There’s more to personalization than addressing your customers by name. It’s about showing that you value them, and building stronger relationships with your base. This is as true in the B2B space as it is in consumer marketing. In fact, 87% of consumers say that personalized content impacts their perception of a brand.
Whether your potential customers are exploring your website, reading an email, or engaging with you on social media, they should feel as if you care about them. You can accomplish this by personalizing the content you present to your target audience.
Of course, if you’re trying to obtain buy-in for your content personalization efforts, it’s not enough to argue that personalization is good. You’ll need solid evidence of its benefits. In that case, look no further. Here are five benefits of content personalization, with recommendations for getting the most out of your personalization efforts in a variety of situations.
1.Reduce friction on the way to conversion
Nobody likes to fill out forms. This includes your prospects. While you want to collect as much current data as possible, you also want to avoid frustrating your customers. Keep in mind also that in B2B, engaging with your brand is often part of someone’s busy workday. Asking them to fill out a long form, can lead to abandonment before you get the conversion you want.
With personalization, you can take the information you already have and use it to prefill forms. That way, your prospects don’t feel as if they are having to repeat themselves when they fill out forms on your site. That way, you increase the likelihood of conversion at the moment, and give your customer a better experience to remember in the future.
2.Improve ROI for video content
When it comes to content personalization, much of the focus is on text. However, personalization can be taken far beyond website content and email marketing. There are also ways to personalize video content. Here’s how:
- Use customer information to determine the videos you’ll share with each customer who visits your website. For example, a customer with no purchase history may be shown a ‘getting to know us’ video upon entering your website. Another may be prompted to watch a product demo video based on previous purchases, and product inquiries.
- Video descriptions can be modified to ensure that they are most likely to be found by relevant prospects. By including the right keywords, you can better ensure that the right audience sees your videos.
- Finally, there are video personalization hacks. There are tools such as Vidyard that allow you to incorporate the name of your prospect’s company or other personalized information directly into your video content.
Video already has great ROI. You can get even more out of it by offering video content that is as relevant as possible to your target audience.
3.Increase email engagement
Too many email campaigns fail to reflect any real understanding of the client’s needs. Instead, they simply indicate the sender’s desire to make a sale. When email content doesn’t match up with a potential buyer’s requirements, metrics such as open and click-through rates are going to suffer.
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This is because too many emails are sent en masse. They are based on templates, and by trying to reach everyone, they reach virtually nobody in any meaningful way.
Fortunately, there are many personalization techniques that can make your marketing emails more engaging for your business clients. This begins with obvious tactics such as inserting the contact name in your email greeting, and using their company name in the emails you send them.
In addition to that, you can also use dynamic content to further personalize your emails. Each prospect could potentially receive a different email with content that is based upon their demographics, preferences, and previous history with your company.
4.Build trust and a sense of loyalty
People trust people (and brands) when they perceive that there is care and understanding. Reaching out to potential customers with generic client demonstrates neither of those things. It’s a bit like planning a date without bothering to learn the other person’s interests. It’s hit or miss at best, and makes it seems as if you just don’t care all that much.
Your prospects want website experiences, and content that is created to reflect their organizations’ needs. When you present your audience with content that is current and relevant, you send the message that you care about meeting their needs. When your audience knows that visiting your website and opening your emails will lead them to relevant content, they’re more likely to show your brand loyalty in the future.
5.Engage visitors and increase time on site
What would you do if you walked into a clothing store and saw nothing that matched your size or personal style? It wouldn’t matter if you were just window shopping, or planned to make a purchase that day. You’d quickly determine that store wasn’t for you, and make your retreat. The sales staff wouldn’t get an opportunity to impress you.
The same thing applies to your website and social media content. If your target audience doesn’t see something that applies to them, they’re going to bounce. That’s why it’s important that you present content that is useful every customer segment, and that you share content that is relevant through every stage of the sales funnel.
You can accomplish this by creating detailed, and precise customer personas. Then, guide your customers to the most relevant content by using data to determine what is going to be most relevant to them.
Get to know your customers. Develop an understanding of their needs and preferences at various stages of the buying process. Give them choices. Whenever possible, address your customers by name, or otherwise make it clear that you’ve taken the time to grasp what is relevant to them. Then, combine data, technology, and thoughtful content creation to ensure that you are offering each prospect exactly what they need at any given point in time.