Effective digital marketing and SEO strategies understand that today’s buyers want to be seen, heard, and valued by the brands they choose to support.
But what does incorporating personalized content look like? How can you tailor your customers’ experience as they interact with your brand? And where does personalized content fit into the different stages of the buyer’s journey?
To answer these questions (and more), we met with Erica Bantum, Head of Demand Generation and Growth Marketing at Searchspring. Read on to get insights from a seasoned marketing expert on personalizing content, addressing each stage of the buyer’s journey, leveraging AI, and retaining the “human touch” throughout.
UnboundB2B: What role do you think digital marketing and SEO play in e-commerce? Specifically, how do SEO and content fit into the buyer’s journey?
Erica: Digital marketing and SEO are crucial for e-commerce brands seeking growth and visibility.
Digital marketing and SEO build your brand awareness, drive traffic, improve user experience with website optimization, and eventually convert clicks into customers.
As for content marketing, I’d say that it’s most effective when each stage of the buyer’s journey is optimized. I don’t think enough people think of this in terms of addressing each stage in the funnel.
We’re talking about creating specific content for every stage. So, we have content tailored to the awareness stage, and then we have content for the consideration and decision stages. We have content tailored for abandoned carts and customers who have not purchased in a while.
We do this to build trust at each stage and I think that works so well because it resonates with the customer at the right time in their journey. That ultimately creates brand loyalty in your customers by building an entire customer-centric approach.
For example, at the awareness stage, you might use blog posts or high-level thought leadership. Maybe the content is focused on a specific problem, and prospective customers come to learn how to solve it. By the time they’re done, you’ve introduced your product as one such solution.
It’s different for the consideration phase, in which you’ll focus on content to educate and inform, helping them narrow down their choices. So, this is where product comparisons and case studies would prove useful.
Then there’s the decision stage, where you’re aiming to persuade and convert. This is where you can start incorporating enticing offers, customer support pages, testimonials, and how-to guides that show your product working in real-world examples.
Once you have this content all planned out, it’s simply a matter of creating a cohesive, valuable experience tailored to each step of the customer journey. And that’s the best way to improve their experience, increase conversions, and resonate with your customers.
UnboundB2B: How has COVID-19 affected seasonality and data in the retail world?
Erica: So much has changed in the past few years, but do you know what hasn’t changed? Learning from the data and analytics. It’s always been about leveraging the data.
Now, the numbers tell us a lot about what happened, such as that people, unfortunately, are ditching brick-and-mortar stores and shopping more online.
With that, we’ve seen a lot of seasonal campaigns online where businesses are increasing their deals, offering more promotions, and stepping up their email marketing efforts. It’s interesting to me because I know I became an online shopper.
The big question is how businesses plan for seasonality amidst the rise in online shopping. Some may start preparing for Black Friday as early as May, while others may begin sooner or later. The right timing depends on analyzing your data.
For example, what does your reporting show you for last year’s holiday season? And the years before that? You should be looking for the peaks and the valleys. Then, simply plan around the peaks. If you follow the data, you can reverse engineer your seasonal marketing campaigns to maximize your efforts. You can allocate your budget accordingly. Again, it’s just leveraging the data.
As far as post-COVID trends, we’re seeing brands branch out with their marketing channels. More companies than ever are exploring social shopping, which is simply selling through social media platforms.
That’s why you’ll see a lot of brands using platforms like Instagram, especially to target millennials and Gen Z shoppers. Here is an avenue that some brands wouldn’t even have considered a few years ago.
Fast forward to today and social shopping is where a lot of conversions are happening for some brands. It makes sense when their target audiences are already on the social platforms. Americans spend 33% of their screen time on social media. This might be a worthwhile pursuit for some brands to consider, or else they might be missing out on opportunities to build trust or convert.
UnboundB2B: Where does website optimization fit into your digital marketing strategy when so many shoppers are shopping online?
Erica: Website optimization is crucial to maximize conversions and create a great experience for your customers.
You don’t want to lose your customers because of a poorly optimized website, but it’s all too common. I think some brands assume if their product or service is good enough, they don’t have to put the work in. Based on my experience, every brand needs to optimize.
Let’s talk about a few key areas to focus on when it comes to web optimization.
- Speed: We are living in the TikTok era, and people simply don’t have the attention spans. A slow site loses customers fast.
- User experience: I may sound repetitive, but optimizing for user experience is important! Visiting your site should be an experience that aligns with your brand. Does the design and flow suit your audience and your brand style? Or does it look dated? Is it jarring to go from one page to another or is it seamless? If you’re a fashion brand, does your customer think they’ve landed on a website that looks like a construction company’s? Or does it look and feel like a fashion site?
- Mobile Optimization: Mobile optimization is essential, as most shoppers are browsing on their phones. Make it easy for them to purchase from your site without obstacles. It doesn’t matter if they’re Gen Z or millennials, though if the memes are right, millennials only make big purchases on their desktops. And that’s funny but there’s also some truth to the numbers there.
- Search functionality: And the last thing is you want to optimize your search functionality. Buyers are more informed than ever and they know what they’re looking for. So, you want to make sure they’re able to find it. If your search engine returns irrelevant or wrong results, customers are simply going to leave your site and find it elsewhere. This is why it’s important to set up detailed product descriptions, categories, backend keywords, etc.
UnboundB2B: With the recent influx of new AI tools for marketers, how are they changing digital marketing and SEO?
Erica: AI in marketing is evolving so quickly that it cannot be ignored and it’s having a huge impact on digital marketing strategy. I think there are ways that we’ve learned to incorporate it intelligently to boost our efforts and the speed at which we can accomplish more mundane tasks. Or tasks that would require very thorough work without needing that human element.
We might use AI to quickly create thorough product descriptions that hit specific keywords. Otherwise, it would take a long time to create the descriptions, tie in keywords, and make sure we check every box. SEO AI is great for optimizing content for search engines. It’s certainly allowed us to help brands go to market a lot faster. We can go from a concept to messaging very quickly, and then we can tweak it to make sure it suits the brand and resonates with the audience.
I think the key to using AI in marketing successfully is to gauge how much of the human touch is necessary. People are pretty good at picking up on it at this point, and they’ve learned pretty quickly. So, you wouldn’t use SEO AI where the content requires a more human element, or where it might create something that’s off-brand. That’s why we, if we do use AI, have an elaborate review process that works for us.
The way I see it, the hardest thing is to start with a blank page. So, AI is great at quickly providing structure or a base to work with, and then that’s something we can review and edit to nail the finer details and our brand voice.
UnboundB2B: How important is it to personalize your content? Where do you think there’s room to create broader, more generalized content?
Erica: Marketers should look at all content through a personalized lens of who their customers are. In a sense, I think all content should be personalized. We’re always striving to reach a certain target audience or ICP (ideal customer profile), right? If you were to ask me what the best kind of content is, I would say content with a focus on a customer-centric approach. It’s content that adds value and suits the customer and where they’re at in their buyer journey.
Now, if we’re talking about personalized content as opposed to generalized content, I think there’s room to be broader in, say, overarching content or themes. But when it comes to the website, there are ways to personalize the site and how your customer interacts with it, though this can get a bit technical.
Personalization shines in things like social shopping campaigns and email marketing. With social shopping campaigns, as we said earlier, we usually have a very good idea of who we’re marketing to on a platform like Instagram. Or with email campaigns, we can create a personalized email that resonates with the right buyer at the right time. What’s interesting is that, if you miss the mark here with email marketing, you might push the customer away.
Again, the key is a customer-centric approach to content. It’s like the discussion around the differences between B2B vs B2C marketing. At the end of the day, you’re selling to a person who is making the decision. The business isn’t sitting and thinking and consuming your content, a customer is.
So, whether you use AI or not, as long as you’re mapping out the buyer’s journey, creating content that resonates with your audience, leveraging the data, and keeping your campaigns customer-centric, you’re going to be successful in your digital marketing strategy.
Is your website optimization and content strategy focused on maximizing conversions and creating the best customer journey?
Whether or not you implement AI in your digital marketing strategy, keeping it focused on the buyer is key to good marketing. It’s now and always has been about understanding your customers, creating better experiences, and building brand loyalty through a customer-centric approach to content.
For additional insights on leveraging AI and SEO, tune into our latest podcast where we share best practices and expert advice!
Michael Frost
5 November 2024
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