Content marketing has been in the spotlight substantially with Google playing hide and seek with all the digital marketers with its SEO algorithm.
It is no surprise that keyword stuffing has lost its priority to wholesome and better-curated content when it comes to search.
And now with content personalization, that is being taken to the next level as it allows businesses to target its audience in a personal way. So let’s have a detailed look as to what is content personalization.
What is Content Personalization?
Content personalization is a digital marketing technique which makes use of content to provide a customized experience to customers based on their likes and dislikes.
By leveraging big data, businesses can create individual customer profiles and bunch similar profiles together in their database.
Using this information they can curate content in a way that the customers can relate to it in a more personal manner and hence this results in increased conversion.
This can be a bit confusing for some, but it is a very sound concept as with developing technology, it is more accessible for businesses.
To understand this better, we can have a look at some personalized content statistics that will shed some valuable insights.
Content personalization has a lot to do with the collection, curation, and analysis of data.
The main challenge here is getting people to share their data post GDPR. Based on surveys conducted by top research firms globally, some interesting statistics have been uncovered:
- Of all companies surveyed, only 7% of them considered content personalization as a priority in reaching out to the customers.
- Among the customers, only 22% of the customers were happy with the experience. They expect more personalization.
- Enlightened with the above data, customers were asked some more information and it was uncovered that over 57% of the customers are willing to share their data for personalized discount offers.
- A Salesforce study also found, 62% of the consumers expected companies to send personalized shopping recommendations and discounts.
This is proof enough that the world is quite ready for content personalization and we should get on with it before the ship sails away!
How Personalized Content Improves Customer Experience?
To understand how personalized content helps improve customer experience, it is imperative that we check some interesting content personalization examples.
We have some ‘Prime’ examples right in front of us that we use in our daily lives (get the pun?). E-commerce sites such as Amazon, Alibaba; social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn; and then there are video streaming sites like YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video.
These are all prime examples of content personalization. Let’s check some practical scenarios.
Your search for fashion items on Google. Your search is recorded and shared with all such platforms which pay for this data.
Next time when you visit Facebook, you start seeing ads of Amazon and fashion brands to purchase the clothes you were looking for at a discount.
If you show interest in clicking and checking the offer and you buy it, that’s the conversion through content personalization.
If you do not buy it, Amazon will start sending you emails with more recommendations of similar items and more discounts.
In another scenario, you watch a comedy movie on Netflix; it will start suggesting you similar comedy genre movies.
If you search for comedy movie recommendations, Prime Video will start showing you recommendations in ads of third party sites.
And then there is YouTube which also keeps suggesting similar videos based on your viewing history. All these are absolute content personalization examples.
It makes life easy for the customer to check out what is next and it does improve their experience.
Going a step beyond personalized suggestions is a personalized video. Even though it seems gimmicky, but a brand like Nike is benefitting its massive return on investment.
Their app, Nike+, inbuilt for all Apple products, keeps a track and stores all your workout.
Using this data, Nike’s marketing team sent out about 1,00,000 personalized videos to its users.
These videos documented the progress of the users over the past year. The videos gave the users a sense of being paid attention to personally while parallelly promoting the brand.
Nike has made these videos fun to watch even for those who do not use Nike+.
These videos are also easily shareable on social media thus creating consumer-generated content increasing the brand’s web presence.
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How to Create Personalized Content?
As we have discussed earlier, customization depends on one preeminent thing which is data.
The more data you have, the better-personalized content can be pushed to the customer to improve their experience.
Big Data helps here, but there is no better source than asking the customers themselves what they want. Always ensure that at every customer touchpoint, have your “tell me more” channel always on.
Say with all the gathered data, you are able to clearly distinguish six types of personas who visit your website, who wish to shop or are interested in your products and then you take the next step by creating data for all these personas.
It does not have to be a single content piece. You can have as many variations and versions as you wish and keep them ready.
Post that, when any customer visits your website and you identify the persona that visitor has, then you can push the relevant content to that user and hence you can effectively increase the conversion rate by providing them a better experience.
This will also result in customers returning back to you.
While creating personalized content, the following are a few pointers that one should keep in mind:
- Assess the needs of your audience
- Address your audience individually
- Modify your approach timely.
Top Content Personalization Tools
To get content personalization done, one cannot simply just create something out of the blue. You will need special tools made for it.
Now finding some good tools can take days or even months. But don’t worry, your job is made simpler here as we have the best list of the top content personalization tools available in the market currently. The list is as follows:
- Evergage
- Optimizely
- Omniconvert
- Adobe Target
The aforementioned list of tools will help you reach audiences more effectively through curated content and personalization.
For example, Omniconvert provides you with features such as AB testing, segmentation, personalization, and conversation-based surveys on their CRO tool.
Adobe Target allows optimization and automated testing on your website.
It also provides you with 3 major features such as automated personalization, multivariate testing, mobile app optimization, and recommendations.
It is imperative to get the right tools to collect data and ensure you get the right content to the right people for an optimum boost in engagement and sales.
GDPR has made it difficult for businesses to gather information.
Hence, these tools will come handy so that businesses can gain data the right way through the proper channels and even the consumers are assured of proper utilization of their data.
Content personalization is the new smart technique in the world of digital marketing, all thanks to the algorithm changes by Google which favors results with a better content on it.
With personalization of the content, you will have better traffic as more people will want to come again for the amazing customer experience they have with your business than elsewhere.
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