Will AI finally bridge the Hyper-Personalization Gap for SMBs
For years, brands such as Netflix and Amazon have been able to create a hyper-personalized product experience for their customers. From matching titles to matching accessories, we’re used to being fed personalized offers.
For Small-to-Medium (SMB) sized businesses, this has been a bigger struggle and the ability to match customers to needs has been more painstaking. Yes, there are behavioral automation tools and tactics that have helped. From marketing automation to geo-targeted ads, we’re flirting with the possibiliites.
Small businesses, particularly E-Commerce businesses have always had the advantage of being small and nimble when it comes to pivoting and putting in scrappy, sweat equity to compete to win. However, when it comes to personalizing product sales, it’s been a challenge.
SMBs Challenges to Hyper-Personalization
One of the first challenges that limits SMBs from competing with Hyper-Personalization is in the data. Leveraging data is not as easy as the brochure advertises. For many SMBs, there are no data scientist available to procure the data. Many SMBs leveraging marketing automation software to help overcome this. By using a limited view of customer interests, we might send better emails or SMS text marketing.
The challenge in many marketing automation strategies is that by the time we know what the client wanted, they’ve already made a choice. We’re dealing in historical data instead of predicting their needs in real-time.
An additional challenge is an SMBs ability to scale to compete using historical data or relevant market data. Most marketing automation tools require a marketing team infrastructure that just doesn’t exist. When the majority of marketing teams being focused on output, it’s not realistic to have the bandwidth to scale their automation to the degree it needs to be effective.
For Medium sized businesses, the struggle is not much easier. They have access to more marketing resources but their data is a mess. The ability to clean their data is a struggle.
The Role Chat GPT and AI has in creating Hyper-Personalization for SMBs
In many ways, Chat GPT is acting as an Artificial Intern more than Artificial Intelligence. For too many businesses, it’s becoming a hack for writing over-sensationalized web or email content. It’s overuse of the words “Unlock” and “Unleash” are exhausting to see.
What can be effective is to use it as an aid along your roadmap to creating more personalization. Deloitte recently published a whitepaper on leveraging AI for personalization. Caution, it’s an Enterprise view of the needs and process, but something SMBs can leverage to better understand their own roadmap.
As an SMB, the use of data is more challenging but not impossible. SMBs are used to being scrappy. It’s what keeps things interesting.
Get serious about Product Value Propositions
The first step to leveraging AI for Hyper-Personalization comes from your ability to productize your services. To get serious about the way you build and express a product’s value to your customers. Using Value Proposition Templates for each and every product should be a table-stakes.
In order for AI to recognize your solution to your customer’s needs, you need to have custom services optimized for technology. In doing so, your ability to personalize your offers will become more proactive than reactive.
FYI – we’re discussing this topic more over at Azola Academy. Click here to get into the conversation.