Recently I was having a discussion with my colleagues about how Dynamic Website Personalization (DWP) is changing inbound marketing and how it's going to change the way that websites are designed and leads are captured and nurtured. This conversation was prompted by a great article from the folks at Entrepreneur.com
about how websites are being designed with the user experience taken into consideration to create a more personalized experience based upon customer life cycle, industry or other criteria that is deemed important.
When I started thinking about this more and how it applies to inbound marketing, I couldn’t help but think about the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray in which a weatherman finds himself living the same day over and over again. Without a website and lead generation process that’s customized to each lead that visits your website, your leads are probably experiencing the same thing that Bill Murray’s character did in Groundhog Day. He would wake up at the same time every day and the same things would happen to him throughout the day. Meeting the same people, having the same conversations and ultimately the same outcome. He would wake up again the next day and the same things would happen. After a few days of this he became quite frustrated and tried to come up with ways to break the daily routine.
3 Reasons to Make Your Inbound Marketing Leads' Website Experience Dynamic
If your inbound marketing leads current experience on your website is similar to the scenario that Bill Murray’s character encountered, there are three reasons to consider making your website dynamic:
1) Leads are Not Customers and Customers are Not Leads
In most businesses you can easily differentiate between your leads and your customers and you don’t want to put sales pitches in front of your clients like you would a prospect. You want to be able to show your leads one piece of content such as the solutions your product provides and show your customers content that’s more in line with how to use the product or service.
2) Show Your Leads Some Respect
When a website visitor first converts on your website and becomes a lead it’s important to change the way that you market to these new leads. Showing your leads the same calls to action that they converted on doesn’t make any sense and can turn off your new leads that you have worked so hard to get.
Imagine going on an appointment with a prospect over and over again and having the same conversation and presenting the same sales collateral each time. How would that reflect on you as a salesperson? How would it reflect on your company? In my mind it would make you seem as though you don’t value your prospect’s time, you don’t understand their needs and you are not moving the lead closer to becoming a customer. In a dynamic sales environment the conversation is constantly changing and you are responding to cues and buying signals that the prospect gives you, which helps you provide the prospect additional information, which moves them closer to the ultimate goal of becoming a customer.
3) Create a Competitive Advantage
Let’s face it. Most of the things that I have been discussing in this article your competitors are not doing! Dynamic website content is a rather new technology so most businesses are not utilizing it. In most industries there is a defined pool of prospects and the company with the best marketing and user experience to their website will undoubtedly win online. Add some dynamic content to your website before your competitors do and grow your market share before they beat you to it.
How to Make Your Website Dynamic
Creating a dynamic website isn’t as easy as it sounds and is highly dependent on which content management system (CMS) you are using.
Most content management systems such as WordPress, one of the most commonly used content management systems, doesn’t allow the displaying of content based upon lists or other criteria. In order to create a website with a highly personalized experience, building or moving your website to a software system that allows for the displaying of dynamic content such as HubSpot, an inbound marketing software, would enable you to display specific content to visitors based upon if they are a visitor, lead, or a customer as well as what they have downloaded from you in the past. In terms of full disclosure, The Center for Sales Strategy is a Gold Level partner of HubSpot and we work with clients on a daily basis to generate leads and make their website visitors experience more customized.
The Impact of Dynamic Content on Conversion Rates
When asked about the impact of dynamic content on HubSpot's own website, Meghan Keaney Anderson, head of product launches at HubSpot, said, "We looked at the data for more than 93,000 calls to action created using HubSpot, and hundreds of millions of views over a 12 month period. "We found that calls-to-action dynamically targeted to the user had a 42 percent higher viewed to submission rate than calls to action that were the same for all visitors. That's marketing, and impact, any business would love."
Are Increasing Your Conversion Rates Important to You?
If a 42% higher conversion rate doesn’t impress you there is no reason to spend the time and effort moving or building your website utilizing dynamic content. You are probably best doing what most other companies do with their websites and create a beautiful online brochure that looks the same every hour, every day and every week to your customers and prospects alike and letting your competition take the forefront with creating dynamic content for their prospects.
Did the Groundhog See Their Shadow?
On Groundhog Day, which was yesterday, the big question on everyone’s mind is, “Did the Groundhog see their shadow?” Will we have 6 more weeks of Winter or is Spring on the way? Hopefully Spring is on the way and hopefully after reading this you have seen why having a website that’s not dynamic is sure to turn off your visitors and make them feel like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.
If you are interested in starting an inbound marketing program and learning about the crucial steps needed to make it successful, download 30 Days to Inbound Marketing Success.
