Between curating customer data, piecing together buyer personas, tailoring content and leveraging automation tools (to name a few), there are several moving parts to personalization — and it’s easy to compromise one area to focus on the other. But what if there was a simpler approach to personalization that yielded better results?
In a recent webinar, “Cutting Through The Clutter: How To Harness A Simpler Approach To Personalization,” Navu’s John Greely, VP of Marketing, and Colin Zealear, Head of Sales, walked attendees through the mechanics of a simpler approach to personalization built around audience segmentation and first-party data. While the full webinar is now available on demand and dives deeper into the nuances of personalization, here are four key takeaways that reflect the power of personalized website messaging:
1. Send Targeted Messages That Guide Visitors To Relevant Content
According to Zealear, there’s a “huge” opportunity for businesses to nurture website visitors when they’re still in the research phase, which includes sending out targeted messages that guide visitors to relevant content in the middle of their journeys.
“When you think about the top of the marketing and sales funnel, you have very targeted ads with different messaging aimed at different audiences — same is true at the bottom of the funnel,” he continued. “But in the middle, prospects are wandering around your website, and most marketers are sitting on their hands hoping visitors will find what they’re looking for and spamming all visitors with the same messages.”
2. Engage Self-Service Buyers Via Unified Messaging
Those targeted messages can also help cut through the content overload of years past, which caused buyers to become more discerning and increase their reliance on third-party sources. According to Greely, this led to more sophisticated and savvy buyers, who don’t respond to campaigns in the same way.
“If somebody comes into your website from Google, they already have one story in mind,” he continued. “They think you’re going to solve one problem, and that’s what they’re looking for — if your website has multiple messages and gives them the wrong content early on, or they can’t find what they’re looking for, you’re in danger of them bouncing. These early touchpoints are critical, so you need to use whatever information is at your disposal — whether it’s third-party data or acquisition-source campaign information — to create unified messaging.”
3. Onboard The Right Tools To Assist With Personalization Efforts
While there are several tools at marketers’ disposals to help assist with those personalization efforts, Greely warned marketers to proceed with caution and perform their due diligence onboarding new technologies.
“AI and ABM tools are supposed to help you fill a need in your marketing team, but oftentimes they end up being unwieldy and make marketers’ jobs harder,” he explained. “Most times, you’re trying to make the tool work rather than having the tool work for you. There is so much productivity to be gained from these tools, but you need to ensure you’re adopting them with caution and not getting lost in the weeds.”
4. Ensure Marketers Remain In Control Of Messaging
Zealear echoed Greely’s sentiments about the potential pitfalls of technology, advising marketers to ensure they remain fully in control of all technology-related processes.
“AI is all the rage right now — it’s what everyone’s talking about,” said Zealear. “However, despite making huge strides in generating accurate responses and content, there’s still a long way to go before AI becomes truly dependable. You need to keep marketers in control and adopt tools that don’t need a lot of time or maintenance, because people are busy and the last thing they need to do is worry about artificial intelligence functioning correctly.”
To learn more about this simpler approach to personalization, check out the full webinar on-demand now!
