Personalized Content: The Unsung Hero of Digital Marketing
While Generative AI has been making waves in content marketing, another crucial element has been quietly shaping the landscape for years – personalized content. According to a Forrester report, more than half of U.S. online adults value personalization as a key factor in loyalty, with many expressing a preference for personalized customer experiences post-purchase. However, despite digital executives’ ability to predict customer needs, only a third of customers feel companies are providing relevant experiences for them.
Enter VML, the world’s largest creative company, offering a global network of experts in brand experience, customer experience, and commerce capabilities. With a focus on data-driven content and campaigns, VML helps organizations transform their digital presence to drive personalization and growth. Despite challenges like organizational silos and budget constraints, VML emphasizes the importance of starting where you are and moving forward in the journey towards personalized storytelling.
Steps to Personalization
Creating a scalable and data-driven content strategy is essential to setting the foundation for personalized content. This strategy should prioritize human-centered storytelling and audience needs, transitioning from reactive and tactical content handling to a personalized, ROI-driven approach. By aligning stakeholders and defining content governance models, organizations can streamline content creation and distribution to drive personalization efforts effectively.
Prioritize Personalization Efforts
To avoid overwhelm, prioritize personalization efforts based on audience needs, ROI potential, organizational readiness, and channel impact. By focusing on areas where personalization can make the most significant impact, organizations can maximize the effectiveness of their personalized customer experiences.
Processes Drive Consistency
Establishing a content governance model that supports the content strategy is crucial for ensuring consistent, personalized content delivery. By involving key stakeholders from business, design, and technical teams, organizations can streamline content activation processes and align priorities for successful personalization efforts.
Designing with Accessibility in Mind
Ensuring that content is accessible to all audiences is essential for successful personalization. By designing content with accessibility features like alt tags, readable colors, and video transcripts, organizations can make their content easy to find and understand for everyone.
Use Content Modeling for Personalized Content
Content modeling helps organizations define different types of content and their relationships, facilitating the creation of structured, reusable content templates for personalized storytelling. Leveraging technologies like Contentful’s Composable Content Platform enables organizations to deliver flexible content tailored to diverse audience needs throughout the customer journey.
Data is the Key to Seamless Personalization
Collecting and analyzing data on audience behavior, interests, and motivations is essential for delivering personalized content. By leveraging data insights, organizations can tailor content to individual preferences and continuously improve the personalization process.
Wrapping Up
The path to content personalization is a journey that requires commitment and strategic planning. By investing in strategy, governance, accessibility, content modeling, and data-driven approaches, organizations can unlock the power of personalized content to engage audiences on a deeper level and foster lasting relationships.
Take a tour! See Contentful in action with a personalized walkthrough.