Personalize Your Way to Success: Building Loyalty and Growth in a Competitive Market

Hello and welcome to the show. Today we are still on folks who are in the curated hamper and the gift giving space or the gift giving industry. Remember that even though we are tying everything into people who make businesses out of creating hampers and giving gifts, this essentially is we're using sales and business development principles to see how we can solve problems that these people face specifically and that all of us face in a universal sense.

If this is the first time you're listening to the podcast and skip back a couple of episodes, I guess maybe five or six, you'll get a sense of the players in the curated hampers and gift giving space. You get a sense of who the people are in the industry, the problems that they face, and how these problems are shared universally by us all. And also, you're going to get the basic road map about how I intend to use the next couple of episodes over here on the podcast to show how we can solve these problems.

Now the previous episode was where we looked at, Oh yeah, niching down. Yes, we looked at how to niche down as a means of setting yourself apart from other players in the space. Now the the process of the idea behind differentiation is this. If you're on the space and you feel commoditized, it feels like every Jack, Dick and Harry is in the business, or every Jane and Delilah and Henrietta is in the business. Then we need to look for ways to help us stand apart from the pack.

And yesterday's episode basically was to say that you can do that by focusing on a specific niche, narrowing down on a specific Clyde base that you serve, and is one way of setting yourself apart from the pack. Because everybody, rather most people are going to be afraid of losing revenue and they're going to try and advertise for as many people as possible and do business with as many people as possible. So today I'm not going to recap what we spoke about yesterday.

So this is your first time of listening to the show. Definitely listen to yesterday's episode and then you get a greater context of what it is that we're trying to do here. Now today we're going to look at personalization as a means of setting yourself apart. So yesterday we looked at niching down and then today we're going to look at personalization. Now personalization is a good strategy. It's a good thing to try out because it creates A deeper connection with customers and it leads to memorable experiences.

And of course, those are good things because they lead to greater customer satisfaction, customer happiness, customer success, whatever it is that you want to call it. And those are the principal things that enrich that whole dynamic of people coming back to do business with us again and again and also referring their friends, their family members, their associates to come do business with us as well. Let's see. OK. Yeah.

So before we continue, let's define what personalization is. Personalization basically is just trying to tailor your products or trying to tailor your service to the individual needs or to the preferences of your customer. And of course, you see how this ties into what we discussed yesterday. If you niche down and you're focusing on key segments in the market. And then of course personalization becomes easier because you already know, you already know in an intimate sense who it is that you deal with.

You already know the demographics and the psychographics of the people that you deal with. Those are the kind of data that you need to personalize your product or service. Demographics is basically what's the demographics? How do I define that now? OK, well, demographics is basically age, sex, location, basically all the kind of information that you would need to fill into your census form and things like that. So that's, that's the kind of data.

So who are the people that you deal with? Male, female, which part of the country? North-south, East, West. What's their income level? Rich, poor, broke, dead, broke. Let's see, what else? Yeah, so those sort of things as demographics now, psychographics, on the other hand, those are the the stuff that people are interested in, so you know their hobbies, their likes, their dislikes or things like that. So in order to personalize our product or service, we need to get a keen sense of the demographics and the psychographics.

So we need to know who are we dealing with, Male or female? Where do they live, How tall, short, how slim, how fat, where necessary. Because of course, if you're in clothing, retail clothing, then of course you know how tall or how slim you know comes into the picture. So the demographics will vary according to the business that you run. So know the demographics, know the psychographics. We also need to know their buying history, what else?

You know, their preferences, things like that. Now, when you're able to tailor your product or service and you have all the data that you need, the demographics and the psychographics, what that results in is this. You're going to have targeted messaging and offers. If it's targeted, people find it relevant, it appeals to them, and it's easier for people to take action on. When you put out all those bland messages, you're trying to appeal to everyone.

You might catch a few people, but The thing is, bland messages don't. They don't rake in, rake in the right, the right crowd. So there are people like me, for instance, who like vanilla, and by that I mean the ice cream. I really like vanilla, But unfortunately it looks like most people prefer other kinds of stuff. So yeah, they will take vanilla if there's nothing else that is there. But looking at other ice cream people there like, OK, my mom doesn't do ice cream.

Yeah, my wife does. My children, they do. But it looks like ice cream. People as a whole, you know, everybody has their own slant. They all like that kind of flavours. I mean, you'll never go out of business if all you sell is vanilla because you can appeal to the whole range of folks. But people who do all those, you know, unique flavours, like there's this thing, what's it called? Magnum, yeah, back when we were in the UK, so there's Magnum and it had I think some nuts and some fancy flavours like wine and stuff like that.

So the Magnum folks, you know, the Magnum folks and the Vanilla folks, they're, they're not the same. So vanilla, you'll never go out of business. But Magnum, you're able to build a profitable business. So you have targeted messaging and targeted offers when you're able to personalize, be able to customize and improve the customer experience. I remember I said that's important because if you improve the customer experience, then people come back, they buy today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and then they say, hey Wifey, let's go.

And then Wifey becomes a customer. And then Wifey brings our colleagues and their colleagues bring their husbands and their husbands bring their friends and blah, blah blah, and you make a bunch of money. Then it also allows you to build deeper relationships with the customers you already have and it shows that you understand them. It's also a form of empathy and summary. That's basically what personalization is, what you need, the data that you need,

demographics and psychographic psychographics. And the results are basically everybody's happy and people keep doing business with you. Now let's look at examples of personalization that you can do if you're in the created hamper and give giving space. Now remember, we are talking about people in the created hamper and gift giving space. Yes, but that doesn't mean that these techniques are only going to work with them.

They apply to all of us as well, whether we are architects or wedding photographers or dentists or brain surgeons. So just bear that in mind. The challenge is even if we talk about ideas in this podcast, in tomorrow's podcast, or the one we did the day before, that don't apply to you. Just give it some thought. Also, sit down with ChatGPT Gemini. It's there's no more Google bad, it's now Gemini. So sit down with Gemini or Bing or whatever, and you'll be able to come up with examples about how you can personalize your services as a Let's say you sell human hair.

You'll be able to come up with ideas about how to personalize your services. If you're a dentist, you'll be able to find out which to personalize your services. So for people in the created hampers and gift giving space, you can personalize your hampers by building it around hobbies or dietary needs or different occasions. So I've already seen hampers on dietary needs, you know, like vegetarian hampers, so I'm not sure if that's the right time.

Veggie, basically people who don't like to eat meat, so you have hampers that are built around those sorts of things. So everything in this hamper, no fat, no dairy, no this, no that. So some of that going on, although I I don't see too many of those hampers. It's not like they're sold everywhere, but once in a while you come across them. And then of course, personalized hampers that are built around specific occasions.

I've seen those ones, especially in the wedding space where people would have certain gifts that were what's that word? Is it white labeled? No, not white labeling like you customize it So in the wedding space for brides and grooms, you know the hamper would have all sorts of things. You know, shampoo, wine, water, biscuits, chocolate, whatever. But it will have the face of the bride and groom on it then OK to personalize you can also because personalizing or customizing can be expensive.

So there are some folks that just allow you to have a base and then to customize a couple of things. So and maybe you see this one around Christmas. So you go and you meet the hamper person and the hamper says, well you know what every single hamper is going to have Cabin biscuit is going to have. Pig milk is going to have a bottle of fruit wine and it's going to have what else? Lollipops. So that is basic. This is going to be in every single hamper, but these are the options that you have for customization.

If you're sending it to your high end clients, you can have the option to add this, this and that. If you're sending it mostly to men, you can add this and this. If you're sending mostly to women, you can add this and that. You know you get the picture. So there's a base that is common to every single hamper, and then people get to customize specific hampers depending on who it is that they are sending it out to. Then you can also personalize based on packaging and presentation.

I've seen some folks do this really well, like for instance with handwritten notes or maybe engraving. The engraving thing, it it really, it works. It surprises people because I remember the last gig that we did for the British Council, the video guy that I did, we had to hand over the, what's it called, the raw files. We're going to hand over the raw files on memory drive and the video guys took the time out to customize it.

And so even though the British Council is a, it's not a corporation, what is it called? Well, you get the idea, basically. I'm just trying to say that you're not dealing with individuals, but still, members of the team were pretty impressed that the Flash came and was customized not just to the mother organization, but to the to the team specifically. So they were impressed. So and then also for Yoruba weddings, I've seen stuff like that.

You know, The thing is handed over and a bunch of the stuff is engraved. It makes it more grand and much more impressive. And then also different forms of personalized packaging. So these are different things that people can do in this space to personalize the, personalize the product now, OK, 10 minutes. So let me just wrap it up, OK? So we can go on and on and on, coming up with different ways of personalizing, but let's not get lost in the possible things that we can do because we can engrave, we can emboss, we can handwrite, we can print, we can What's that word again?

There's a way that you bind graphics or things to another surface. Well, I can't remember. I've been out of the business for too long. So there's also different options. But The thing is not to get carried away with all the things that we could do, but we should remember that the goal is we're trying to create a memorable and a meaningful experience. So let's not get carried away with all the FEC that we can add. Just remember, we're trying to create memorable and meaningful experiences because we're trying to cultivate customer loyalty and we're trying to build some overall long term success because people are going to keep coming back over and over again and then refer to their friends,

their family members, their associates and hopefully refer to their enemies as well. Because you know, all money is good money. So if it comes from a friend good, if it comes from an enemy, I'm sure enemies money is not bad as well. So that's all for today. Remember to connect with me on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140. Country code +234 for Nigeria. Also, connect with me on WhatsApp. My name is Tavish. Oh sorry, not WhatsApp.

What's that one called? LinkedIn. Yeah, that's where I spent most of my time. My name is Tavishima Ayede, the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link. We're currently listening to this episode, so thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode where we will be continuing the conversation that we've started on folks in the curated hamper and gift giving space.

But remember, we're using them as a case study, but the principles, the ideas apply universally. So take them and apply to your own unique business or personal context. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys into the next episode.