outsell brands<\/a> that have not adopted personalization by more than 30 percent.<\/p>\nCompelling, right?<\/p>\n
Amazon knew this when their main product was books. Though they implemented AI learning in 2016, the online retailer pioneered personalization long before. <\/p>\n
It’s akin to having physical spies in a retail store watching to see what products consumers are picking up or studying, then following said shopper around the store reminding them about their interest and showing other products that are similar. <\/p>\n
It was brilliant. It was subtle. And it worked. <\/p>\n
But it’s not so subtle anymore, and in some cases can be downright creepy – or alarming.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, a story recently relayed to me by a colleague. They are at the mall with a friend, talking about their interest in a Samsung phone. As they opened their phone and Facebook to check in on the social world, they were met with ads for Samsung phones. <\/p>\n
Coincidence? No. Facebook is listening and responding accordingly. Creepy? Yes. Effective? Yes. But is that taking it too far? Maybe.<\/p>\n
Most of us now have devices listening 24\/7 to our conversations and feeding ad networks that respond accordingly. It’s just a form of personalization. It’s the future.<\/p>\n
![\"genesis-sidebar\"](\"https:\/\/leapsparkagency.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/genesis-sidebar.jpg\" "\\"genesis-sidebar\\"")
<\/p>\n
How to Personalize<\/h3>\n
First, brands are going to need a system to facilitate its efforts. Many exist, and the flavors offered are immense. A few of the top names are RichRelevance, Optimizely, Marketo and Segment. If it’s not obvious, Leap Group prefers Progress Sitefinity and the Digital Experience Cloud for robust website personalization. <\/p>\n
It does require an investment, which is often why brands ultimately decide against making the move to personalization. <\/p>\n
But, can you afford to wait?<\/p>\n
Once you have a system chosen, brands need to start with the basics. Here are the steps:<\/p>\n
1. Create personas (Who are we talking to? How will we segment?)<\/p>\n
2. Content audit (What content exists, categorized by theme and segments.)<\/p>\n
3. Create a content gap matrix (What content do we need to produce? What competitive gaps can we fill? What content can we remove or replace?)<\/p>\n
4. Create a personalization matrix (detail each interaction and widget that will appear when triggers fire, based upon behavior or known elements.)<\/p>\n
5. Wireframe those pages and widgets.<\/p>\n
6. Design<\/p>\n
7. Develop<\/p>\n
8. Test UX, test personalization triggers, test segments and then test again.<\/p>\n
9. Launch!<\/p>\n
Not so easy, but not impossible. And worth both the financial and time investment.<\/p>\n
We are not building websites nor digital experiences without some form of personalization, and this has been true for some time. If brands are not personalizing digital experiences, they are already losing the war – and it is a war for consumer’s attention. We know that the one true way to matter more to a consumer is through relevance. Personalization delivers that relevance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
But what about personalization when we don\u2019t know who the target audience is? Welcome, digital personalization. It comes in many forms:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":1646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,47],"issue":[10],"collection":[3],"acf":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapgroupnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"genesis\"](\"https:\/\/leapsparkagency.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/genesis.jpg\" "\\"genesis\\"")