Benefits of Content Personalisation for B2B Marketers

Marketing strategies stand at the base of any successful company, and in today’s business climate, digital trends are the ones that remain most relevant.  A while ago, content was seen as a communication strategy in the B2C setting, B2B businesses acknowledging fewer benefits here.

With digital transformation, the separation between B2C and B2B has been softened, and today more B2B companies focus on the implementation of content marketing campaigns. With new stats published by the Content Marketing Institute yearly, you can clearly understand the latest developments and the exciting figures that highlight the power of content in marketing.

CMI shows that 90% of successful B2B content marketers rank their customers’ need for information higher than their own advertising requirements. This means, if you haven’t paid that much attention to your content creation practices until now, it’s certainly time to make a change.

Because in content marketing, you need to focus primarily on the customer, and what they need or interests them, you should plan and organize your strategies with the customer’s point of view in mind. Personalization has become a priority for B2B marketers, and a few clear factors explain why.

Here are the main benefits of content personalization in B2B:

B2B costumers want more relevancy

Just like regular consumers want more relevancy in the content and offers they come across, so do B2B customers. Thanks to digitalization, geographical barriers are no longer an issue, and this means B2B consumers can benefit from a wider list of offerings. B2B providers that perhaps had no competition on a national level some time ago, must now deal with international competition.

As a B2B marketer, you need to differentiate your company from the others you are competing with, and content relevancy can have a high impact here. Infosys conducted a survey and 31% of participants stated they wish for a more personalized purchase experience. While these figures refer to regular consumers, the demand for relevancy is equally high in the B2B sector, and content is a great starting point.

Boosting email engagement

90% of Econsultancy’s survey participants said personalization through email is the easiest and fastest win for marketers, as the CRO 2017 report suggests. Email marketing is the easiest way to reach out to your target audience, and content stands as an essential competent for this marketing approach.

Without implementing adequate practices in your email campaigns you will deal with different types of issues:

• Not reaching recipients in a meaningful way
• Open and click-through rates will decrease
• Current clients unsubscribing from newsletters

If the content of your email doesn’t actually match your clients’ needs and requirements, you won’t be able to see any positive results anytime soon. It’s time to give up on en-masse sent emails and basic templates that don’t come with no real benefits and switch to optimal personalization techniques.

A few examples here would be:

• Putting your contacts’ names into email greetings
• Using their company names
• Creating an offer based on the client’s past history with your B2B company

By taking into account specific factors when creating email content, such as demographics and preferences, you will soon observe a boost in email engagement. One Spot’s analysis showcased that organizations using email content personalization benefited from 17% more revenue than the average marketer.

Reduce conversion friction

Prospects are more likely to take action when they can access a fast and easy opportunity. Having to fill out extensive forms will only lead the consumer to abandonment, which is certainly the thing you are trying to avoid here. With personalization, what you are doing is reducing friction on a customer’s way to conversation. You are simply clearing their path and making things easy on them.

This approach gives you the possibility to use the information you already know about your target group, without frustrating prospects with repetitive questions or actions. Because we are talking here about B2B interactions, you need to acknowledge that that consumers’ engagement with your brand is just another task, part of a busy schedule. B2B customers don’t have the time nor the patience to go through a multitude of steps in order to reach their desired action.

Put the data you already have on your prospects to good use, and perfect your content to provide a more advantageous conversion experience for your target audience.

Ensure long-term website engagement

Let’s not forget about website content. You already know by now how important site content has become for SEO rankings. Publishing new content and updating old posts is necessary if you want to boost site traffic and make your online presence more powerful.

However, in B2B, your content creation approach should focus on engaging your current customers as well, and not only attracting new site visitors, and personalization will help you do that. If your posts are tailored to suit the specific interests of your target audience, people are likely to return. Content personalization fosters long-term site engagement, which ultimately influences conversions and company success.

Besides implementing the right personalization features, your content should also be of high-quality, readable, should flow naturally, and should be free of any grammar or spelling mistakes. To advance your content creation and reach higher quality standards, consider working with writing services and tools, such as Top Writers Reviews or Readability Score.

Driving impulse purchase and spurring on B2B customers to act

A smart personalization tactic can also drive impulse and repeat purchases. When you are sending out a personalized offer to a customer, even if they weren’t intending on placing an order at that moment or anytime soon, you could determine them to consider the possibility.

Segment’s statistics show that somewhere around 49% percent of consumers have made a purchase after being presented with a personalized deal, and 40% have bought a more expensive product based on the personalized recommendation. These figures remain just as relevant for B2B customers. Personalization is simply an easy and effective way of spurring on consumers to act.

Foster a sense of loyalty-building trust

Customers want to feel valued by brands, regardless if we’re talking about B2B or B2 consumers. Building trust in your brand, and determining customers to continue opting for your company in favour of any of your other competitors means you should focus on advancing customer relationships.

Because personalization ensures a superior customer experience, it will also foster a sense of loyalty. Generic content will only make costumers believe you don’t actually care about covering their needs, and they are likely to start searching for another company that does. When your content is relevant to them personally, you’ll manage to turn a prospect into a loyal customer.

Conclusion

Content has become as critical for B2B marketing as it is for B2C strategies, but in order to maximize its effects, personalization has started to play a key role. As you can see, there are a few strong advantages that come into a discussion here. From reducing conversion friction to ensuring optimal email engagement rates, you will discover a multitude of benefits when using a personalized content marketing approach in B2B. Get to know your target group, obtain a deeper understanding of their preferences and expectations, and give them options. Use collected data and technology in your content creation processes to ensure each prospect is presented with what they actually need and want to see.