Think about the best presentation or pitch you’ve ever received. Chances are, it stood out because the content was personalized for you and your organization. A few years ago, my team was in the market for a social selling tool. We heard from multiple vendors, but the pitch that stood out and left an impression included small details like our company’s logo, addressed our specific challenges, and was tailored to our unique needs. We were left feeling that the seller cared and had our best interests in mind.
Content personalization isn’t unique to that isolated experience. Research shows that modern B2B buyers prefer personalized content experiences during their buyer journey. According to McKinsey, 71% of buyers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, while 76% are frustrated when companies fail to do so. Can you blame them? We’ve all sat through presentations that have had nothing to do with our own needs, and they’re no fun.
Fortunately, creating personalized experiences doesn’t have to be as challenging as it sounds. Sales enablement technology is packed with tools and capabilities sellers need to personalize everything from emails to pitch decks and have more meaningful conversations with buyers. Organizations that have enablement tech actually save time on content-related activities. However, a recent study found that 83% of respondents who don’t use enablement tech said that the content they use is not personalizable enough.
In this post, we’ll define the importance of personalized content, how to personalize content, and share inspirational content personalization examples.
Why content personalization matters
For starters, personalized content matters because it’s important to your buyers. Content marketing is a critical tool that helps sellers build relationships with their prospects. While discovery conversations focus on learning a prospect’s challenges and needs, personalized content marketing ensures that sellers address those needs through tailored experiences. In doing so, sellers can establish themselves as trusted advisors who prospects can rely on throughout their buyer journey.
How to personalize content
Creating highly relevant, personalized content starts with understanding your audience. Taking time to define your buyer’s needs enables you to go beyond generic, cookie-cutter content. Instead, you can curate content that aligns with their specific needs. Sales enablement software allows sellers to take brand-compliant, marketing-approved content and update it for their buyers. Let’s take a look at a few sales enablement tools you can use to create personalized customer experiences.
Content automation
Marketing content isn’t created just to be recreated over and over by sales reps. Personalizing content shouldn’t take hours out of a seller’s day. Instead, it should be streamlined so that sellers can spend more time engaging their prospects. Content automation solves this challenge by using templates that allow sellers to customize individual or thousands of pieces of content in a couple of clicks.
Content automation tools also integrate with other systems in your organization’s tech stack to simplify personalization. By connecting content automation with a customer relationship management (CRM) system, sellers can easily stream data from their CRM into content to create charts, tables, and other materials automatically.
Digital sales rooms
Sellers share a lot of content with buyers throughout a sales cycle. Additionally, there are several stakeholders who have different interests when making a purchasing decision. Instead of sending multiple assets to different stakeholders, digital sales rooms (DSR) allow ways sellers to consolidate the content they’ve personalized for various decision-makers. DSRs are centralized microsites where sales reps and buyers can collaborate and access content that is relevant to the deal cycle. The analytics behind DSRs also provide insight into who engages with content, which helps progress deal cycles.
Content analytics
Understanding what content works when and for who is critical to personalized content marketing. For example, a solution brief for a chief marketing officer at a technology company may not be relevant to the chief operations officer at a manufacturing company. Similarly, the content you share with a buyer after two in-person meetings will be different from the content you share with a prospect following an introductory video call. Sales content analytics give sellers deeper insight into what content works and when. As a result, reps can make informed content decisions that allow them to share the most relevant content with the right audience.
AI-guided selling and predictive content
Although there are several tools and capabilities that enable sellers to personalize content, AI-guided selling levels up personalized experiences. Similar to content analytics, predictive content relies on data-driven insights to determine the right content in the right context. Rather than depending on human intelligence alone, AI-guided selling leverages machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify patterns that may go overlooked by human intelligence. This level of analysis makes it easier for AI to recommend content for a specific buyer based on their industry and stage of the sale cycle. It also provides insights into what content has been effective with similar buyers over time. Tools like AI-guided selling remove the guesswork and make it simpler for sellers to personalize content experiences with ease.
The right content every time, with Seismic
The Seismic Enablement Cloud™ is purpose-built with the tools and insights go-to-market (GTM) teams need to create meaningful, personalized content experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can engage its buyers with the right content at the right time, get a demo today!
If you’d like to learn more about personalized content, download our ebook, Breaking Through the Content Clutter: Using Personalization to Engage Buyers.
Seismic is more than just technology. It represents a new way to sell. While many tools can help organizations sell more efficiently, Seismic is unparalleled when it comes to selling more effectively. Instead of using outdated sales methods faster, Seismic enables truly transformative and intelligent management of the customer conversation.
In an upcoming webinar, Seismic President Hayden Stafford and Market-Partners Inc. CEO and Founder Martyn Lewis will explain why and how you should tap into the transformational capabilities of Seismic to meet the needs of today’s buyers. Register today to learn the five hurdles to overcome with your Seismic adoption, as well as the five must-do’s to drive sales enablement transformation.
