According
to our Account-Based Marketing
Research Report, 80% of senior B2B marketers use personalized
content to some extent, while 49% use personalization technologies to support
their ABM strategy.
How is
personalization being used to provide an uptick in ROI? And when does it stop
being a powerful tool for conversion and start becoming a creepy intrusion?
We’ve
collated our own research conducted among senior B2B marketing in the Insights for Professionals community, along with
other industry insights to provide this in-depth guide to B2B personalization.
This article aims to bring you up-to-speed with how personalization is being
leveraged in the B2B marketing community right now.
Reading time: 14 minutes
Why B2B
marketers shouldn’t ignore the rewards of personalization
Personalization
for B2B marketers focuses around delivering the message a
customer will be interested in, at the right time in which they will be
interested, in order to appeal to the 90%
of 18-64 year olds who value personalized messages.
The benefits
of personalized content experiences are clear:
§
better engagement
§
superior customer experience
§
faster revenue
§
shorter sales cycles
This
is according to the How Do B2B Marketers Deliver Personalized Content Experiences?
report from our research mini-series around Content
Intelligence in B2B marketing. Every aspect of a company’s presence should be
tailored towards an individual,
high-quality personalized experience to maintain a
competitive edge in today’s digital world.
Consider the
frequent emails you receive from any organization you’ve provided data to.
§
Are you more likely to open the messages addressing you
specifically, on first name terms?
§
Do you completely ignore any that aren’t directed at you and are
instead the generic ‘send to all’ style?
§
If the content is irrelevant or repeated, is this a massive
turn-off?
79%
of businesses that have surpassed their revenue targets have a
documented personalization strategy in place, while 83% have a dedicated
personalization budget. It is through content personalization that companies
can attract and engage with customers going forward and achieve the conversion
they are so keen to see.
2 key personalization pain points faced by the modern B2B
marketer
As with most
things, there are challenges to overcome when considering personalized content
and reaching greater audiences. Here’s some of the more common ones…
1. Tailoring content
A
recent ITSMA
report concerning ABM leaders reveals their top challenge to be
“personalizing and tailoring our marketing to the key contacts at each
account.” This aligns to our research conducted among senior B2B marketers in
our Insights for Professionals community. Key findings published in ABM FAQs infographic, shows how 47% of marketers find
the biggest challenge to be delivering relevant content to target audiences.
Tailoring the
right content to each account and individual is quite the task. With more
complex, longer, and nonlinear buyer journeys there are various considerations
to take into account when it comes to personalizing the content journey. This
can make content personalization less of a simple and straight-forward process…
43.5%
of marketers are not personalizing content by industry, while a significant 52%
are not personalizing by buyer stage, according to our Squib.Media; The B2B Content Intelligence Report,
This suggests
that half of B2B marketers are not yet adequately personalizing their content
in relation to buyer stage and DMU stakeholder to improve the relevance of each
message and the likeliness that it will achieve its intended purpose.
2. Scaling up
Marketers
looking to personalize at scale while ensuring the quality of their
communications remain strong may face a few difficulties. If you were to
operate a one-to-one strategy,
personalizing content for 5 to 10 key accounts wouldn’t be a huge issue. The
challenge comes when you’re looking to scale up campaigns and connect with even
more companies; resource
constraints don’t always allow for complete personalization and
you run the risk of damaging relationships through sending out inaccurate
content.
The
biggest challenge when trying to scale audience reach is accuracy, according to 73% of marketers, closely
followed by data accessibility (68%) and relevancy (65%).
When it all becomes a little creepy…
Personalization
can be great when done well, but when done wrong it can be detrimental. Take a
look at some of the common pitfalls marketers face:
Don’t be a creep
If
you’re targeting someone you’ve not spoken to before, it’s not about letting
them know you know who they are. This can come across a little creepy! Instead,
leveraging the right indicators and listening are both key to truly showing
them personalized value (Content Marketing Institute). Consider if you
were to receive a message indicating that a company knows all about you; not
only your name but what you’ve been looking at, the behavioral tendencies you
portray, things you value and so on. Does it make you feel somewhat vulnerable
when it’s too much information?
Inaccurate and irrelevant
As we’ve
mentioned, personalizing at scale can be challenging to get right. It can lead
to inaccurate triggers and consequently irrelevant content, which some might
consider worse than not receiving personalized messages at all. The effect this
can have on engagement can be damaging and can quickly change perceptions of
your reputation.
Damaging relationships
Fully
personalizing your content requires time and energy; tailoring it specifically
to each individual account on your list involves focus and accuracy, as
discussed in our recent blog Content
Personalization at Scale is Easier than You Think. The impact of not
doing this, or not doing it well and rushing it, can impact relationships with
accounts and prompt them to lose trust and even look elsewhere.
One-to-one personalization holds the key
56% of B2B marketers say obtaining the right
audience intelligence to create Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) is one of their
biggest challenges. With the revolution of accessible tech platforms, decisions
surrounding how to personalize content have greatly advanced thanks to the
adoption of AI, machine learning and predictive modelling.
Such
technologies have the ability to collect, analyze and translate extensive
amounts of data into actionable insights that effectively detect the most
accurate triggers for content personalization. Various levels of
personalization can be achieved as a result, not only with greater ease but
also on a larger scale.
AI technology
and accessible machine learning, used to identify the most accurate triggers
for personalizing content, have made one-to-one personalization far more
accessible – as we’re about to find out…
The ability of AI to support
one-to-one personalization
Given the
increasing costs of new customer acquisition and customer loyalty wavering,
delivering individualized experiences and maximum relevancy has become
imperative. Machine learning and real-time processing now make it possible to
make sense of the abundance of untapped customer data and react to customer
signals in-the-moment.
Machine learning
This method
allows you to accurately identify topics most relevant to your target audience
through leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP). Its intelligence allows
strategic tagging and categorization of content within a centralized content
platform which, if supported by machine learning capabilities and an AI
recommendation engine, can use algorithms and models to analyze, interrogate
and draw interpretations from any patterns in first party data against
real-time buying signals.
The interpretations
will then trigger intelligent content journeys to guide the right messaging to
the right audience. The more accurate the categorization of content, the higher
the relevance.
Lead scoring
Another
effective technique for translating user actions into signals of buyer intent
is lead scoring. This
uses event based triggers at key touchpoints in the buyer journey, triggering
corresponding workflows which deliver a sequence of personalized
communications.
Attaching a
‘lead score’ to the activity of a prospect allows scores to be monitored
against set behaviors to give you an indication of how they act, providing you
with implicit data and user activities. You are then able to marry together the
implicit data with user activity, to see a highly sophisticated level of data
to further enhance personalization capabilities.
Master personalization with 5 key steps
Once you have
the mix of perfect content to engage and nurture the prospect, you should
deliver it across B2B marketing channels in a sequence of controlled
touchpoints. Establishing the best fit for one-to-one personalized
communications by integrating various different channels such as email
marketing and paid social, strengthens the likeliness of success.
Here are 5
key ways to master personalized content; follow these and you can’t go wrong…
1. Ensure sufficient content for each journey
It’s all very
well adopting a personalization strategy, but without enough appropriate,
engaging and relevant content you are likely to fail at the first hurdle.
Prioritize content creation as often as possible.
2. Keep messages relevant and accurate
Use content
atomization and repurposing to break content down into personalized areas. This
will ensure higher levels of relevancy and accuracy in your targeting.
3. Understand fully what each persona cares about
Personalization
is most meaningful when it offers differentiated experiences based on the
unique needs of each buyer in the decision making unit (DMU).
4. Adopt an AI-centric approach
AI aided
capability allows you to personalize content at scale and with high relevance,
which can fast-track decision making and display superior brand value.
5. Utilize machine learning to gain an abundance of data on your
prospects
Simply using
first party data and marketing automation might not give you enough to go on.
Effective machine learning needs training data to base its decisions on.
Running campaigns across various different keyword categories provides access
to key user behavior insights.
One-to-one
personalization is far more readily achievable to B2B marketers now, with AI
and machine learning capabilities having really evolved. To maximize its
potential, you will need a well-defined audience with a rich set of data
displaying specific and clear characteristics, preferences and behavioral
tendencies. The availability of intent data and real time buying signals has
enabled personalized content to be effective, accurate, and more likely to
reach accounts at vital touchpoints in the decision making journey.