Welcome! Personalisation in B2B is difficult, isn’t it?
Let’s face it. That greeting would have been much more powerful if it had stated welcome Mark, welcome Caroline or welcome Youssef. Who doesn’t like a personal welcome, after all?
72% of customers say they only engage with messaging if it is personalised, according to Forbes. How useful would it be if this article would start with everything you (Mark, Caroline, Youssef or X) want to know about B2B personalisation?!
Online retailers like Amazon or Bol.com already apply this personalisation principle to the max. When I visit Amazon’s website, I land on a page filled with board games, summer dresses and beauty products. I know full well that the average 40+-year-old male would not land on a similar page.
And it shows in its results – Amazon has an online conversion rate of no less than 74%! Obviously, there is the elephant in the room: Amazon and Bol.com are B2C companies.
From B2C to B2B, applying the principles of personalisation
We recently hosted an online clinic on personalisation in B2B. In this article, you will read some of its highlights and 3 tips on how to quickly up your personalisation game.
Examples of platforms to apply personalisation to:
- Website
- Reports
- Whitepapers
- Proposals
Making content personal – how to personalise in B2B Marketing
Personal relevance matters in all stages of the B2B buyer’s journey. Whether you are looking for information on newly launched product X or comparing companies Y and Z on delivery. You want content that meets your information needs.
Due to the online revolution, personalised experiences are nowadays even expected by B2B buyers, rather than appreciated, McKinsey says. Still, 63% of Digital Marketing Leaders struggle with personalisation, according to Gartner.
Neil Patel says that the main bottlenecks are a lack of technology, resources, or relevant data. That is, marketing managers often seem to associate personalisation with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
But even with limited funds and without state-of-the-art technology, there are three simple ways in which you can up your personalisation game:
1. Think of personalising to larger segments
Personalisation can be implemented on many different levels. You can segment your audience per:
- Account / lead
- Decision-making unit
- Buyer persona
- Stage in the buyer’s journey
- Industry
Although most marketing managers seem to think that content is only personalised if it is adjusted to a single account or lead, there are many ways to create interesting, personalised content for larger segments.
You can, for example, adjust the cover page of your report to the industries of choice. Your trend report could have the image of an oil platform when addressing the oil industry, and the visual of a fast vehicle when ‘speaking’ to car dealers.
It is also possible to create separate landing pages with relevant content per vertical or even microsites for specific accounts.
2. Personalisation is also about ‘selecting’ or ‘highlighting’
Most B2B companies create content, whether (trend) reports, whitepapers, guides or blogs and infographics. Instead of creating separate content pieces for each segmented target audience, you could highlight relevant information to specific readers.
For example, you could send an email to your Cloud-specialist accounts: Here’s our IT-trend report. Chapters 11 to 14 focus specifically on the Cloud. We recommend you give it a look! You can send the same report to software developers and ask them to look at chapters 15 to 18, because that part focuses on software development trends.
Tip: Analyse your existing content database and see what content still resonates. Then you have a look at your audiences and their content needs. Select which parts are relevant for your target audiences and engage!
3. Personalisation is not about tech, it’s about data and insights
Only a few companies these days have the most advanced martech stack. Most organizations do however collect customer- and prospect data & insights. Think of customer interviews, NPS surveys and website analytics.
You can use these insights to find out what themes your customers are interested in, where they go for the latest insights in their field, and what content types (blogs, videos, FAQ pages etc.) they prefer.
Such insights can lead to designing and setting up the most relevant and personalised campaigns! The best marketing is done by enabling the buyer to buy (buyer enablement). When you apply personalisation techniques with the buyer in mind, you are winning the game.
Discover more about B2B personalisation
Recently, SPOTONVISION expert Vega Sims, Roel Haanappel from Unit4 and Webeo’s Kirsty Dawe shared their tips and best practices. You can watch the personalisation clinic here.
Do you want to get started with B2B Marketing personalisation? Let us know.
