When you think of personalization in B2B sales and marketing, you may have traditionally thought about meeting clients face-to-face, and it’s hard to think of a way to get more personalized than that. But advances in digital marketing are helping us move beyond the old way of “getting personal” with potential customers.
In fact, in recent years, account-based marketing (ABM) solutions have made it a lot easier for B2B marketers to connect with and customize content for the sales team’s target accounts.
But what about the rest of the people visiting your site every day? How can you tailor interactions to the prospects visiting your company website, regardless of whether they are an ABM target? After all, Gartner expects 80% of B2B supplier-buyer sales interactions to occur in digital channels by 2025. And corporate decision-makers want offers and content tailored to their needs.
And what about those customers who've already converted? Offering customer-centric content with built-in personalization can be part of your lifecycle marketing approach.
Maybe you’ve taken a few steps to customize some interactions with leads and customers by implementing email automation that leads certain prospects to a specific funnel or by running an ad that drives a targeted audience to a particular landing page. These are reasonable first steps but remember: These actions happen at a segment or vertical level, not the individual.
To get more granular in your personalization efforts, here are five ideas you should consider:
1. Website Personalization
Gartner reports that customers rarely travel the buyer’s journey in a “linear fashion.” In fact, they tend to use digital and in-person channels with almost equal frequency. Additionally, the hand-off from marketing to sales is rarely clear-cut. A prospect will often bounce from digital media to in-person sales conversations and back to the website. Therefore, website personalization is critical to keep decision-makers engaged.
If you want to close more deals, your brand has to be perceived by customers as being the supplier providing the most helpful information to advance the buying process.
Personalizing your website content can make it more specific and relevant to each prospect and drive increased conversions. Here are some things you can do to tailor your website experience to your visitors.
- Create dynamic content. Dynamic content automatically changes based on user preference, online behavior, or last purchase, unlike static web pages. Think travel booking sites that vary their offers, hero banners, and listings specific to you. How can you take a similar approach?
- Integrate personalized recommendations. Using machine learning, recommender systems filter and display specific content or product suggestions based on affinity or past behavior.
- Building specific landing pages. These are not your typical static landing pages created per broad segment. Instead, they are hyper-specific, personalized pages based on individual profiles of visitors.
- Use dynamic CTAs. Offer different calls to action (CTAs) based on each user’s behavior or your existing customer database.
Tools you can use:
2. Email Personalization
There is more to personalizing your emails than just using merge tags to display each recipient’s first name or sending different emails to each audience segment. These are ways you can use hyper-personalization in email marketing:
- Add personalized images to your emails. Some platforms, like Lemlist, can automatically show unique photos and videos—say a screenshot of each recipient’s website or company logo.
- Deliver dynamic email content. Depending on the profile, behavior, or preference, you can personalize specific offers to segments of your email list.
- Personalize your email signatures. You can display dynamic targeted banners in your email signature that change based on specific accounts.
Tools you can use:
3. Ads Personalization
Ad variations help display ad copy and banner ads to specific target segments. However, you need more sophisticated tools to personalize your ads based on individual intent. Here are options to personalize your online ads:
- Personalize your remarketing ads. Remarketing has proven to be highly effective in converting visitors into buyers. But instead of showing the same banner, dynamic remarketing shows ads tailored to users or displays the products they last viewed.
- Use dynamic ads. These are banners or creatives that automatically change for each user in real-time. Instead of static banners, dynamic ads show unique content or promotions based on behavioral data.
- Target individuals instead of accounts. Your ads don’t need to be seen by everyone in your account. Instead, use person-based advertising to show customized ads to specific individuals.
Tools you can use:
4. Video Personalization
Video marketing is essential, with 54% of consumers wanting more video content from brands. No wonder 86% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool. Personalized videos, which appear to be created for the person watching them, are the next big thing. Check out these tips:
- Use hyper-personalized videos. Customize each video message with offers and CTAs specific to each person or account using video automation so you can personalize your videos at scale.
- Embed personalized text and images into videos. Surprise clients by blending their name, company name, logo, and other elements in your video. You can create thousands of dynamic videos using automation.
- Talk directly to each customer. What is more personalized in a video than speaking to your client one-on-one, mentioning them by name (make sure you've got the right name), and referring to specific details like your previous conversation or professional background?
Tools you can use:
5. Chatbot Personalization
Chatbots seem to be everywhere. They are the fastest-growing sales and customer service channel. The more advanced AI-powered chatbots are more intelligent and conversational, understand context and intent better, and deliver more personalized responses based on previous conversations.
- Personalize your welcome message. Instead of a standard greeting, your chatbot can greet each user not just by name but also mention the weather and location as a conversation starter.
- Have your bot respond with personalized images. You can dynamically embed text into the photo your chatbot shows to each user.
- Offer personalized recommendations. A well-designed chatbot should integrate your customer database, website, and CRM system. It can then recommend products or personalized ads based on user preferences or activities in real-time.
Tools you can use:
Get Started with B2B Marketing Personalization
Delivering personalized content, emails, ads, videos, and chatbots are just some tactics you can use for B2B sales and marketing. You can also add personalization on your other channels like social media. However, you don’t need to do everything all at once. Start with the most common channels for personalization, namely email and your website.
AI and automation allow brands to offer personalization at scale, so it won’t be as complex and time-consuming as you would think. There are so many tools in the market that are reasonably priced and easy to use. As prospective and existing corporate clients prefer to be treated as individuals and are more likely to purchase, pursuing a personalization strategy will be worth your time, investment, and effort.
