Inbound marketing is using educational, valuable content to draw people who need your products/services to you. Smart content is a “weapon” in your inbound marketing arsenal and is more powerful and flexible than other types of content. Why? Because it changes/adapts based on the viewer. Smart content allows you to improve your visitor targeting and create an individualized experience.
For example, smart content allows you to show different calls-to-action (CTAs) to people based on where they are in the buyer’s journey, other pages they’ve visited, and which content they’ve already interacted with on your site (e.g., viewers won’t see a CTA for an ebook they’ve already downloaded).
The most famous – or maybe infamous – example of smart content is Amazon’s recommendation engine, which shows users products and services they might like based on previous purchasing behavior.
How smart content targets prospects
Smart content gets its information about website visitors from your CRM and marketing automation platform and uses that information to create customized content.
The information it uses includes:
- Name
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Email address
- Interactions with your social media accounts
- Their browser/device
- Other websites they’ve visited
- Previous activity on your site
- Where they are in the buyer’s journey
The customizations you can make using smart content are endless. It could be as easy as changing your CTAs or headings for different geographic areas or as complex as showing entirely different content to new visitors versus returning visitors.
How smart content enhances personalization (and why that’s important)
It’s common marketing knowledge that personalized content performs better and is more effective than ‘generic’ content. Personalized email messages have a 26% higher open rate than non-personalized emails, smart CTAs perform 42% better than generic CTAs, and, according to an Infosys report:
- 59% of customers say personalization influences their shopping decisions
- 31% of customers want their shopping experience to be more personalized
- 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content isn’t personalized
- 78% of consumers will only engage offers if they’ve been personalized to their previous engagements with a brand
Smart content allows you to offer a unique experience: highly personalized, valuable, and relevant content for every prospect. The results? A better experience for the user – and a higher chance of conversion for you.
What makes smart content smart
Most marketing automation platforms use the cookies stored in a visitor's browser to identify the visitor and pull information from their contact record. After looking at their device presets and IP address, the software matches visitors against a piece of content's smart rules and shows the correct smart content.
(Caveat: This means you can’t rely entirely on smart content – because cookies are typically unreliable on mobile, smart contact doesn’t always deliver.)
You can create smart CTAs, smart forms, and add smart content to your website pages, landing pages, and emails.
Imagine going to the grocery store, asking for apples, and having an employee offer to help you choose a cut of steak. That’s what you’re doing if your website shows the same content to all visitors, regardless of which search term brought them to your site or which content they’ve already seen.
To show visitors apples when they ask for apples, smart content is the answer.
If you have questions or want to try smart content, contact us!
