The internet is full of bland, generic content that gets repeated and blasted to everybody endlessly. As a business, your goal is to engage your audience so they can eventually become a customer or client, and boring content just doesn't do that. The most effective, engaging content is personalized and relevant to the reader. It's not hard to do, but it does take a bit of thinking strategically about your business and offerings. Here are three areas you can start personalizing right away.
Segment Your List
The first area is segmenting your list.
Use data you have about your customers/clients to split your list into different segments. Once your list is segmented, you can send each segment only the content that's relevant to them. This is by far the best way to grow your list and grow your revenue.
You can split your list by any type of demographic – age, gender, location, industry, occupation, etc. An even better idea is to segment your list according to how they found you. For example, one category would be for people who subscribed to your list via a lead magnet. While another category could be people who subscribed to your list through a class or webinar they signed up for.
Bonus Tip:
Another way to segment is by what stage of the customer journey they're currently in. A few stages that are good to start with are subscribers, leads, and customers. (I actually help my clients set up segments based on the 7 stages of a typical customer journey – click here to apply for a Technology Breakthrough Call). You can also segment your lists into prospects who haven't bought yet and those that are already customers. Segmenting gets even easier if you use a marketing automation service like ActiveCampaign that lets you utilize tags instead of being required to use multiple lists.
Personalize Website Navigation
The second way to personalize your marketing is to revamp the content categories on your website. Ask yourself, “What are people looking for when they visit my website?” Come up with specific keywords or phrases for the types of information those visitors are looking for, and create a category for each.
You can even use visitor profiles as your categories. Instead of naming a category ‘Blogging,' make it ‘Bloggers.' Categories that actually name your visitors, such as ‘Women Business Leaders in Transition,' ‘Cat Lovers,' and ‘Acne-Prone Skin Sufferers’, will tell them exactly where to go.
Yet another way to personalize the experience of navigating your website is to lead first-time visitors to a ‘Start Here' page. This page tells them what your website is all about, breaks down the categories by telling them what they'll find where, and might recommend specific posts that are trending topics. This is especially helpful if you are a course creator and sell courses. Having a ‘Start Here’ page streamlines the process of getting people to where they want to go faster.
Remember this is a work in progress. As your offerings, marketing messages, and/or business model changes you will go back and revisit your categories and update them as needed.
Customized Landing Pages
Many businesses create landing pages and drive traffic to them, never fully considering the experience from the visitor's point of view. What they fail to realize is that your message needs to be consistent from the traffic source to the landing page. If not, there's a disconnect that may lead your visitors to leave your website and go elsewhere. Customizing your landing page is the third way to personalize your content.
For example, if a visitor clicks on a free offer about growing your social media following, the link should lead them to a landing page about growing your social media following. If they found your website through a QR code on a flyer about weight loss, they should be directed to a specific page about making healthy meals to help lose weight. The landing page they find should offer what they're looking for when they click the link. No bait and switch here.
So Where Should I Start?
My mentor, Chris L. Davis always says “start closest to the money.”
For most that will be your website where you sell your products or services. In order to personalize content, you need to know exactly what people are doing on your website and where they are going. There are a number of tools that can help you do that. One that I use is ActiveCampaign’s Site Tracking feature. It lets me know what pages of my website my contacts have visited. This lets me send out on time and targeted marketing messages to them based on their interest.
Another tool I recommend is Thrive Suite. If you have a WordPress website you can use Thrive Suite to personalize the content that shows up based on the visitor's interest. You can check out Thrive Suite by clicking here.
Always think of ways to better customize your website for your visitors. Get ideas by gathering customer feedback. Utilize reader surveys or just ask for feedback directly in your social media posts. Then, make changes accordingly to give visitors a better, more personalized experience engaging with your content and business.
Need help making this happen? Are you a business or professional service provider and want this done for you? Let’s talk. Apply for a Technology Breakthrough Call by clicking here.
