Personalization has emerged as a key engagement driver, contributing to successful businesses, big and small. Alexa, the owner of Forever Friday Consulting, sheds light on effective personalized marketing, drawing attention to the role of quizzes in this transformative strategy. Read on to learn how personalized approaches impact brand awareness—directly from Alexa, as she shares insights on the evolution of personalized marketing in luxury wellness.
Table of contents
From Fitness Trends to Algorithmic Precision
Let’s start with some backstory: I present to Boston University’s MBA program every semester, and I have for the last three years. A professor at the university saw what I was doing and asked me to speak to the luxury marketing class on boutique fitness and the rise of luxury wellness. Each year, the segment I add to the deck on personalized marketing gets longer and longer.
I’ve been talking about Oura—a health technology company—for a while now. Specifically, how the company has evolved to incorporate all wearables, such as Levels, the rise in mainstream Continuous Glucose Monitors, and even going into how algorithms are getting more personalized to serve us exactly what we’re looking for.
Key Takeaway: The growing demand for personalized marketing is driving the popularity and development of customizable products, catering to people’s love for tailored experiences.
Why Personalized Marketing Works
Have you ever taken a personality test? I can pretty much guarantee that learning your results was interesting to you—even if they didn’t necessarily align 100%. You could say, “Yes, that’s me,” or “No, that’s not me.” Either way, you were able to stand more robust in a declaration about yourself, and that’s a great feeling.
The first documented personality tests go back over one hundred years ago, when Katherine Briggs developed the Myers-Briggs test to determine which soldiers would have PTSD, or “shell-shock,” as they called it back then.
Fast forward to 2023, and personality testing is a $500 million industry, with an annual growth rate of 10% to 15%, according to the Harvard Business Review. It’s pretty easy to tell why—we love hearing about ourselves! We love learning how well we slept, how many calories we burned, what our love language is, what’s written in the stars for us, and maybe even how big of a Swiftie we are.
Personality tests may have originated with the army in mind, but it is fascinating how apparent personalization is in our daily lives today.
It’s December 2023, as I’m planning this article, so Spotify Wrapped is EVERYWHERE. When you think about it, this one is hilarious. Spotify Wrapped took over the internet by telling people what they already knew about themselves. Of course, people can just look at their Spotify history to find out what they’ve been listening to, but Spotify wrapped up the information with a neat little bow. With Wrapped, Spotify shows its audience who they are and what they like, providing validation. It’s excellent brand marketing.
Key Takeaway: Personality tests are timeless and continue to captivate individuals, confirming their desire for self-discovery and personalized experiences.
Why Quizzes Are the Best Form of Personalized Marketing
I know it feels like we either need a huge budget or a huge team to take a personalized approach to our marketing, but that’s not true! One of my favorite ways to get to know my audience better is through my quiz.
I’ve been using Interact for over three years. My quiz, “What’s Missing From Your Marketing?” is a free personalized resource for my audience. It is so much more effective than a one-size-fits-all lead magnet.
I’m a marketing consultant focusing on brand awareness, client retention, clear messaging, and systems. Someone might have GREAT brand awareness strategies but be lacking in client retention. I wouldn’t prescribe that person a freebie focused on finding ideal clients, much like I wouldn’t prescribe someone with a 90% conversion rate a freebie that teaches them good retention. I would prescribe that person a freebie on how to find their aligned audience!
After taking my four-minute quiz, quiz-takers receive one of four results—each result aligns with questions I strategically ask when onboarding private clients. I’ve improved upon the quiz questions over the years to help me better understand what’s going on in someone’s business and find winnable gaps in their marketing.
After just four minutes, I can send quiz-takers a module for their marketing gap to help their strategy—all for free and ALL automated. I don’t have to lift a finger.
I use Interact to make my quizzes and Flodesk for my email marketing. Each of my four quiz results leads to a separate workflow that includes a downloadable workbook or module. Most of the workflows have at least three resources that match the client’s result.
The additional bonus is that because these four pillars (awareness, retention, messaging, systems) are the foundation of my business, I talk about them time and time again. As the quiz attracts more people, it continuously segments potential clients among the pillars. Rather than starting from scratch, these new subscribers receive automated messaging customized to their quiz result.
One of my business offerings is the Friday Society membership, which includes quarterly meetings dedicated to one of my four pillars. For example, the 2024 Q1 meeting will focus on brand awareness. Since launching my quiz, I can reach out to the segment of my audience who will most benefit from the meeting this quarter. The advantage of having a segmented audience vs. just one big list is invaluable and serves my goals so much more.
If you’re ready to create your own quiz, I wrote up some tips to help you get started:
Tips for Creating Quizzes
- People want to learn about themselves—they don’t want to learn about your business (way harsh, I know, but it’s true).
- Give your quiz a title that your clients can relate to. For example, What’s your Marvel superhero workout routine? Think of Oura: They tell you about YOU; they don’t tell you about OURA. Oura is just the brand that helps you learn about yourself. Get it?
- Make sure you have at least three results and products or services that match your results.
If you’re looking for even more ways to personalize your marketing, consider polls and story engagements. A popular method is ManyChat on Instagram—a third-party app that helps manage DMs. (Full disclosure: I don’t currently use ManyChat. It was glitching when I tried it, but I’ve heard this is no longer a problem). When I used it, the app directed people who DM’ed me (awareness, retention, messaging, systems) and added them to the appropriate segment on Flodesk!
Key Takeaway: Personalized marketing is best achieved through creating quizzes. Quizzes identify and segment your audience and address marketing gaps, all while building valuable connections.
Wrap-Up
As a small business owner, I know that relationships are the cornerstone of success. I know that every one of us has true friendships with those we interact with daily. Getting more personalized and using the above tools just makes sense when streamlining and growing your business.
If you haven’t already created a quiz, head over to Interact’s AI-Powered Quiz Maker to get started!