Executed correctly, content personalization accelerates the process of moving both anonymous and recognized visitors through the sales funnel to become qualified leads and conversions. The beauty of content personalization is that it doesn't have to be complex. Getting started is simple. Marketers should begin small and get more sophisticated as they gain experience and gather data about their consumers. One of the myths about content personalization is that it is a complicated, time consuming, and technical process, but this doesn't reflect reality.
Getting started is easy. All you have to do is employ a marketing automation tool like HubSpot to gather a wealth of data about your customers. Next, you can begin tailoring your content towards your consumer's needs and interest based on buyer personas that you create. With a data driven approach to personalization, you can be sure you're personalizing for the right persona.
The notion that implementation is overly complicated is just one of the many myths floating around about content personalization. According to a survey conducted by Econsultancy and Adobe, half of surveyed marketers see content personalization as critical to their digital strategies. When it comes to content personalization, marketers are taking notice. However, there are a lot of myths about personalization that could deter you from attempting to personalize your own content. You shouldn't let a mental block stop you from taking advantage of the benefits of personalizing! Here are three other common myths about content personaliztion that need to be debunked:
"I don't have enough content for personalization"
There is no required minimum amount of content you should have before it makes sense to leverage personalization tools. Instead, you should think about how you can leverage the content you already have, while also creating content for the future. Personalization is more about effectively targeting your existing content than it is about creating a bunch of new content from scratch. The goal is to make your website more relevant to your visitors' needs, regardless of how much content you have-use the blogs, videos, and emails you currently have at your disposal to begin personalizing. Don't worry about the amount of content you have, instead, be concerned about whether or not the content that you do have is relevant. Content creation is about quality, not necessarily quantity, although consistency is key.
"Personalization only makes sense for huge companies like Amazon"
This misconception is particularly detrimental because it holds back small businesses. With the marketing tools available today, even small businesses can personalize content. Once upon a time, it took a huge budget and tons of website traffic for personalization to be a worthwhile investment for a company, but that is no longer the case.
The game has officially changed, and now everyone can play-even small businesses lacking big budgets. It's not only possible for these businesses to personalize, rather, it's critical.According to a study conducted by Gannet, 94 percent of surveyed businesses stated that personalization is critical to current and future success. The opposite of personal is irrelevant and in today's marketing industry, irrelevance is a worst case scenario
"Personalization isn't worth the time because it only drives short-term conversions"
The reality is nearly the opposite. Personalization is arguably one of the best methods available for optimizing the lifetime value of your customers. There is a misconception that personalization is only effective as a short-term strategy. By combining and leveraging behavioral, usage, and situational data about your customers, you can achieve long-term brand value through personalization.
Implementing content personalization isn't overly complex or time consuming-even small businesses can do it. It's important that the truth about content personalization be brought to light in the face of dangerous misconceptions like the myths featured in this post.
Personalizing is simple. Marketers can ensure that it falls naturally into their existing workflow. There don't have to be any extra time-consuming steps involved. 70 percent of a B2B buyer's journey is complete before even engaging with the vendor, and 87 percent of B2B buyers say that content has an impact on vender selection, according to a HubSpot blog. This means that the most critical investment for marketers to make is providing an engaging and effective web experience, which begins with the relevancy of the content. Businesses should no longer consider content personalization too complicated to implement. Marketers who are able to overcome this mental block will see dramatically positive results by providing a tailored content experience.
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