The desire for personalization among B2B buyers is growing louder. At a time when solution options seem endless, standing out is critical—and personalization is the answer to true differentiation.
According to Gartner, 86% of B2B customers expect companies to be well-informed about their personal information during interactions. Personalized experiences have the power to make customers feel seen, appreciated, and understood, forging the trust necessary for growth in the B2B world. Personalization allows brands to tailor their content and messaging to align with individual buyer needs, establishing a strong connection that fuels loyalty and accelerates conversion.
Moreover, the intricate nature of B2B buying decisions necessitates personalization. Most buying decisions involve an average of six stakeholders, each with distinct needs, concerns, and priorities. Through personalization, marketers can implement multi-stakeholder messaging, a tactic that’s vital in engaging larger buying committees and influencing conversions.
So how can you amplify your personalization efforts? In this blog post, we’ll delve into why personalization is key to more impactful B2B marketing strategies and how to ensure you’re delivering more personalized buyer experiences.
Why Personalization Matters More Than Ever
Buyers today spend more time conducting independent solution research than ever before. With research indicating that only 5% of the buyer’s journey is spent with a salesperson, marketers need to engage key decision-makers through personalized content and messaging that speaks to their concerns to make a lasting impression. And with buying cycles also taking longer to complete, it’s important to map that content to where the customer is in the buyer’s journey through a full-funnel approach to stay top-of-mind through the entire decision-making process.
Changing buying committee member demographics are also driving the demand for increased personalization. Millennial buyers aged 25-44 are increasingly shifting into decision-making roles and are expected to make up three-fourths of business buying teams in 2024. These buyers are digitally motivated and self-guided in their solution research process. Having grown up surrounded by recent technological advancements, they have preconceived notions and expectations of their buying experience. They know that they’re signaling their interests and identity through their content consumption and online behaviors and that providers can use these insights to deliver more relevant interactions. Millennial buyers don’t just want personalization—they expect it.
How to Create More Personalized Customer Experiences
The biggest misconception about personalization is that you can check the box on it just by adding the target buyer’s name. The reality is that personalized experience goes deeper than that. You need to understand the buying committee personas and map relevant content and messaging to each stage of the buyer’s journey to truly own the customer experience. Here’s a closer look at how to do just that.
Lean on Data
Data is key to unlocking personalization and building in-depth experiences by tailoring content to funnel stages. Not only does it assist with identifying and prioritizing the key buyer personas within buying committees to influence decision-making, but it provides insights that allow you to align your content with the trending topics your target customers are researching.
Due to the growing complexity of most B2B buying processes, you need access to multiple sources of data for the clearest picture of who to engage and what content will resonate with them the most. Each buying committee member has their specific concerns and wants to find a viable solution to solve them. Data-driven insights around these concerns allow you to create content and messaging that educates them about your solution, motivates them through the funnel, and persuades them that you are the ideal solution to partner with to reach their goals.
Engage Buyers Based on Where They Are in the Buyer’s Journey
Personalization isn’t just about the content you use—it’s also how you engage them. Not all buying committee members progress through the buyer’s journey at the same rate. One person might be in the consideration stage while everyone else is still in the awareness stage. Mapping content to where individuals are in the buyer’s journey is the most effective way to present them with the content and messaging needed to get them to a unified decision faster. Here’s how that looks:
The suggested assets and content types above help you segment and map out your content to each stage. There‘s no magic number for content types—focus instead on what type of content delivers that extra level of personalization.
Review Campaign Performance and Optimize Your Approach as Needed
Data-driven personalization strategies must be constantly measured, tested, and optimized for the best results. Given the resource intensity of your multi-channel account-based marketing efforts, you can’t afford to run a campaign only to review and measure the results at the end. Purchase decisions are long and complex; triaging what went wrong at the end means losing out on time, investment, and most likely a sale. You need an agile approach that allows for continuous adjustments as the market shifts.
Paying attention to engagement and pipeline metrics uncovers important campaign optimization opportunities. These insights allow you to take a data-driven approach to optimization that generates more revenue from target accounts, improves the ROI of your marketing efforts, and increases win rates through more relevant and personalized marketing content for your target accounts.
Unlock the Power of B2B Personalization
The potential to amplify engagement, strengthen customer bonds, and accelerate conversions has made personalization a cornerstone of successful B2B marketing. Strategically leveraging data to understand what buying committee members want, delivering content when they need it, and continuously reviewing and shifting your approach to ensure you’re providing relevant experiences paves the way for a memorable, personalized experience.
The underlying premise of personalization is its potential to resonate with customers on a deeper level. It’s about demonstrating to your B2B buyers that you truly understand their needs and are committed to delivering value in a way that speaks directly to them. This level of individualized engagement is what can truly set your brand apart in the competitive B2B landscape.
