The Content Coast's tips for speaking to prospects not at them.
76% of consumers say personalization makes them more likely to purchase, and 78% say it makes them more likely to repurchase.
(Mckinsey)
The combination of automation and data and the pure amount of options for both data capture and automation tools, allows for personalization at scale. Therefore, if you aren’t customizing content, you might just be lazy! JK; you might not know how or you might need tips. That’s where the Content Coast comes in.
Creating personalized B2B content that effectively engages business clients is crucial for standing out in today’s competitive market. B2B customers are perhaps more discerning consumers. And according to McKinsey, personalization results in a 10-15% increase in revenue; the better a company is at using data to increase customer knowledge and intimacy, the better the returns!
Understand Your Audience:
Use insights from existing clients in a particular industry, how did they originally get started with your company, what challenges did they have? Craft messages about cost, management, production and speed, whatever the challenge to relate and resonate with the prospect immediately.
Pro tip: Use tools like customer interviews, surveys, and feedback to continuously gather data to inform new content. This information will help tailor your content to address specific pain points and aspirations.
Segment Your Audience:
Ensure messaging is not one size fit all. Instead, break your audience into segments based on factors like industry, company size, role in the company, or their stage in the buyer's journey.
Pro tip: Create lists in your marketing and CRM tools based on these segments then create rules where new customers flow right into these lists without putting them in there.
Use Data Insights:
Incorporate data and analytics to personalize content. Use prospect and customer website visits, open rates, click-through rates, and engagement levels to refine your content to match what they care about.
Pro tip: Use website visits to inform retargeting and any paid placement.
But, Make It Useful:
Your content should offer up tangible value to your audience. This could be through actionable advice, unique insights, or solutions to common problems. Content that readers find useful will more likely be shared and remembered.
Pro tip: Providing something for free that helps them do their job or prove out their job easier, is a great way to ensure a return look. This could be a calculator tool in excel with pre-populated data or comparison guides even a playbook that someone can take to modify and make their own.
Use Interactive and Dynamic Content:
A dynamic website that serves up different content based on the user is super cool. The ability for a customer to create a customized dashboard or have control over how they interact with your company and content is the coolest. According to Instapage, a personalized homepage offer influenced 85% of customers to make a purchase.
Interactive content like quizzes, assessments, calculators and even infographics encourage engagement and keep prospects interested. Specific outcomes from this content could influence the journey if let’s say results or recommendations really hit home!
Pro tip: Suggested content at the bottom of your website helps direct visitors to where you want them to go and take action.
Market to the User Journey:
In marketing we produce content for top of funnel, mid and bottom funnel, where sales can be set to push them to the finish line and close! Personalization is crucial in all stages of the buyer journey: educational content for those at the awareness stage, detailed comparisons and case studies at the consideration stage, and strong calls to action and incentives at the decision stage.
B2B companies should take a play out of retail or eCommerce companies’ playbooks, as according to Dynamic Yield, over half of consumers enjoy receiving targeted discounts of promotions by email.
Pro tip: While an incentive or limited time offers or proposal deadlines are effective, they are very salesy. Instead, try the authentic approach with “hey can we get this in by end of quarter and as a favor to help expedite the I’ll work with my marketing team to offer you X. Doesn’t have to be a discounted thing, it can be a mutually beneficial thing such as sales training or a playbook on best practices and how others in their industry use your service.
It's important for sales and account management (if separate) to have a feedback loop with marketing. What are existing clients facing or doing with your company that you can leverage to produce content. Marketing needs to listen to sales on what seems to work and what needs adaptation.
The Content Coast creates personalized and engaging B2B content to build pipeline and help with conversion. Contact us today to create content that converts prospects to customers.