A Beginner’s Guide to Content Personalization

Every visitor to your site has a different reason for visiting. Many of these people are repeat visitors who like your website and want to buy your products. There are some new visitors who want to see what your site looks like and what services you have to offer. Millions of websites, however, present the same content to all visitors. 

Even though it can attract a lot of traffic at once, there is no guarantee that all of this content will be engaging. However, if you use the content personalization technique, you will be able to show different call-to-action texts to each visitor. You will build user engagement because the visitors will think the website was especially designed for them. You will create a sense of belonging. If you are a beginner, you will need a lot of information to get started. Here is what you need to know.

What is Content Personalization?

Content personalization is a technique of providing different kinds of content to different kinds of users based on their interests. For that, you will have to gather their information like location, the ads they engaged in, browsing history, your website visit and purchase history, etc. But the information might also include their gender, age, the device they are using, their frequency of visiting your website, their referring URL, and so on. With the help of this information, you can create a customised website for them.

And this effort won’t go in vain because records suggest that more than 90% of customers like websites that recommend products and services based on their interests. And more than 70% of customers are annoyed if the web does not serve their interests. So, if you implement content personalization on your website, this will lead to massive authority. But if this strategy is so popular, then how come you are getting to know it just now?

The Growth of Content Personalization?

Since Content personalization is not even several years old, most people have no idea how to go about implementing it. Content personalization is a part of the marketing strategy where they create personalised content for every user using email campaigns, homepage campaigns, landing pages, interior pages, and more. Email content personalization is popular among all because it takes little time to create. In content personalization, the most important aspect is customer satisfaction. The marketing strategy is not applied only when a visitor is visiting your site, but also, right from their interaction with your business, the services and products you offer, and the user experience you provide, which is a part of content personalization.

Therefore, you can see that it is a broad topic and takes a lot of planning to process. However, if you want to get into content personalization, you will have to learn about the differences between another strategy that users tend to confuse with it.

What Is the contrast between Content Personalization and Web Personalization?

Content personalization is a dynamic marketing strategy that refers to the automation of content changes for different users. The strategy uses customer segmentation variables and other relevant information that you can also use for promoting your business through social media and email marketing. With this approach, you can draw the right attention to the right people with your products and services. However, promotion strategies alone won’t do you any favours in creating user satisfaction. 

That’s why web personalization is also important; based on the user’s preferences and browsing history, the website’s display will be changed right when a user is interacting with your site. After finding out that you offer personalized content, they will also see that you have designed your website especially for them. This will guide them to the right services and products they are looking for and increase your conversions at the same time.

An ideal example of a website that provides both web personalization and content personalization to its users is Amazon. Your Amazon homepage is not the same as mine because our browsing histories and previous purchase histories differ. Moreover, international customers on Amazon receive product recommendations depending on their native language and the currency they use. 

I can provide you with another example of web and content personalization. Think of a website named Catalogue that shows you content based on your gender, location, and currency. They will show you clothes based on different seasons if you're a woman, and vice versa if you're a man. Now, if you are a male and visit a female-specific website, you will return immediately, increasing their bounce rate. Why would you keep them around if they do not provide relevant content?

Content and web personalization have a lot in common, both are marketing strategies that are used together to provide high-quality customer experiences. However, website personalization does not create content based on user interests, it displays content based on user interests that have already been created. First, you'll need to create content personalization, then you can create website personalization. 

How to create a Content Personalization Plan?

Every successful website has something in common: they all create a content personalization plan. With this plan, you can deliver a customized experience to individual users to create customer engagement. You can gather the personal information of these users from your website’s interaction and social media pages. You can monitor the keyword searches and other relevant data provided by the customers. After taking notes of the users' age, gender, location, etc., you can create a successful content personalization plan and a sales funnel. 

How to create a Sales Funnel?

There are a total of five main stages to creating a sales funnel for digital marketing campaigns. The steps include the following:

1. Creating awareness of your brand

2. Increased interest in your products and services

3. Deciding if your website serves their purpose 

4. Increase user engagement with your business.

5. Creating a purchase

Your website can track their preferences and tailor the content they see in each of these stages based on their preferences. As soon as they land on your page, your main goal should be to guide them to the bottom of your funnel where they will purchase. The relationship between your business and the customer will be long-lasting if they like your product. You can create five types of content personalization based on the required information and sales funnel stages. 

How Many types of Personalized Content are there?

By now, you should be familiar with what personalized content is and how it is created. Using this knowledge, you can create the following types of personalized content:

Quizzes

You might have been engaged with various interactive quizzes on social sites or blogs. You can apply that method to build better user engagement. With these quizzes, you can offer personalised content to the users. If you check out BuzzFeed’s post, you will find them posting various personality quizzes to create user engagement. With this approach, you can also find more target users. You can create interactive quizzes with different software programs.

Social Media Ads

With a social media ad strategy, you can find the target audience and create and deliver personalized content to them. Facebook, Instagram, etc. collect users’ data and sell it to advertisers so that you can easily find your target users. You can also target the old users who have visited your website before to give them another chance to buy your product.

Map Apps

There are various GPS-based apps that will help you target the users of a specific location. These maps will help you reach users of certain interests. For example, if a vegan is looking for a vegan restaurant and yours is the one, they can easily find it. An example of such an app is Google Maps, which offers places and directions based on the user’s interests. 

Fun Games

Many websites engage users with various fun and interactive games that also collect data and create customer engagement. Users are more likely to like your business if you offer them games to play. For example, Coca-Cola has been offering various games to gather user information so that targeting audiences becomes easier.

Customized Emails

You can collect subscribers to your channel or website and target them with customised email campaigns. Spotify offers personalised emails to every customer that registers on the music streaming platform. The music app keeps a record of every user’s song preferences, tastes, and dislikes to re-engage the users and create a bigger user base.

With the help of these 5 types of content personalization, you can avail various benefits in the business-to-business market.

What are the benefits of Content Personalization?

If you can conduct content personalization for your business, you can avail yourself of many benefits. Nevertheless, these are the best ones to keep an eye on. 

It increases the chance of leads.

With content personalization, you can remarkably enhance your conversion rates. If you deliver uniquely designed content that’s specially designed for the customers’ interests, they are 60% more willing to buy from you in comparison to users who don’t deliver unique content.

Increased Brand Value

When you put a lot of effort into serving your customers, they will notice it, and it will have a positive effect on your brand. The more popular your brand is, the better your conversion rate will be. That’s basic.

Improve Engagement with Valuable Campaigns

All of the above-mentioned points were specified to help you achieve better user engagement with valuable campaigns. You can run ads on social media, use email marketing tools, conduct surveys, and more to generate more traffic. Personalized campaigns receive more responses from users than marketing campaigns.

Content Personalization Can Anticipate Purchase Intent

With content personalization, you can predict the purchase intent of the users. The key is to create intent-specific content that you know will bring leads. 

Conclusion

Content personalization tools are available to assist with marketing strategies. There are several tools you can use, including Adobe Target, Cxense, and Dynamic Yield. Whatever it takes, apply CP to your website because there are so many reasons to do so and none not to. Visiting your website again or visiting your competitor's will depend on how it appears to a potential customer.