By: David H. Khalili
Founder of DentalLabSupport.com
Dental Lab Marketing Trends: Increasing Need for Personalization
Dental Laboratory marketing used to be simple. You simply relied on word of mouth and local print ads to get the word out about your business, trusting that the quality of your products or services would help you gain exposure.
Of course, these traditional types of marketing also came with significant shortcomings. Print marketing is expensive, and word of mouth is unreliable - which is exactly why the rise of digital marketing, a controlled yet inexpensive solution for many small businesses, has been so rapid. Today, 66% of small businesses plan to maintain or increase their digital marketing spend, while 85% of the same group consider the biggest change in marketing between 2010 and 2015 the rise of digital marketing tools.
But as you can imagine, digital marketing comes with its own shortcomings - mainly, the loss of personal touches with your target audience that are so crucial in local markets. That's exactly why digital marketing personalization is an important small business marketing trend that you shouldn't ignore.
The Concept of Mass Customization
Experienced business owners and eager management students will be familiar with mass customization, the concept of producing a product on a large scale but with enough customizable features to make it appealing to individual audience members. Mass customization has been around since at least the 1990s, driven by an increasing desire to appeal to individual customers' unmet needs.
Why does this matter to small businesses, who often don't produce their products on a scale where mass customization would be necessary? Because personalized digital marketing is, in a way, nothing more than a new application of the concept. In other words, it applies the indisputable advantages of personal interaction with the scalability of its nature, in more than one way:
1) Personalization in Email Marketing
Take emails, which remains one of the most effective marketing tools for small businesses. Research consistently shows that personalized emails, from subject lines to the actual text, perform significantly better than simple email blasts that are not adjusted to their individual recipients.
Does that mean that you need to send your emails out one by one, changing the text for each of your recipients? Absolutely not. In fact, modern CRM software can help you personalize your emails in ways that are reminiscent of mail merges: you write one text that includes placeholders, and the software takes care of filling in individual contact information from your database. Suddenly, your recipients will receive the personal attention they crave, without any extra work on your end.
2) Personalization Beyond Email
But your options to personalize your digital marketing don't stop there. In fact, you can use all of the information you collect about your contacts in your customer relationship management software to personalize all aspects of your marketing, from your website to your Google search advertising. You may want to think about personalized web content, auto fill forms, and other options that are now available for little cost to you.
Considering how well it fills the gap between the personal approach of your traditional advertising methods and the convenience and cost-effectiveness of digital alternatives, no wonder small businesses are increasingly flocking toward personalization options in digital marketing.
The noted small business experts at Entrepreneur.com joined the chorus this year when they declared that "personalized marketing is no longer a luxury." Considering the plethora of options available thanks to various personalization tool, this is a small business marketing trend that you should not ignore.
Of course, personalizing your marketing messages only works if you can store information about your audience. And that's where you need a CRM that effectively gathers this information, and can even help you personalize your email marketing efforts in the process. So if you're ready to join wave of small businesses rightfully rushing toward personalization, contact us!
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