The big themes for marketers at Dreamforce this year revolved around content personalization, including consumers’ desire for content based around their specific interests, the rise of predictive content technologies, and the growing success of account-based marketing.
Among these themes, we’ve distilled the four high-level takeaways from Dreamforce 2015 for marketers to implement back in the workplace:
1. Consumers want personalized content.
Today, consumers want their preferences and inputs remembered, and they’re not afraid to give you their information if it makes their lives easier. In fact, 78 percent of consumers are more likely to become a repeat customer if a brand provides them with relevant content. This means that marketers are now tasked with creating content to address each persona, each stage of the customer journey, and each question at each of those stages.
If that sounds overwhelming, keep in mind that inbound leads still cost 60 percent less than outbound leads, according to Search Engine Journal. In short: personalized marketing is worth it.
Here are a few tips to help you personalize your marketing efforts:
- Use tools like Reachforce and Datanyze to append first-party data to your leads and build your segments.
- Map out your customer’s journey and where people get stuck in your buying process.
- Use progressive profiling on your forms — don’t make someone fill out his or her information twice.
- If you’re B2B, consider trying account-based marketing (more on that later).
2. Marketers are investing in predictive content technologies.
Marketers are learning that technology can tell us which content pieces are likely to succeed. A small minority of a brand’s content pieces actually drive the overwhelming majority of its successes, especially with regard to web traffic coming from organic search.
Technologies (like TrackMaven!) are now able to help marketers determine what will be “breakout” content, and how to frame their content strategies around these tentpole pieces.
3. Account-based marketing is here to stay.
According to Sirius Decisions, more than 90 percent of marketers recognize the value of account-based marketing (ABM). Companies practicing ABM often have better alignment with sales, close bigger deals with target accounts, and are able to increase pipeline velocity.
ABM is the antithesis of traditional “spray and pray” marketing; it also delivers the highest ROI of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic. Here are 3 tips to help you get started with ABM:
- Use predictive scoring to build a target account list with your sales team.
- Use a prospecting tool like InsideView or RainKing to build out contacts, and start testing messaging and measuring engagement.
- Look into tools like DemandBase, Terminus, and Engagio to go further with account-based advertising and analytics.
4. Be targeted with your digital channels.
Eighty percent of people ignore Google-sponsored ads, according to Search Engine Land. This is not surprising, with search algorithms prioritizing educational content like blog posts and videos over landing pages.
Instead use remarketing, look-alike audiences, and tools like Marketo’s real-time personalization to create segments and target your paid marketing efforts.
The Bottom Line: It pays to personalize! And the good news? There is a plethora of predictive marketing technologies available to help you personalize and target your content for your audience. For a comprehensive look at the technologies available to help you market more effectively, peruse our list of top tools here.