ANSWERED: Is Smart Content Still Relevant?

One thing is clear: Modern consumers and B2B buyers want a personalized experience online.

And the stats back it up. seventy-two percent of customers will only engage with personalized messaging.

And over ninety percent of consumers have discontinued communications with a company because of irrelevant messaging.

So how do you create a personalized experience? You can lean on segmentation to provide personalized outreach, engagement, and customer service.

However, to go deeper, you can rely on your CRM to predict customer behavior and track engagement.

And here’s where smart content comes in. When you use smart content on your website, users see what you want them to see and, more importantly, what they want to see.

In this post, we’ll discuss what smart content is, what the benefits are, and whether smart content is still relevant in the current market.

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Right?

Not necessarily. Producing content just for the sake of it is futile and likely to do more harm than good.

If you’re constantly churning out low-quality, irrelevant content, your audience will likely tune out and lose interest in your brand.

On the other hand, producing high-quality, relevant content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience is much more likely to engage and retain them.

Producing content just for the sake of it can also be a waste of time and resources. It takes time and effort to research, write, and create content. If it’s not resonating with your audience, it’s unlikely to be worth the investment.

Content is still king, even if the content and how we distribute it is evolving.

Chris DuBois, Lean Labs CEO, has a strong vision for content in the coming year. He plans to provide similar content across multiple mediums and platforms. Repurposing blog content into podcast, video, and social media formats allows different people to consume content in different ways.

Instead of trying to break ground or look for the next marketing hack, we want to lean on repurposing and redistributing content using various platforms. Different people consume content in different ways.

Smart content plays a role in this strategy.

What is Smart Content?

If personalizing the user experience is a great play, smart content is an excellent tactic. With smart content, you can deliver personalized, targeted, and evergreen content to your audience based on their specific needs and interests.

Static content can’t provide the same experience. Smart, or dynamic content changes based on

Preferences
Behaviors
Location
Language
Demographics
Past interactions

A classic example of smart content is Netflix’s recommendation engine, which shows recommended programs based on user behavior, past shows watched, and how long users spend watching.

Its “Recommended For You” section suggests content you might watch based on shows you’ve watched. You can vote on a show while watching. Click dislike, like, or love, and get recommendations on similar shows. Genius.

How Does Smart Content Work?

Using a CRM like HubSpot, you can create and deliver personalized and targeted content to your audience based on specific conditions and criteria.

Here are a few examples of how smart content might work on HubSpot:

A marketer creates a landing page for a new product launch. Using smart content, they can show different versions of the page to different users based on their location, language, or other demographic information.
A sales team creates an email campaign to promote a new service. Using smart content, the team tailors the messaging and offer in the email to specific segments or individuals based on their past interactions with the company, job title, or industry.
A business owner creates a website for their online store. Using smart content, they show personalized product recommendations to visitors based on their past purchases, browsing history, and other data.

At Lean Labs, we use smart content for clients. For example, for one of our clients, we set up CTAs so that once someone converts on an offer, we add them to a list. We use that list membership as a rule so they don’t see the same offer again. They’d only get the next step in the buyer’s journey.

This stops them from seeing a CTA they won’t convert on again, helping to keep our data clean. It also increases the chances of moving them through the buyer’s journey.

What are the Benefits of Smart Content?

Personalization

Personalized content performs better.

Eighty percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience.
Three-quarters of consumers are happy for brands to create detailed profiles if they’re used to provide a more personalized experience.

When content is more relevant and valuable to consumers, they’re more likely to engage and take the desired action, such as filing out a form. Most consumers use a filter. They’ll consume a piece of content and either dismiss it, gloss over it without taking the next step, or say, “Hey, that’s me!”

Content that’s intuitive and nudges consumers along the buyer journey builds relationships with less effort.

Better Lead Nurturing

Speaking of the buyer journey, how does smart content play a role? You might start with relevant blog content, but content for the buyer journey doesn’t stop there. Use smart content throughout the buyer journey.

Tailor your content to the specific stage of the buyer’s journey that each lead is in. For example, early-stage leads might need more educational content, while later-stage leads might be more interested in product demos or pricing information.

Leads often bounce back and forth between funnel stages. They might visit your website and take the desired action to become a lead, but not become an MQL.

All is not lost.

If they’re not ready to purchase straight away, they might still come back to your website and continue their journey.

With smart content, you can provide additional value through relevant offers, targeted CTAs, and email campaigns that re-engage and re-establish the relationship with the lead.

Pro tip: Use automation tools to deliver your lead nurturing content and trigger personalized content based on specific actions or behaviors. This saves time and ensures that your content is delivered to the right people at the right time.

Increase Sales

You can build trust with a personalized experience. The more you understand your customers’ needs, the more they trust you.

Image source

How does this translate to sales?

_{Improved customer experience: Personalized content makes customers feel valued and increases their loyalty to your brand, leading to increased sales over time.}
_{Increased conversion rates: When potential customers say, “That’s me!” they’re more likely to convert on offers.}
_{You understand your audience better: By analyzing the data generated by your smart content efforts, you can learn more about your audience and what drives them to purchase. This can help you create more effective marketing campaigns and increase sales.}

What You Should Consider Before Creating Smart Content

Like your other marketing efforts, smart content works, but only if it’s part of an overall strategy. You don’t want to overdo smart content or think it’s a silver bullet.

Every piece of content you produce, smart or otherwise, should add to your user’s experience. Don’t make assumptions based solely on your ICP. Experiment, use data, and ask your current customers what drove them to convert on an offer. What resonated with them? What did they find valuable?

With a clean, well-managed database, you’ll easily segment your audience and succeed with smart content. Here are a few things to consider:

_{Identify your target audience: Clearly understand who you are trying to reach with your smart content. Consider demographics, interests, and behaviors when defining your audience.}
_{Determine your goals: What do you want to achieve with your smart content? Do you want to increase conversions, drive traffic to your website, or improve customer loyalty? Clearly defining your goals helps guide content creation.}
_{Identify the channels you will use: Will you use email, social media, your website, or a combination of channels to deliver your smart content? Choosing the channels that will reach your target audience most effectively is essential.}
_{Gather data: To create truly personalized and effective smart content, you will need to gather data on your audience. This includes demographics, interests, behaviors, and past interactions with your brand.}
_{Consider your resources: Creating smart content can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Make sure you have the necessary resources to create and deliver high-quality content, including time, personnel, and technology.}

Is Smart Content Still Relevant?

Smart content is a robust tool to add to your arsenal. It should be part of your strategy, especially when using a CRM platform like HubSpot.

However, proceed with caution.

Cookies make smart content work, and many people are now switching cookies off because they’re increasingly worried about what companies do with their personal data.

What else drives conversion? You can use various strategies, but you need to start with a stunning website. Lean Labs creates websites using HubSpot CMS, and you can too. You can even start for free now!

Want to create a stunning website that links to a complete CRM solution and start using smart content today? Book a HubSpot meeting with us at Lean Labs! We’ll show you how to set up HubSpot the right way the first time. You might even save 60% on HubSpot, too.

Here’s the link: HubSpot Meeting