Everyone wants to make their content memorable. But with an oversaturated landscape in almost every industry, it’s tough to stand out. Luckily, we’ve got a few strategies on how a content marketing agency can help you succeed in that department.
At ClearVoice, we’ve found that one of the best ways to make your content unforgettable is through content personalization. It’s the secret sauce that transforms generic engagement into a memorable experience, fostering a deeper customer relationship and enhancing your brand experience.
But here’s the catch — scaling personalization without the correct expertise and resources is a significant challenge. It requires a deep understanding of your target audience along with the ability to create and deliver content that speaks directly to each individual.
So, in this article, we’ll dive into why personalization should be a cornerstone of your content strategy and how partnering with the right content marketing agency can be your ace in the hole to unlocking your success.
The Power of Personalization in Content Marketing
Personalized content goes beyond addressing a customer by their first and last name. It’s all about tailoring content based on individual preferences, behaviors, and interests. This level of customization creates a relevant and engaging experience for customers, ultimately leading to increased brand loyalty and conversions.
Benefits of personalized content
Bottom line, personalized content improves the customer experience. When customers feel personally heard, understood, and valued, they’re more likely to engage and make purchasing decisions. And you don’t have to just take our word for it. According to Hubspot:
- 96% of marketers say personalization leads to repeat business
- 94% say it increases sales
Not only that, marketers whose brands gave customers a personalized experience were 215% more likely to say their strategy last year was effective compared to brands that don’t offer a personalized experience.
Let’s dive deeper into some of personalized content’s key benefits:
- Enhanced engagement: Personalized content captivates audiences, resulting in higher readership, social sharing, and better retention
- Improved customer relationships: Personalization fosters deeper customer connections by creating a positive brand experience and cultivating long-lasting relationships
- Increased sales: Businesses can drive targeted website traffic, generate qualified leads, and boost sales through effective lead nurturing and conversion strategies
Personalization and customer expectations
Today, customers expect personalized experiences across every touchpoint. In Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report from this year, 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.
Here are some more stats to think about:
- 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs/preferences.
- 61% say most companies treat them like a number.
By meeting (or exceeding) these expectations, businesses can separate themselves from the rest of the pack, building lasting customer relationships that lead to long-term success.
Challenges of Personalization at Scale
The biggest challenges are scaling personalization efforts and the costs associated. While daunting, these challenges can easily be overcome.
From personalization to individualization
While this level of personalization is highly effective, it becomes progressively challenging as the customer base expands. As customers increase, manually delivering personalized experiences to each individual becomes impractical and inefficient. The time and resources required to manually customize content for a large customer base are not feasible for most businesses.
Moreover, relying solely on manual efforts is prone to human errors, resulting in inconsistencies and missed opportunities. This is where additional resources such as an agency, alongside their expertise and automation, can help to personalize your content efforts to each individual.
For example, consider a bank wanting to engage its customers more effectively through segmentation and personalized content. It would be nearly impossible for the bank to handle this manually.
But an agency can help develop personalized financial content that aligns with the needs of different customer segments — from young professionals looking to start saving and families seeking mortgage advice to retirees managing their retirement funds.
A robust personalization strategy like this, along with help from an agency, enables the bank to offer hyper-targeted solutions through banking content tailored to each segment’s journey.
Conquering the mountains of data
When organizations grow, the amount of data they generate and collect grows right along with it. As the amount of data grows, it can quickly become disorganized and offer no help to you if you cannot find a way to analyze it effectively.
That’s where content management systems and marketing automation platforms can be a huge help. They enable businesses to:
- Collect and analyze customer data.
- Segment audiences effectively.
- Automate personalized content delivery.
All in all, these tools streamline the personalization process, making it more efficient and scalable. But often, internal teams lack the personnel, bandwidth, and/or expertise to harness such information.
Good thing there’s a solution for that.
The Role of a Content Marketing Agency in Scaling Personalization
Outsourcing your content personalization to a content agency can be a game-changer. They already have the expertise and resources to create and deliver personalized content that’s relevant to your target audience. And they can continually manage your efforts and track your results so you can focus on the larger tasks at hand.
The expertise and tools offered by content marketing agencies
Through extensive research, content agencies thoroughly understand customers’ preferences and pain points, developing buyer personas and customer journey maps as guiding frameworks for personalized content strategies.
To scale personalized content delivery, agencies rely on tools such as CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, CMSs, and analytics tools. These tools help to streamline and optimize the personalization process by enabling marketers to:
- Track customer interactions
- Automate content delivery
- Measure campaign effectiveness
Agencies are in the loop regarding industry trends and continually invest in training and professional development, ensuring their teams have the knowledge and skills to implement cutting-edge personalization techniques.
Case Study: Successful personalization at scale
Many brands have mastered the art of personalization through the help of content marketing agencies. Remember when Bitmoji’s were all the hype? In 2016, Snapchat launched Bitmoji with personalization top of mind. It allowed users to design cartoonish characters of themselves that could be featured throughout Snapchat’s core areas, such as profiles, Snap Map, and more.
Following this launch, Snapchat created ‘Bitmoji Stories’ that would be visible in the Discover Feed for users. When clicking to view the story, users would find comic-book-like images with your personalized avatar and content to correspond. It would even include a friend’s avatar in the stories based on the information from your recently contacted friends. Through partnering with an agency to develop personalized content, Snapchat was able to bring traffic from one app to another.
Choosing the Right Content Marketing Agency for Your Personalization Needs
To select the right agency and partner for you and your needs, you should consider the following:
Aligning agency capabilities with your objectives
If you want to ensure a fruitful partnership, make sure you align the content agency’s capabilities with your overall business objectives. Here’s how to do that:
- Determine your personalization goals. Decide what you aim to achieve and communicate it clearly to the agency
- Evaluate their expertise. Ask yourself if they truly understand customer behavior based on your conversations regarding your goals and target audience. And do they also know how to leverage technology to automate and streamline the process?
- Ensure they have the necessary resources. Your personalization needs may be complex. Does the agency have the resources in place to manage those complexities?
Assessing past performance and reputation
An easy way to gain confidence in an agency’s ability is by reviewing its past performance and online reputation.
- Look for agencies with a proven track record of success in executing personalized content campaigns
- Review their case studies and client testimonials to gain insights into their ability to deliver results
- Seek agencies that have worked with businesses in your industry or similar target markets, as they will better understand your unique needs
Considerations of budget and ROI
Determine your budgetary constraints and find an agency that offers services within your financial capacity. But remember to prioritize value first and foremost rather than cost alone.
- Evaluate the agency’s pricing structure and determine how their services align with your expected ROI.
- Consider the long-term benefits of personalized content in terms of increased customer engagement, conversions, and revenue generation.
- Agencies that provide transparent reporting and analytics to track the impact of their efforts will be most beneficial to your business’s bottom line.
Start Scaling
While essential, personalization at scale is quite the challenge. A content marketing agency can help you achieve personalization at scale by providing expertise, tools, and resources. If you’re looking for great content or need help scaling your personalization, we can help. Get in touch with ClearVoice for more information about achieving personalization at scale.
