How to reach niche audiences with precision: Harnessing the power of digital personalization

How well do you really know your digital audience? As the amount of available data and marketing opportunities grow, you’re probably feeling even more pressured to answer that question and deliver results efficiently.

You might be at a standstill, scared to act until you’ve isolated your ‘perfect’ target persona. But that fixation on every detail – from exact age to ‘liked’ movies – is just a waste of precious resources. In fact, it’s cutting off tons of interested buyers before they even see you.

You’re understandably worried about letting your message get lost in an overwhelming sea of options, offers – noise. You know audiences don’t have the time or energy to pay attention to every single piece of content. And, while the huge amount of data is helpful, it alone isn’t enough.

Your solution: digital personalization, a content-first strategy focused on providing value to your audiences.

Instead of creating strict hyper-targeted audiences that sound perfect and produce nothing, you offer useful content to a broad audience, wrapped in head-turning stories that catch and reward your target's attention.

In return, you see first-hand how your audiences act and use that precious insight to offer deeper and deeper layers of personalized content, confidently positioning your solutions as the hero.

The result is success through shared value. Audiences get the personalized content they want, and your business lowers costs, increases conversions and creates a better return on investment.

What Makes Personalized Content Powerful?

Personalization is the expectation.

Personalized content isn’t just extra value, it’s quickly becoming the norm. A 2021 report by McKinsey & Company found that 71% of consumers expect personalization. In a time of curated social media feeds, people want every piece of content they see to meet their immediate and specific needs.

When it doesn’t, they’re bored (if not annoyed). According to a 2022 Twilio Segment report, 62% of consumers say a brand will lose their loyalty if it doesn’t deliver a personalized experience.

But when they get something personalized, they feel appreciated, building a deeper connection to a brand that seems to understand them. They’re excited to engage, act and spend.

Asking what audiences really want.

When audiences aren’t concrete, personalized content acts as both an effective entry point and filter. It also avoids the targeting bias that might’ve stopped potential customers from ever seeing you.

Instead of assuming everything about your audiences, digital personalization encourages and rewards them for sharing their needs. A variety of messages and touchpoints engage audiences and entice them to ‘tell’ us what they want and where they are in their buying journey. With this strategy, content ranges from broad interests to specific, even differing, pain points. Users are flagged based on which messages they interacted with, sorted in-platform and retargeted with content that is more deeply personalized and relevant.

Our multi-channel digital campaign for NK Seeds is a prime example of this. We retargeted growers who engaged with our wide variety of content and served them deeper, more personalized messaging, including ads for seed varieties that did best in their specific area and local reps they could connect with for more recommendations.

You can learn more about how we used digital personalization to increase campaign’s click-through rate and conversions, all while greatly reducing cost per acquisition, here.

With digital personalization, you’re not leaving them canned answers and walking away, you’re engaging in a conversation. You’re simultaneously building loyalty and reducing ad fatigue by giving customers a variety of content rather than desensitizing them to the exact same message and creative.

That honest connection and enthusiastic engagement is what digital personalization uses to drive success.

 

On top of that effectiveness, ads that get more engagement (including clicks, comments and shares) are known to achieve lower CPC and CPM, bringing in more business at a lower cost.

 

Offering what they’ve been asking for.

For some niche and B2B audiences, more direct callouts can grab attention effectively, targeting these established customers with specialized solutions and very specific pain points. For example, a geotechnical engineer is most likely to engage with content made solely for their industry, especially on platforms like LinkedIn. Few else would know, notice or care.

These touchpoints aren’t just focused on paid advertising: effective personalization is multichannel for both B2B and B2C audiences. Alongside paid ads, you might provide free how-to videos on your website, post organically on social media, send custom messages, or offer downloadable checklists; all to meet and engage audiences at different points in their experience. This helps ensure your brand stays top of mind and shines as an ideal solution whenever they’re ready to buy. That’s especially important when your B2B sales cycle lasts longer. Could you really give your full attention to the exact same ad every week for three years?

Giving them the tools to get closer.

Free tools are one of the most engaging and exciting examples of personalized content. An effective tool, like a calculator, quiz or checklist, can attract, sort and sell to your audience all in one place.

3 Steps to Creating Deeper Connections with your Niche Audience.

1. Describe and Decide.

The first step is research. Personalization starts with a broad audience, but you need to know what content you can offer to bring prospective customers closer.

This means segmenting and defining audiences with personas. These model customers combine demographic details like age, location or career with “interests” that range from habits and hobbies to favourite brands.

Additionally, a well-developed CRM database, purchase history or mailing list helps crystalize and create audience segments. Platforms like LinkedIn can use this data to identify “look-a-like” audiences that act like your current customers.

Complementary to this ‘hard’ research is social listening, reading customer reviews, social media comments or other informal sources. This first-hand feedback is great for finding new pain points, unexpected markets and content ideas.

2. Carefully Craft Personalized Content

Good marketing needs to create value and present it at the right time. Why pay for a good idea if no one knows it exists, or bring everyone’s attention to something that won’t be worth engaging with? It really comes down to empathy. If you can understand what real people want and present it in a relatable, authentic way, you’ll have no trouble catching and keeping their attention.

Personalization is no exception. In fact, people are more concerned about data privacy than ever before. In a survey of 2,500 people, Gartner found that consumers are over three times more likely to stop engaging with brands that over-personalize and use too much data. Balance and subtlety are still key.

3. Release, Retarget and Retune

From likes to location, platforms like Google, Facebook and TikTok categorize user interests and characteristics to create the personalized experiences people love. Those same algorithms allow us to measure behaviour and results to better serve the right content to the right people.

Digital personalization also holds a powerful agility, allowing longer campaigns to integrate feedback while they’re still running. Images, text and messaging strategies can even be changed mid-campaign as their performance is measured. Regardless of campaign length, the first-hand feedback and engagement results that come from digital personalization are an exceptional foundation for future content and strategies.

Do A Lot More, With A Little Less.

Simply put, digital personalization is the best way to reach customers, build loyalty and engage your niche audience as they move along the sales funnel. Relevant, useful and personalized content has become the expectation across all digital platforms, and it clearly pays to give audiences what they really want. Even as privacy concerns grow, limiting third-party data and targeting, digital personalization is a powerful solution that satisfies both B2B and B2C customers.