Before you invest in Marketing Automation and Personalization: Fix your Content and Site Structure (3/4)

SERIES INTRO: If you want to successfully implement new platforms for marketing automation, personalization, and measurement — you need to know your audience in greater detail, you need to create more granular content structured for use, and you need a team that has the right skills and process to continuously measure and optimize. I’ve got some great advice for you to get everything in place.

Articles in this series

🔻 Please read Parts 1 and 2 for a complete introduction.

• Part 1: Introduction, basic benefits of Marketing Automation and Personalization platforms, and creating a Digital Experience Framework to assess your current state.
• Part 2: Do you know your CUSTOMERS and their needs?
• Part 3: Do you have the right site STRUCTURE and CONTENT?
• Part 4: Are you ready for CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION? Do you have the right roles and process to make the most of marketing technology?

Structure your site for measurement and a user-centered focus

One of the biggest changes in any site redesign is making sure you can talk more directly to different types of customers, and their specific needs — think of a multi-audience site structure that has areas for “end-customers” and “channel partners.” For example, a building products manufacturer needs to talk to homeowners, as well as builders and dealers. A machinery manufacturer has end-customers who might be original-equipment manufacturers (engineers), but also distributors (sales reps).

I’m not talking about a site composed of “landing pages.” I’m talking about making sure your site is structured correctly throughout.

1. Structure around audience types, and their journeys

Your second job: take your detailed personas and their use cases (see Part 1), and build a site that is directly tied to their specific needs, and their purchase journeys. This means site sections that focus on planning, selecting, purchasing, and post-sale support. And a journey that immediately allows a visitor to move to that part of the site that matches who they are.

A journey-sequenced site is good for people — and provides triggers for dynamic personalization

As noted in the personas discussion of my last post, for the purposes of marketing automation and personalization, structuring a site by audiences and major journey stages allows you to not only provide more relevant content, it also allows you to measure who is visiting, and for what reason — which adds data to the rules you can use to further provide a better experience.

The Therma-Tru website demonstrates this structure:

The Therma-tru site is organized around the homeowner purchase journey (main navigation), but a separate section for Professionals is offered — with tabbed content for specific professional audiences.

2. Provide content that people want (then you’ll use what they click on to further personalize their experience)

If you better understand your targeted personas, and are developing a site organized around them, then the next step is to make sure you have the right kinds of content. Don’t forget that the whole point of personalization and site optimization is to deliver the content that customers expect, while using the technology to make the user’s visit more efficient!

So, the right kind of content needs to serve the user, and help the system work. This means two things:

1. User-focused content that is helpful, desired, understandable, and interesting;
2. Technically-structured content that is engaging, but more clickable, and therefore useable as triggers of user direction/intention.

I’m going to share a number of content types that people are looking for (which means that you can help an individual, while tracking what they really need).

When considering how to develop helpful content, ask yourself: as a business, what subjects do you own?

While it is clear that you definitely own the details of products and services you sell, you also have the ability to share your point of view and best practices when it comes to understanding which products/services are right for your customer, and how to make a good decision.

Don’t do this: Typical of many manufacturer sites, this carpet catalog’s “Backing” filter option lists an incredible amount of branded choices — the majority of users will be unable to even use this criteria.

Make sure people can understand what you give them.

I’ve seen far too many catalogs that assume the visitor knows how to filter/select from the many, varieties of product in a given category. And even if they do have a good idea of what they are looking for, too many sites think users can somehow filter confusing trademarked names for common features. I’m not going to say here that you shouldn’t trademark something, but if you are effectively taking something remarkable and making people go out of their way to compare it to a competitor, you’re doing your business a major disservice.

In general, a confused mind doesn’t buy.

Don’t confuse or overwhelm — give people help.

Make sure you have purchase guides, comparison guides, and how-to-purchase guides front and center — especially if you need to explain trademarked innovations — so people can clearly compare what you make, vs. what they actually want, and what your competition offers.

Filtering by customer use: You have to go beyond your technical specifications and characteristics. Let people filter on their particular needs, then recommend (provide results for) things that meet their needs.

Example of filtering/selecting a product that is compatible with a specific use — here the user needs a hose that works with Sodium Hypochlorite (liquid bleach disinfectant). Eaton PowerSource http://www.eatonpowersource.com/ can show them products that work.

Comparison guides that are jargon-free: People are using this information to compare you to the competition. If you confuse them with your own trademarks and jargon, you’re doing the exact opposite of what people need.

An audience-focused comparison guide lets a customer clearly see what’s different about your products (and provides a way for them to compare to competitors, which they are certainly doing on other sites). Therma-Tru shown (https://www.thermatru.com/explore-doors/door-collections/product-line-comparison/).

Create technically-structured content — content that is modern, engaging, and measurable

Assuming you’ve identified content and topics that are the most helpful and useful to your audiences, the actual form of your content can be both effective and usable by a personalization engine.

More popular (modern) content: From a straight copy perspective, bulleted lists, infographics and charts all can make it easier for a customer to focus in on the key points of any topic.

Here are some forms of interactive content that are consumable (people like them, they are helpful), but with regard to personalization, each can be technically measured through user interaction:

• Quizzes are as simple as inviting the user to answer 3–4 questions, resulting in some recommendations — perhaps specific features to look for in a product, or matching product results
• Calculators help people figure out how much of something they need to buy, or add a projectful of products and services together, to get a better idea of the expected budget
• Configurators help combine different variations of products together — with behind-the-scenes rules that provide valid solutions for what they should purchase
• Checklists allow people to better understand the decision(s) they need to make, and subset a list of steps/stages/choices with things that specifically pertain to them; a checklist can result in links to where they should go to learn more
• Simple tab panels or accordions with content are UI techniques that can reduce on-screen clutter, letting the user reveal one or more topics that appeal to them

Now, If you go back and read each one of the above bullets again, you can see that each provides one or more data points that can better understand:

1. Where the user might be in their journey (general information, specific planning, pricing),
2. What the user doesn’t know and wants to understand better (their click implies their intention and need).

Again, you can use what they are interacting with as part of a rule to define what you offer them later on site, and even in a follow-up email.

This example of visual learning content has multiple events to track as the user interacts with the information. Even measuring the cumulative amount of areas investigated could help understand level of interest.

Consider intercepting people who might be off the path, or less informed

Even in the middle of search results you might interject an option to help direct customers to something they may not yet know (or a better way to filter what they are looking at). This can be especially helpful if you sell products that are infrequent, but important purchases.

Imagine that the customer went straight to the catalog but hasn’t seen a comparison guide, or read about what makes your products extra special. You might have a special guided selling tool (shop based on your need) that could be of value to them. If you could make an assumption (based on rules) that the customer is not aware, you could insert a personalized message to catch their attention in-line, rather than have them simply leave.

Even in the middle of search results you might interject a callout to help direct customers to something they may not yet know (or a better way to filter what they are looking at). Different people might best benefit from a custom message.

SUMMARY: You need to have good content first. User-focused content and features will deliver a better experience, even if you don’t have personalization and automation tools. You must structure sites around user needs, and deliver content and features that they care about.

Personalization and automation platforms can’t work without content to measure, and content to dynamically suggest.

Read part 4: Get your team and process ready

🔗 To successfully deliver an enhanced digital customer experience will require continuous optimization, new organizational structures, and new marketing technology roles.

⭐️ Mike Osswald is VP, Experience Innovation at Hanson Inc., an Ohio-based digital agency that creates meaningful experiences enabled by technology. Contact us if you’ll like to talk further — we’d love to be a part of the conversation.