I felt a brief pang of unnecessary irritation. For the umpteenth time, my spellcheck had defaulted back to American-English and was insisting I immediately spell personalise with a zee! Why does the software fail to remember I was raised on the side of the pond that likes to add superfluous letters into words at every opportunity? Was my spellcheck unaware of the tedious hours spent as a child trying (and mostly failing) to understand the archaic peculiarities of the English language under the guidance of a teacher who blamed most of its quirks on the Romans?
Still, it did at least get me thinking more about the challenges of personlis/zation! Specifically, what are some of the fundamentals within the context of delivering effective Thought Leadership content? Particularly within the B2B world, it makes you wonder how many well-meaning campaigns miss the mark because they fail to speak the language of, or lack relevance to, the intended target audience.
The Challenge of Personalisation
The truth is there are a myriad of challenges to effective personalisation strategy. You might have a lack of quality data available on your audience or have concerns about the collection of the data you need so that you’re compliant with privacy regulations.
Then there’s the issue of defining the needs and interests of your target audience, tracking their changing preferences over time and delivering personalisation at scale to a diverse range of people. Perhaps you simply lack the resource to deliver a personalisation strategy and are struggling to persuade your firm to invest in the essential tools needed to get the job done.
So yes, it’s not straightforward and that’s why in the content creation world, personalisation is often an afterthought. The good news is that the best things in life are (almost) free, so let’s start with the fundamentals because if you can nail those, you’ll be ahead of most.
Who’s your audience?
This question is often overlooked, but you simply must have a precise understanding of your target audience. If the definition of who you’re trying to engage is too vague or broad, there’s a risk your content will be too. Ensure you conduct audience research using analytical tools and client interviews/feedback to reveal their concerns, preferences and aspirations so that your future content resonates on a personal level.
Divide your audience and conquer
Designing content that tries to speak to everyone will please no one. You can forge a stronger connection by segmenting your audience and identifying the needs of those various segments based on their job function, industry or location for example. This way, you can take a more nuanced approach to your content creation, crafting more accurate messaging to different audience cohorts in the process.
Let data be thy guide
Conduct an audit on the audience data you have available to get an understanding of what you know and where the knowledge gaps are. It’s often taken for granted that content marketers will have an avalanche of data they can use to inform their approach, but it may not be the case. In order to hyper-personalise your Thought Leadership content, you’ll need enough data (and possibly the assistance of analytics or machine learning software) to provide an accurate sense of audience engagement behaviours and preferences.
Bring your content to life
Be creative. Your content doesn’t always have to be fancy, but think about whether you can deliver a more meaningful and immersive content experience to capture audience attention. It could be a flash poll, video or animated infographics – something memorable that provides you with further data insights for future content personlisation.
Make content delivery dynamic
It’s absolutely worth exploring a dynamic content delivery system that can react and adapt to your audience/reader preferences in real time. This way, your audience can receive AI-driven recommendations of additional content you’ve created making your content distribution strategy far more effective.
Show some personality when personalising
This isn’t always prioritised during Thought Leadership creation, but careful thought is needed on your brand voice from the very start. Is your content distinct and is there some personality in your Thought Leadership that makes it relatable? This shouldn’t be an afterthought. Your brand voice must be consistent and memorable in order to stand out.
Tailor your content to suit the channel
Go to where your audience is. The ‘Field of Dreams’ approach (“if you build it, they will come”) rarely works. The best engagement will come when you tailor your content to suit the preferences of audiences that can be found within the key channels you’re looking to use be it LinkedIn, Twitter, industry events and so on.
And finally
Designing and delivering great Thought Leadership content is challenging as the landscape becomes increasingly competitive. Yes, there’s some great tech out there that can help with personalisation, but really, it boils down to your philosophy on how you choose to approach your target audience. Are you thinking first and foremost about who they are, where they are, what they do and what’s keeping them up at night? Or are you just thinking about the long list of topics that you must be seen to be talking about in the coming year for fear of being left behind by your competitors? If it’s the latter, then there’s a danger that you’re merely adding to the noise. Take the time to do your research, explore the data and hold off on pressing the publish button until you’re confident that you can share a relevant message in the right format to the right person at the right time.
Author: James Laight, Vice President – Thought Leadership
