Crystal Clear Communications Blog

In my last blog, I wrote about how talking to your customers directly about their information and research habits helps you discover the best way to market to them. In speaking with many business-to-business (B2B) buyers across several industries, one thing is clear regardless of industry and title: Marketers must personalize content.

Every single person I spoke with expected content to be highly targeted to their own interests. One Chief Financial Officer asked, “Why are you showing me content that looks like it’s meant for my CIO?”

What does this mean for marketers? Personalizing content means doing more than just updating your Message Map and buyer personas. It means ensuring you deliver the right content to the right buyer at the right time.

Always start with data

The good news is that we live in an age where we have a lot of data. If you aren’t already analyzing all the client and prospect data you can get your hands on, now is a great time to start.

In addition to typical marketing data such as website activity, email opens and click-through rates, activity on social media, also look at customer data. Analyze purchase history, customer feedback, and anything else you can get access to.

Your goal is to find out everything you can about your clients and prospects. Once you’ve analyzed the data, organize it by themes, titles and industries. Hopefully you can come up with groups, which may sort customers by industry, title, location, age range, etc. This analysis will help you personalize content as specifically as possible.

You have your groups, now what?

Now it’s time to apply creativity and technology.

Since personalized email has higher click-through rates, write creative subject lines for each group. Test different subject lines and copy to see what resonates best with your target audience.

Trying to personalize content for several different groups can be overwhelming. This is where technology can help. At last, living in the age of personalization is paired with living in the era of AI tools.

Plenty of AI tools can help you personalize your marketing. Not sure where to start? Here are some blogs that suggest good AI tools for marketing personalization. Note that the writer of each blog lists their own company’s tools first, but they each still give a good list of tools:

• 11 AI marketing tools your team should be using in 2024
• Five AI personalization tools to watch

True personalization requires more than Marketing

You can have the best personalization in Marketing, but if Sales, Customer Service, and other departments lack personalization, your efforts may fall short. Buyers expect seamless, consistent experiences with their vendors and partners.

Create a cross-functional personalization committee to ensure your buyers experience as much personalization as possible when they interact with your organization.

That pesky Marketing budget

As I share ideas with my clients, I frequently hear that they didn’t plan for personalization in their budgets. While it can be difficult to get a budget increase mid-year, your clients and prospects are expecting you to personalize content for them.

If customer demand alone isn’t enough to persuade your leaders to increase your budget, remind them that increased personalization is more likely to resonate with your target audience, leading to more opens, more clicks, more leads, and eventually more revenue.

In today’s world, clients and prospects demand personalization. Marketers can succeed by using data, creativity, and technology.

Have questions about marketing and communications? Get answers weekly or email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.