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Improve your marketing by using better segmentation to personalise the message

04 August 2015| by Neha Karl

The other day I tried on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ shirt, only to find that much to my disappointment, it couldn’t have looked further from flattering. That got me thinking about the absurd nature of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ analogy. As unique individuals, how on earth could ‘one-size’ seriously fit every person? It may sound cynical but look around; the approach is everywhere – from clothing and pharma, right down to how some companies market their products and services.

Much like when shopping for the perfect outfit, your visitors, leads and customers are out to find content, information and products that are tailored for their needs. With so much information out there, this can be a seriously exhausting task. You can make their life easier and ensure that your company is the best fit for them, simply by personalising your marketing and messages.

Aim to micro-segment

You’re probably already segmenting your marketing strategy by targeting different campaigns to certain customers, but if you can take that one step further and micro-segment, it’ll likely work wonders for your business. The aim of micro-segmenting is to convert visitors and leads into high-value customers, who will then turn into your number one promoters. You can achieve this by tailoring your marketing for each person that visits your website.

So the million dollar question, how do you drill down your strategy to develop messaging and content that each individual visitor simply can’t refuse?

Work to truly understand your customers

In order to create personalised content, you need to understand your customers – what are their interests, goals, motivations, and pain points? How do they subtly differ? How can you keep each engaged through tailored messaging and content.

This is where well-defined buyer personas come in, and the most important element to achieve this is to research each customer to really understand them. Find patterns between each person and create segmented lists for each persona. Once you’ve developed your personas, you can map out their expected buying journey. You can then create a content strategy around the buying process, to ensure they receive the relevant content at each stage (whether via email or even when visiting your website) – a strategy that will help to drive conversions.

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Image: Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock.com

Creating a segmented content experience

One company that has a nifty way of ensuring their audiences receive a tailored website experience is Sales Benchmark Index, as its website has been specifically designed to ensure that each visitor receives relevant content. They achieved this by taking an elective approach, where website visitors who visit the homepage are first asked to select the role that best describes them. After they make their choice, the entire experience is personalised for their persona. And the best part is, the website recognises the visitor’s name and persona in the future to ensure they never have to filter through irrelevant content again.

For more great ideas on how to segment your digital marketing, check out these prime examples of website personalisation.

It’s easier when it’s automatic

Although there’s many ways to personalise content, actually implementing these can be time-consuming. Instead, you can use an automated tool such as HubSpot’s Smart Content feature, which uses Smart HTML modules to personalise everything from forms and calls-to-action, right down to image-sliders. In a nutshell, this tool allows you to customise your entire website in one step for a persona-centric experience. And the best part is that it does all the ongoing execution for you, giving you more time to fine-tune your messaging, segmentation and content. So what are you waiting for? Try out the new tool and see the results for yourself!

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