Digital Marketing generally does follow some preset rules, but not always. Few other trades offer as much flexibility and personalization opportunities as digital marketing does. Learning to mix and match digital marketing strategies is an important skill to master in any content marketing course you may enroll in.
What is personalization anyway? It is the process of creating and distributing unique ads and other promotional content keeping in mind the needs and preferences of the target audience so that the marketers market the right product and experience to the right person at the right time. By doing this, the business stands a better chance of making customers feel valued, having more meaningful interaction and convincing them to convert.
(Courtesy — Mozcon)
Many avenues in the customer journey offer potential for personalization, such as communication channel, device, and the most likely time of day for a given consumer to engage with a company. However, brands can also personalize website, email and mobile application content, paid media messages, discount offers, sale alerts, product and service recommendations and transactional communications, like receipts, invoices and shipping notifications.
The benefits of digital marketing personalization are twofold. Firstly, the customer enjoys a user experienced that is highly relevant to their need state. Secondly, the digital marketer can obtain a rich collection of customer preference data and loyal patrons to keep that revenue flowing in.
According to Digital Trends, 73% of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to make their shopping experiences more relevant. And as per Monetate, 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels.
So, how to go about personalizing digital marketing as taught in content marketing courses? Let’s find out.
Gathering Enough Data
“The more actions are taken on your website, the more personal information the user gives you, i.e., in exchange for downloadable content,” opined Yulia Khansvyarova, digital marketing team lead at marketing research software firm SEMRush, while trying to explain the importance of data. Indeed, the more data a digital marketer has about the target audience, the better he knows how to convert them into loyal customers through personalized recommendations and targeted ads. People these days do not shy away from sharing intimate details on social media and this fact alone has become one of the best ways to tap into social insights and customer preferences.
(Customer Database Schema | Courtesy — MBASkool)
Figuring out Buyer Personas
After gathering sufficient data, brands can segment their audience based on a range of factors. These factors can be age, gender, income, location, interests and pain points, as well as shopping habits like frequency and purchases. Other types of data points required to create buyer personas may be what incentives they respond to and what information they need to make a decision. Once marketers have clarity on individual personas they can begin to refine the custom messaging to show to both new and existing customers. This messaging should be catered to the defined personas by addressing their needs and ultimately help them enter the next stage of the marketing funnel.
(Courtesy — DigitalStream)
Utilizing the Collected Data to Map out Content
So a marketer has enough data and has classified buyer personas. Now what? Mapping out the Content relative to the personas studied. It is because if the content is not mapped out to the specific interests and needs of each persona, it will not be viewed or shared and will fail to generate sufficient hype. This means marketers must identify what content would be of unique interest to each persona and map these interests to their range of products and/services to maximize lead conversions.
What content would be of greatest interest to the buyer and most useful in nurturing them down the conversion funnel at each interaction? What triggers the deployment of that content? Content mapping aims to answer these questions.
(Content Mapping | Courtesy — Moz)
(Geo-location based targeting | Courtesy — Asos)
Delivering the Personalized Content
Now comes the part where the actual personalized content has to be created and delivered.
Email is a very obvious example. Email marketing using tools like MailChimp, MoonMail, ActiveCampaign etc. are usually taught in a quality content marketing course.
Tink Taylor, president of email marketing automation platform ‘dotmailer’, pointed to analytics firm Jupiter Research, which found relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.
Take a look at our very own emailer as an example.
Here’s another instance.
(Courtesy — Mozcon)
Analysis — Personal Productivity Reports
Personalization shouldn’t and doesn’t stop at collecting info and dishing out persona-centric content to magically convert targeted consumers to loyal customers. It also entails analyzing what actions the target group is taking in response to all that targeted content.
RescueTime, a time management company, engages its subscribers with personalized reports of the activities they participate in on the site, playing on their time management capabilities.
This is how their analysis works.
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