Content is the backbone of any marketing campaign. It fuels the success of modern marketing. The more personalised, and optimised, you can make content the better your marketing efforts are going to be. Every email campaign, every paid search campaign, blog, and of course each website page require content. 

Millions of dollars are spent each year on producing great content, but how much of this content is successful? According to research by Gartner, less than 50% of B2B businesses think their content is successful and less than 20% of B2C businesses think their content is engaging. 

This is where Smart Content comes in. Being able to tailor content based on the interests of a website visitor, or the place in the sales funnel they are, is very powerful. 

Benefits of Smart Content 

When you have a great Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that allows you to segment your database clearly, you can make your website content be tailored to whoever visits your website. If someone signs up on your website, and you can see they are interested in your videography services you can tailor your information to highlight that. 

However, this is not the only way you can customise content. If you have content that isn’t performing on a desktop, you can even make content tailored for mobile phones. This means that your content will display differently on a desktop and a mobile phone. 

We use the HubSpot system to help businesses improve their lead generation, sales and business growth, they also offer Smart Content. 

By using smart content you are able to get more visitors to turn into leads. If the content the visitor is reading is more relevant to them than your generic website copy can be, they are more likely to convert. 

Of course, just having the concept of smart content isn’t enough. How are you going to implement smart content into your campaigns? We’ve put a small checklist together to help you get started. 

1. Create a strategy plan 
   1. No plan, no success. Not all content needs to be personalised. Make sure you know what content you want to personalise, and what makes sense to personalise.  
   2. Make sure you have your Buyer Personas ironed out. Understand them and know where they are entering your website from, and what they are interested in 
2. The various user levels – how well does your CRM know the visiting user? 
   1. Anonymous users -  hardest to customise for since you don’t know anything about this user. You can use the IP address of the user to customise the content, like changing the language depending on their location 
   2. Cookie Users – These are users that have filled in a few forms and have browsed your website before. If you know someone is interested in Videography, it makes sense to show them videography articles and content. But it’s a bit tricky since if a user shares the website with friends they could see completely different content. 
   3. Logged-In Users (or users in your CRM) - The most customisable option. Depending on everything you know of this user you can customise their information as much as possible. 
3. Make sure all your systems work seamlessly together. This is why we recommend HubSpot, since they have a CRM, marketing integrations and CMS. 
4. User Segmentation – Make sure your user segmentation in your CRM is as detailed as it can be. Don’t make smart content too personalised based on segmentation. You don’t want “Matt” to see “Student” as he logs in. 
5. Content Segmentation – after having the plan, user levels and more information all worked out. It’s time to segment your content. You can do this in many ways. 
6. Machine Learning – This piece of software will recognise the website visiting pattern of users, and optimise the content based on their browsing behaviour. But, as mentioned before, be careful with how much content you make “smart”. Reserve it for logged-in users, or CRM users, if possible. 

If you want to find out more about smart content or see how we can help you set up smart content on your website, on landing pages or for email campaigns, message us today.