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Personalization for customers has become not only accepted but expected in a rapidly advancing technological world.
The concept of personalization is simple: People want relevant recommendations that will either fix their problems or improve their lives.
Although personalization is often associated with B2C marketing, B2B buyers appreciate a tailored approach, too. In fact, research has found that 77% of B2B buyers will not make a purchase without personalized content, yet only four out of 10 B2B marketers say they think they are using personalization techniques effectively.
Because of the growth and expansion of digital access and increased capabilities throughout the B2B marketing technology stack, there are more opportunities for personalization. Ultimately, that translates to business growth, partly due to the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which offers the ability to undertake B2B marketing more quickly and efficiently.
And with a plethora of data available, it is important for businesses to get on board with this new way of operating to help personalize their campaigns.
For example, Adyen, a digital payments platform, customizes its campaign landing pages by industry. A hospitality company, on the other hand, would see a different landing page than a retail company. Such personalized experiences deliver highly targeted messages and can boost campaign conversion.
In addition to personalized landing pages, marketers can tailor headlines, messaging, content, calls to action, graphics and even navigation on a website based on a visitor's industry, demographics, behavior, history with the brand, or other data.
Adobe's 2023 B2B Commerce Growth Strategies Survey and Report found that 72% of B2B companies collect behavioral and transactional data for their storefronts, and 68% use the data for personalization on their websites. Still, most aren't using the information they collect on merchandising, marketing, and email.
"In general, companies underestimate the value of the customer data on their ecommerce sites, said Adobe Digital Strategist for Manufacturers and Distributors Ed Kennedy. "B2B ecommerce websites are a treasure trove of data for marketing, sales, and operations that most businesses aren't fully utilizing."
Reaping the Benefits of Personalization
It makes good business sense for companies to embrace personalization trends, particularly because AI and Big Data allow companies to go beyond manual curation, which is not scalable. Most companies have neither the time nor the budget to invest in 100% manual data assessment.
Embracing AI companies helps organizations attain the following goals:
Improve conversion rate. The ultimate key performance indicator (KPI) for B2B companies is the conversion rate. By presenting curated options for customers based on their preferences, conversion rates will automatically improve, and those results can also be used in marketing materials. In 2022, Cloud company Snowflake's landing page conversions jumped 60% after using Intellimize's platform.
Create a more relationship-driven sales cycle. The precision offered by AI and Big Data helps build relationships. Rather than simply conducting a single webinar or sending a link to a YouTube video or a product specification video to 20 people, companies can customize the messaging in that video for those 20 people based on their specific needs.
Increase retention rate. A company's marketing efforts should not stop at customer acquisition; it is equally important to engage with active customers to increase loyalty and repeat business over time. By using data collected about client history, purchases, usage, and other factors, personalization platforms can create individualized messaging to help them use products successfully. Additional opportunities for personalization include reactivation campaigns, loyalty programs, or recommendations that demonstrate an understanding of client pain points and needs. Ultimately, a happy customer will be a repeat customer, thus improving retention rates and customer spend.
Making Campaigns Work: The Right Tools for Personalization
To achieve those benefits, companies must integrate personalization software tools into their campaigns.
A customer data platform (CDP) unifies customer data from first-, second-, and third-party sources; analyzes customers based on firmographic data; segments audiences; predicts behaviors; recommends actions; and identifies trends.
Creative management platforms (CMPs) help marketing teams design, automate, distribute, manage, and assess the performance of digital ad campaigns.
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platforms build personalized ads in real-time, tailored to the individual based on user data. Personalize calls to action based on a prospect's stage in the sales funnel stage or through dynamic keyword insertion, location-based targeting, or ad extensions.
With the latest developments in generative AI and language learning models (LLM), new and emerging technologies can turbocharge marketing efforts by tailoring the content and messaging to address key customer needs based on industry, organization, title, or a variety of other factors.
But software and tools don't generate revenue—a sound and well-executed plan does. Personalization technology merely enhances existing initiatives. Accordingly, marketers must prioritize spending on a tech stack that's based on priorities, plans, and capabilities.
Addressing the Challenges: Data Investment
For B2B marketing and ad campaigns to work, companies need to initially collect and focus on first-party data. Accordingly, the essential foundation of a personalization marketing technology stack are tools that collect critical information about prospects, customers, and other stakeholders.
Moreover, it is important for companies to work with various third parties to augment databases by leveraging AI to connect multiple points to create unique customer profiles.
Although hyper-personalization may be the goal so that companies can tailor messages in 100 ways for 100 clients, the reality is that it takes a lot of steps to develop those systems and operate at such a high level. That, in turn, requires a financial as well as resource investment that includes technical training.
Forging Ahead With Personalization
Companies willing to invest the time, energy, and funds to embrace personalized B2B marketing and advertising can expect a bright future.
Thanks to the advent of generative AI and the B2B transition to online marketing, it is easier to personalize messages based on customer needs. Now is the time to invest in these new technological tools to become a major player in the field and be one step ahead of competitors.
Although successful personalization is based on data and driven by technology, the most effective B2B campaign is perfected by a human touch. In addition to developing and implementing sophisticated marketing, a personal phone call, video message or other one-on-one interaction will reinforce your genuine concern for your clients and their success.
Personalization: The Secret Weapon B2B Companies Are Not Using
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Someshwar Bindu is a director of product—AI/ML at a major e-commerce company. He has extensive experience in AI, advertising technology, e-commerce, and product management.
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