Personalized Marketing Round-up: Top 7 B2B Trends to Watch in 2023

In 2023, B2B content personalization continues to be a crucial strategy for businesses looking to engage and convert their target audience. Personalization is a marketer’s magnum opus. Like a work of art, it has the power to stir emotions and leave the audience with a signature experience. But acing personalization requires a fine eye. Get it right, you win a loyal customer. Get it wrong, you run the risk of losing your customer base.

With marketing practices, personalization is also evolving every day based on the changing demands of customers. Marketers are experimenting with various creative solutions to deliver the best to their customers to maximize business value. According to a study by Evergage, for 55% of marketers, the primary benefit of getting personalization right is better customer engagement and experiences. As per Monetate’s research on personalization, when all the companies dedicatedly invested in personalization, 83% of them were already exceeding their revenue goals. In this blog, we’ll be talking about the top personalization marketing trends that could be your next creative solution to execute the perfect personalization strategy in the coming years. Let's begin with a quick look into how personalization has evolved.

An Evolving Practice

Personalization as a practice in marketing started in the early 2000s. It all began with “personalized” email campaigns to engage customers. A simple strategy of using the name of a customer at the beginning of the email was enough to establish long-lasting relationships with their customers. But now with the lightning-fast proliferation of technology in our lives, this is not enough.

We’re living in an era where a customer has access to more information about brands than ever before! Nowadays, before making any purchase a customer deeply scrutinizes the brand and their offerings. In their research, customers not only compare brands with their competitors but also take into consideration user-generated reviews to better their judgment. Given the amount of influence and details available to a customer, nailing personalization becomes all the more challenging for marketers. This makes personalized marketing even more complex. But it does lead marketers to get creative with customer insights, experiment with personalization strategies, and go beyond just personalized email campaigns.

Personalization has come a long way

Customers want brands to echo their needs. About 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience. With access to more data and better marketing automation tools, marketers are able to create personalized communication and offers that are relevant and effective. They can also track customer journeys across different channels and touchpoints to create seamless experiences. Reports show that the global personalization software market is expected to grow to $2.2 billion by the end of 2026. The bottom line is, with the right resources and strategy, personalization can be implemented at scale.

Here are the top five things you should consider doing to enhance your B2B content personalization efforts:

1. Zero and first party data collections - Zero-party and first-party data collection are both essential for understanding and personalizing B2B content. 

Zero-party data includes information that is directly shared through surveys, preference centers, feedback forms, quizzes, or interactive content. Zero-party data is highly valuable because it is willingly provided by the customer, offering insights into their preferences, interests, and intentions. Some examples include:

• Surveys or questionnaires that specify buyer preferences, challenges, or goals.
• Preference centers that highlight customers’ communication preferences, or interest in specific product features.
• Feedback forms that provide direct feedback on customer experiences with your brand or products.

First-party data, on the other hand, refers to data collected directly from sources such as websites, email marketing, CRM systems, or other owned platforms. It includes data gathered from customer interactions and behaviors, as well as demographic information. Examples of first-party data in a B2B context are:

• Website analytics: Collecting data on page views, time spent on site, content interactions, and conversions.
• Email engagement metrics: Gathering data on email opens, clicks, and conversions.
• CRM data: Capturing information about customer interactions, purchases, and communication history.
• Social media engagement: Analyzing customer interactions, and engagements on social media platforms.

• Customer Journey Mapping: Gain a deep understanding of your customers' journey and the touchpoints they interact with throughout their buying process. 
• Data Integration: Integrate customer data from various sources and channels, such as website analytics, CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and social media. 
• Consistent Messaging: Ensure your messaging and content are consistent across all channels.
• Channel-Specific Personalization: Tailor your content and interactions to optimize the experience within each channel. 
• Seamless Cross-Channel Experience: Enable customers to transition seamlessly between channels without losing their personalized experience.
• Real-Time Personalization: Leverage real-time data and automation to deliver personalized experiences in the moment. Use triggers and behavioral data to dynamically adjust content or offers based on customer actions or preferences.

3. Understand your audience segments - Invest time in thoroughly understanding your target audience and segment them based on their needs, preferences, and behaviors. Utilize customer insights to identify common characteristics and pain points, which will help you tailor customer experiences. Gain a deeper understanding by conducting market research, analyzing existing customer data, conducting surveys, and utilizing the right data analytics and tools. One of the most important criteria is to map buyer personas within a specific segment to information like demographics, goals, challenges, preferences and buying behavior. Lastly, ensure audience segments are continually monitored to stay attuned to market trends and evolving customer needs for personalisation efforts to remain relevant.

4. Implement dynamic content delivery - Move beyond static content and embrace dynamic content delivery. By using dynamic content, you can create personalized experiences for individual users based on their behavior, stage in the buyer's journey, industry, or any other relevant criteria. This can be achieved through website personalization by customizing banners, landing pages, product recommendations and CTA to mimic a user's past behavior. Email marketing can also be personalized via greetings, relevant blogs, articles, case studies and product recommendations in interactive content formats for the right target audience. Behavioral triggers like a personalized pop-up offering for a specific product page a buyer is keen on visiting   may also lead to increased engagement and conversion rates.

5. Age of AI driven Personalization - The art of personalization is nothing without the heavy strokes of artificial intelligence. AI and ML are opening up a new realm with countless opportunities for personalization in a customer's journey. A close example is how brands like Amazon and Netflix are using AI to personalize show recommendations for their customers. Customers see exactly what they want. Thus, creating a unique user experience. Under AI's umbrella of personalization, facial recognition technology is on the rise in the coming years. Brands are using facial recognition to personalize customer buying experiences in retail and e-commerce. This helps businesses monitor foot traffic, evaluate average shopping time, and analyze customer behaviors. Using these deep insights, they're able to curate more personalized experiences for customers across touchpoints. With the tech booming, experts say that the facial recognition market valued at $4.45 billion in 2021 will grow at a CAGR of 15.4% through 2028.

6. Community Building and Engagement through user-generated content (UGC) - User-generated content is an excellent way to personalize B2B content while also fostering community engagement. UGC adds authenticity, diversity, and relatability to your content, enhancing personalization and building trust with your B2B audience. Some of the best examples of UGC are customer testimonials and case studies that feature client success stories. By showcasing real-life examples you can build trust with your target audience. Few other examples are user-generated reviews, videos and attracting audiences on social media platforms. Don’t forget to include “thought leadership” and invite industry peers, experts and professionals to share their insights - this will build your credibility and attract diverse audiences.

7. Location Based Targeting - As an average person is always in possession of a mobile device, their location details enable brands to plan out personalization strategies in two ways - using geo-targeting or geofencing. If brands know where their customers are at a given point, this data gives marketers the opportunity to reach out to customers with a personalized experience. Geotargeting makes it easy for marketers to define a target audience for a given campaign based on the customer's last-known location. Geofence campaigns are triggered when a given customer arrives in a defined area like a mall, or the airport, or is within close proximity to a physical store or brand of their preference. Location marketing allows brands to travel with their customers, engage, suggest, and drive them to purchase. As of 2021, the location intelligence market was worth $14 billion. Reports now state that it will grow at a CAGR of 15.6% through 2030.

What's the result of trying these trends?

When done right, personalization reaps three main benefits:

1. Better Brand Management

When customers receive relevant messaging, they’re more likely to take action and engage with a brand. The increased brand engagement results in a higher conversion rate, which is the ultimate goal of a brand. 

2. Drive Brand Loyalty

Personalization makes a brand interact closely with a customer. Being part of a band community and receiving personalized communications helps customers feel valued. This leads to building positive brand perceptions.

3. Better Returns on Marketing Investment

Personalization is a more cost-effective marketing strategy than traditional advertising. It can drive a customer to make a purchase and even spend more! According to McKinsey, personalized marketing increases sales by 10% and delivers up to 8x the ROI than what is spent on traditional marketing.

Conclusion:

By keeping up with market trends and understanding what customers want, businesses can make sure their personalization efforts remain relevant. Still, to define the right personalisation strategy, identify right tools and implement it, you will need a right partner who can understand your unique needs. Srijan has helped businesses across several industries to implement their personalization goals with Acquia Personalization. Gain real insights with Srijan as your partner. Speak to our experts today!