When it comes to personalization, Amazon has mastered the game.
Amazon is hyper-focused on curating experiences unique to each and every one of its customers. At some point, everyone has seen a targeted Facebook ad, or a personalized recommendation on the Amazon home page.
People respond to that kind of marketing, with nearly 88% of consumers preferring to shop with companies that provide a personalized experience.
However, personalization isn't just for big brands anymore.
How Smart Website Content Can Generate More Sales
Imagine a website that personalizes for every single customer. Using smart content, companies can set up their website to change and personalize based on the visitor.
Using the IP address of each visitor, or a special browser cookie, content systems can identify those unique identifiers to what is known about that visitor, lead, or customer. As a result, your website can effectively target the right person at the right time, with the most relevant messaging to their stage.
Using smart content can improve bounce rate, engagement, and increase conversions. It can also generate more sales opportunities. And, what’s best, it's not as difficult as it may seem. Using the right marketing tech, like HubSpot, you can easily make a smarter website, using smart content.
Tactic #1: Serve Up More Relevant Offers
When your customer comes to your website for the first time, they have certain expectations. As a brand, you won't always know what those expectations are, though you can make an educated guess. However, after that customer engages with your site, you should have enough data about them to understand where they are in the buyer’s journey.
At the beginning of your relationship with the customer, they're still learning about your product and brand. They may read blog posts or download a white paper. But, at this stage, that content mostly consists of high-level information about the problems they're trying to solve.
It's a soft pitch.
After they've engaged with that content, it doesn't make sense for them to get additional TOFU messaging or offers. They need deeper information. Think of it as a step-by-step instruction manual - once they complete step 1, they will ask, “now what?” If your website’s only message is about step 1, there’s no reason for them to engage further.
Using smart content, you can set conditions to show each visitor the content they really need based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. You can offer smart calls-to-action that adapt to your audience.
As a result, Consideration Stage leads will see Consideration Stage offers, since they have already passed the Awareness Stage; and so on.
Tactic #2: Qualify Your Leads
One of our clients only provides a service to a certain geographic area. We don’t want their sales teams wasting time talking to any leads they can’t sell to. So, we use smart content to better qualify our leads, and help those that aren’t qualified remove themselves from the system.
We double-check addresses and IP country to automatically determine whether or not a lead is within the serviceable area. Those that are, are treated as typical leads. Those that aren’t, are marked as such, and moved to a specific folder away from the sales team.
Of course, some of these leads may be out of the area, but checking for service for a location inside the service area. So, we also have an automated system of self-correction, so that a good lead doesn’t accidentally get removed from the sales process.
Tactic #3: Bring Qualified Leads Through Faster
On average, sales reps spend one-third of their day talking to leads. The rest of their day is typically spent on administrative tasks, data entry, and researching leads. So, as a company, you need to make sure every lead they talk to is qualified. When you convert a qualified lead, you want to accelerate that lead's experience.
We have another client that operates an upscale co-working space, and they offer qualified leads a free day pass. To avoid an influx of people wanting a freebie, we set a few qualifications to make sure only the most qualified leads actually get the pass.
If and when a lead is considered qualified, the pass is automatically offered as a next step. However, if a lead is not qualified, they won’t even see the day pass offer.
The unqualified lead never gets to the sales team. But, this level of smart content makes it imperative that you keep your contact records accurate and up-to-date.
Tactic #4: Collect More User Data
When used strategically, you can use HubSpot to collect even more data about customers. One popular way to collect more user data, over a period of time, is with progressive profiling. Leads hate filling out forms, and depending on your customer, they usually won't fill out extremely tedious ones.
With HubSpot, you can use Smart Forms to create iterative forms to serve up questions you don't have the answer to, and remove questions of which you do. During each conversion, you can ask your lead a few questions at a time.
The first time, you can ask for their name, and where they work.
The second time, you might ask them what their interests are.
The third or fourth time, you may ask for their phone number.
It's the same idea. Here at Lean Labs, we like to get even more creative with collecting information. Within one of our most popular content offers, the Goal Setting Guide, we give the user an asset that helps them dissect their goals. The content actually records the goals, then computes the milestones they need to achieve those goals.
It helps us see their baseline and goals, so we can determine whether or not they are a good fit to work with us.
Tactic #5: Target Visitors By Location
One of the most popular and effective personalization tactics is demographic-based. This is great for multi-located brands, or companies that offer service to specific areas only. For brands that want to create content or target visitors by location, you can set up localized landing pages that trigger unique calls-to-action based on where the user is.
You can set up pages with a call-to-action such as [Your Product/Service] For Sale in [Location]. By using a visitor or customer's actual location, you're providing a more localized experience. You can enrich these pages even more by including feedback or reviews from customers in their area. Personalized stories are great for providing unique content.
For example, one of our clients sold shipping containers. When leads asked for information on a certain container in a certain area, we could send them personalized emails based on their location, the container size they wanted, and the inventory we had at that location. Smart content allowed us to make a single email that would dynamically change based on those variables.
Aligning Smart Website Content and Marketing Automation
For many, personalizing customer experiences may seem intimidating. But it's the future. Creating these types of experiences is no longer optional. Companies that connect the dots for their customers, and consistently engage with them in an organic, logical way, will thrive.
With a tool like HubSpot, you don't have to be a big brand to pull this off. By aligning Smart Content and marketing automation, you can get in front of your most qualified customer's needs. From the beginning of their journey, you'll give them the exact content, message, and offers they're looking for. You'll streamline their journey, and not distract them with irrelevant or ineffective messaging.
As a result, your sales teams will only need to talk to the most qualified leads, and get greater sales opportunities. All of the time, effort, and resources put into developing great content will pay off. You'll have happier, more qualified customers, and more productive, successful sales and marketing teams.
