The Key to Business Growth in 2024? Personalization.

A new year means new opportunities for growth, but where exactly do those opportunities lie? In new markets, across borders, or are they half a world away? 

On November 16, BigCommerce welcomed thought leaders from some of the largest brands in the world to talk about the key considerations your business needs to make when planning for growth in 2024. 

Can’t wait? Watch the full webinar here. 

Jessica Bondurant Thompson, D2C Lead, North America, at DeLonghi, Andrew Lederman, Senior Director of Ecommerce at ABInBev, Crystal Nwokorie, Director, Ecommerce Commercial Strategy at Pepsi Co, and Kristina Pototska, Manager of Project Management at BigCommerce joined Max Kiely, Product Marketing Manager at BigCommerce, to share their insights. 

Personalization is key

“We could spend the next 45 minutes just going into the biggest trends for 2024,” Lederman laughed, “but one of the areas that I’m particularly interested in is personalization.” 

He goes on to explain that, in a post-COVID-19 world, consumers and businesses alike are now settling into these new ways of buying and selling. All the trends and user expectations that were accelerated during COVID-19, like Buy Online, Pick Up in Store, frictionless checkout, and a seamless shopping experience across online and offline channels, are now baseline expectations. 

Brands selling online need to interact with their consumers in the ways that they want to be interacted with. Give them the information they need, when and where they need it. 

Make your customers’ experience as seamless and personalized as possible — and they will reward you with a purchase.

Don’t just focus on the individual

Instead of focusing on personalization at an individual level, brands should instead look at their consumer cohorts, or groups of customers who share common interests or characteristics, and see how they can be targeted in more meaningful ways. 

“For example, we’ve been spending time learning about the Hispanic and Latinx demographic in the U.S.,” Nwokorie said. “They represent 25% of the youth in the U.S today. 

“So we’re now thinking about how we leverage language within our promotions online to better engage this demographic, whether that’s by using Spanish language creative assets, or other assets for personalization.” 

While individual personalization is important further down the purchasing funnel, this kind of generalized personalization can provide much more value to top-of-funnel promotional and marketing assets. 

Get the fundamentals right, then work to expand

“Personalization has always been a buzzword, but it’s more about how you create it, how you operationalize it so you can actually deliver that personalization,” said Thompson. 

When working to personalize an experience, either to an individual or to a wider audience, getting the fundamentals right is just as important as the extent to which you can personalize the experience. 

“If you’re going to deliver personalization, you need to understand things like cohorts, customer lifetime value, all these different things that come together to show you where to personalize and what that looks like,” Thompson continued. “And frankly, that can be difficult to do. So for 2024, especially for brands who started offline and coming online, the most important thing you can do is to set up the technology, set up a baseline for tracking your customer and their needs so you can deliver that kind of personalization.” 

The final word

It’s no doubt that personalization will play a major part in business growth in the new year. But how you personalize your customers’ experiences, and who you’re personalizing to, are equally important. 

Learning your customers’ wants and needs will be crucial. Once you’ve created that baseline for success, then you can move on to larger, more individualized experiences. 

Want to get more insights from our panel of experts on how your business can grow in 2024? Watch the full webinar here.