Hyper-personal treatment: Connecting audiences with B2H
B2H – ‘Business to Human’ – has rapidly become the preeminent trend in brand marketing. The 2022 Adobe Trust Report gives a strong indication why, with nearly 70% of interviewees attesting that their trust in brands falls when personalisation is poor. More than 50% of those interviewees further stated they would stop purchasing from brands that failed to provide personal experiences they value.
From this we can conclude that there is a strong consumer desire for ‘hyper-personalisation’ built on real-time data and technologies such as AI. Hence the move to B2H.
Here are some tips to master B2H approaches and bring your bottom line up to a new level.
Into the metaverse: Engaging audiences anytime, anywhere
Audience accessibility is crucial to an effective B2H approach – so channels are important. The metaverse enables brands to create attractive, easy-to-enter environments that can expand their reach.
According to J.P. Morgan, the metaverse will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over US$1 trillion in yearly revenues. In Pico Group’s Annual Market Survey 2022, 60% of interviewees revealed that they were currently ‘exploring its potential’ or had already ‘conducted some activity’. Let’s look at how brands are trying to grasp the market opportunities behind the metaverse fever.
Example: YAOLAND metaverse platform
YAOLAND is a brand-new metaverse platform created by Pico, 263 Network Communications Co., Ltd. and China Unicom’s subsidiary Shanghai Wocheng Information Technology Limited. Designed to provide brands in all industries with a cost-effective, immersive gamified virtual marketing platform, it features ample ingenious details to ensure that all online audiences can bond and enjoy an equally appealing experience.
Source: Pico Global YouTube Channel
All-round audience engagement with NFTs, avatars and more
As an HTML5 platform, YAOLAND is highly accessible, with tech like 3D virtual streaming making it intuitive and smooth to use. Users with digital devices such as mobile phones and IPTVs can enjoy interactive experiences such as designing their own avatars, exploring different activation experiences and stories, collecting NFTs, gaming, socialising and shopping. Such diverse interactions with brands and friends encourage long-term brand engagement, the formation of online communities, building brand loyalty and boosting sales.
Technologies to humanise – not just digitalise
A successful B2H marketing plan should involve unique interactive experiences. Technologies such as AI, AR and VR are enormously useful in creating these, and can also foster audience interaction with products and brands in a fun and impressive way.
Perfect Corp, a beauty tech company, has introduced an ‘AI Face Analyser’ to provide users with instant, highly accurate facial analysis. The system also recommends products suitable for users’ unique facial traits and colour preferences. In this way, audiences enjoy a fun, accessible, highly personalised experience that also boasts a high level of credibility. The brand gains audience trust and loyalty, thus helping to boost sales. Also, unlike traditional human-based methods of facial analysis, the system can serve several users simultaneously – another to boost sales, with little effort spent.
Source from Perfect Corp
Let the data speak for itself
Technologies can bring marketers instant effects on the bottom line. These can be extended even further if marketers make good use of the data generated.
The key to a B2H approach is to target your audience strategically, and data analysis is crucial to gaining the needed level of understanding. This can include their preferences, behaviour, brand loyalty and many other factors. With such deep understanding, a brand can tailor a highly effective marketing plan that precisely meets the expectations of the target audience and improves the return on investment (ROI).
Recently, Pico launched ExQ™ Experience Analytics, a new AI-powered data analytics solution designed to bring data-driven decision making and measurement into the MICE and brick-and-mortar retail industries. ExQ™ effectively measures, compares and optimises audience experiences to drive return on experience and return on investment.
The tool enables brands to make consistent comparisons of their brand experience performance in a cost-effective manner. It works by pinpointing project weaknesses using a scoring system based on comprehensive data points. To illustrate how the platform helps users leverage first-party data to create experience scores and benchmarks, an ExQ™ Lite Calculator was developed that lets users experiment with project variables and see their outcomes, quantify the impact of experiences, and generate actionable insights. From this basis, clients can better ensure that their events effectively fulfill audience expectations – and improve profits.
Brands can use such data to tailor their marketing plans more accurately to a target audience. For example, audiences at the Amazon Style offline clothing shop can access online services via mobile app and digital touchscreens, receive product information by scanning QR codes, or join a virtual queue for a fitting room. The app predicts users’ favourite styles based on their fits and sizes recorded, makes recommendations, and delivers their selected items straight to a fitting room. This personalisation has enhanced the shopping experience and lifted sales for Amazon.
Source from Amazon
Conclusion
Broadly, B2H can be interpreted as ‘treating each audience differently’. As the popularity of online marketing elements surges, so does the flood of audience information. Marketers need to adopt a B2H mindset, which requires them to put themselves in the audiences’ shoes, think deeply about how they feel, and how this affects what they like or dislike, trust or distrust, buy or not buy. Using it wisely is the basis of ‘hyper-personalisation’ – the key for brands to stand out in the marketplace and earn the respect and loyalty of their target audiences.