5 Ways An Online Advertising Firm Can Help You With Web Personalization

Web Personalization Isn’t a Buzzword

Web personalization is all the rage right now. But it’s not just the latest buzz word in the advertising world. Web personalization is another facet of the complex wave of change bearing down on the market – the Era of the Consumer. The market is shifting to center around the consumer and their experience, and online advertising firms are adapting in turn.

Consumers are on the edge of demanding web personalization, based on how they react to marketing or advertising that is irrelevant to them. 74 percent of consumers get frustrated with websites when content, offers, ads, promotions, etc. appear that have nothing to do with their interests. One way to immediately lose a customer’s interest? Frustrate them. The “make them angry at you till they fall in love” tactic that is so popular in movies is not a recognized or recommended advertising tactic.

And so we have web personalization. Web personalization is all about utilizing consumer data to deliver the most individualized and relevant content to your audience all over the web.

Here are our top five ways that an online advertising firm can help you with web personalization:

An Online Advertising Firm Helps Conduct Geo-Targeted Advertising and Marketing

Aquarium example: deliver personalized deals to our most productive zip codes

Location-based data is some of the most useful for many businesses. Any online advertising firm worth its salt should be able to offer geo-targeting as one of the first tools to be used in web personalization.

Here’s how it works: The online advertising firm does an in-depth analysis of consumer data based on location, cross-referencing location with other metrics and sales data. This should reveal useful insights on particular locations to target. Specific ads or offers can then be created and promoted to capitalize on the sales trend in that particular location.

Two years ago, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium sought to use geo-targeting to boost their zoo membership numbers. Their analysis of membership data revealed which ZIP codes their most frequent visitors were from. They then targeted their new campaign with a discounted membership offer at other households in those neighborhoods. Their efforts were a tremendous success. In just Q1, they were able to increase membership by a full 13%.

An Online Advertising Firm Helps Use Personalized Retargeting and Native Ads

Online behavioral data is one of the first sources that an online advertising firm uses in the creation of personalized retargeting and native ads. This data can be used to build buyer personas, to help guide the creation of highly effective ad copy, design, and implementation strategy and to build audiences, to whom those ads can be delivered.

Part of personalized retargeting or native ads is the personalization of landing pages as well. As we’ve mentioned before, a single message between ad-copy/offer and landing page is extremely important to maintain the sense of personalization and the seamlessness of the buyer path. Just like an online advertising firm does for PPC, each ad group will receive personalized retargeting and native ads based on the results of their behavior analysis that will lead them to personalized landing pages.

An Online Advertising Firm Helps Personalize Emails

Emails are ripe for personalization. People have gotten very used to ignoring emails, but personalization in emails can help bring back uninterested prospects. Why? Well, what’s a more engaging subject line?

“We Need you Help! These Donuts Won’t Eat Themselves!”

“Nick, We Need Your Help! These Donuts Won’t Eat Themselves!”

As this example shows, personalized emails grab your attention. However turned off by marketing emails we are, it’s almost like an automatic response to pay attention to something that literally has your name in the subject line.

An online advertising firm can help you add personalization to subject lines, email body, even CTA’s. The results? A study from Experian found that personalized marketing emails receive 29% percent higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates.

And yet, 70% of companies don’t personalize marketing emails.

An Online Advertising Firm Helps Personalize Content

When executed correctly, personalized web content can be an enormously powerful tool for sales. Personalized web content is content (offers, deals, products, events, pictures, blog posts, etc.), that “changes” depending on the user’s individual information to try and anticipate the user’s needs and wishes. We don’t mean that it magically changes, just that it is setup to show a different piece of web content depending on data of the individual user looking at the content.

Amazon is a great example of a website that uses personalized content. Jump on to your Amazon homepage and one of the first segments you’ll see is a section about items that you’ve recently browsed through – including some models you’ve seen and others that you hadn’t check out yet. You can bet that Amazon has made thousands more sales from having that there than if it was another generic promotion. An online advertising firm might not be able to get you to Amazon-level sales, but helping personalized your web content will absolutely be a sales boost.

Personalized web content means that businesses can show their online customers the products they’re looking for faster and more efficiently – increasing profits for the business and convenience for the customer. Naturally, it has been wildly successful. Businesses that personalize web experiences see an average 19% increase in sales, and yet, 71% of companies fail to personalize their websites.

An Online Advertising Firm Helps Prevent Mistakes

People are okay with the idea that their data is being used to more effectively advertise to them. In fact, 57 percent of consumers are OK with providing personal information on a website as long as it’s for their benefit and being used in responsible ways. The concern over privacy is mitigated by the convenience and relevancy of personalized ads.

However, 77 percent would trust businesses more if they explained how they’re using personal information to improve their online experience. Customers don’t entirely trust businesses when it comes to using their personal information, and web personalization has one major pitfall that an online advertising firm can help you avoid: personalization mistakes.

Marketing to the wrong audience – whether by not using web personalization or by using it incorrectly – can result in an unhappy and uninterested user. A study revealed that 67 percent of consumers would leave the site if asked for donations from a political party that they dislike the most, 57 percent would leave the site if they were married and shown ads for a dating service, and 50 percent would leave the site if shown a recommendation to purchase underwear that is for the opposite sex. People don’t love that businesses take their information, but at least when they are shown relevant content, they get some value from it. One of the biggest issues with getting web personalization right is just that: getting it right. Data mixups, errors, and invalid inputs can turn a hot lead on the brink of buying into a glacially cold sales shutdown.

Think of those emails you’ve got that start with “Hello {{First_Name}}.” Even worse than not personalizing content is making a mistake and revealing that what was supposed to be a personalized and individual message or offer is just a sloppy mishandling of data. Online advertising firms (yes, like us), help prevent these mistakes – which saves you lost sales.