Are you leading with your brand in all your customer-facing marketing content? If not, it’s always important you do. However, the pull to use manufacturer-provided content can dissuade you from putting the time, effort, and money into creating collateral that is in your brand. Riding on the marketing coattails of vendors by co-branding assets may be easy, but it doesn’t do much for your personal brand. Personalized content is an integral component of your customer’s experience with your company and a vital asset in your marketing toolbox that sets you apart from your competition.
What is manufacturer-provided content
Manufacturers are always looking to support resellers by providing marketing collateral that helps sell their products. Professionally done and full of great information, these marketing assets can be useful when you have limited time and budget or need a placeholder for your personalized content. But they’re not an effective marketing strategy.
Marketing tip #1: Manufacturer-provided content has its place in your content marketing toolbox. However, it’s best not to overuse or rely on this content as your overall content strategy.
The cons of manufacturer-provided content
Relying on manufacturer-created content—co-branded or not—can actually hurt your business more than help it.
- Makes you unrecognizable since it doesn’t sound or look like your brand.
- Lacks your company’s value and differentiators.
- Gets lost in the crowd of all the other resellers using the same materials.
- Turns customers off since they’ve seen it too many times before.
- Is highly technical and often way over the heads of your audience.
- Pulls customers away from your website, which complicates the customer journey
- Hurts searchability since Google algorithms are smart at spotting redundancies.
What is personalized content and why it matters
In this context, personalized content is branded marketing collateral that leads with your message, style, and personality. It puts your brand front and center—critical for customer-facing marketing materials—instead of just adding your logo to a piece of content provided by the vendor.
Stand out
The problem in using manufacturer-provided marketing collateral is that it’s so easy, everyone does it. So, no one stands out. Personalized content allows you to tell your unique story. Highlight your unique differentiators and value adds. It takes your audience on a compelling visual journey that is new and exciting. This also makes the use cases endless, from sharing on your social, through email, or even printed to help spread your message.
Build brand recognition
Personalized content enables you to share the manufacturer’s message in your own voice while providing your company’s value adds. Creating new content consistently helps you build a library of amazing images and resources that define your brand. Together, they show off your personality, build relationships, and nurture customer loyalty instead of just searching for sales (though that will come).
Marketing tip #2: Having a resource library of branded and some co-branded materials ensures you have marketing content that speaks to customers at each level of the marketing funnel.
Boost your value
Personalized content is the perfect place to highlight your services that complement the vendor’s solution (security solution with your managed security services). You can also showcase your team’s expertise and certifications, include testimonials from satisfied customers, share company stats and awards that align with the outcomes of the content and showcase your unique qualities.
Be original
One of the most important rules of search engine optimization (SEO) is that all the content on your website needs to be original. This applies not only to your home page, but to all the content collateral housed on your site. The more personalized content you have on your website, the more opportunity you have to move up on the search page.
Marketing tip #3: Drive to or keep prospects and customers on your website instead of linking back the vendor’s website for additional information. This means utilizing a resource library with your content marketing assets as well as co-branded manufacturer-provided assets.
One of the most important rules of search engine optimization (SEO) is that all the content on your website needs to be original. This applies not only to your home page, but to all the content collateral housed on your site. The more personalized content you have on your website, the more opportunity you have to move up on the search page.
How to make your content more personalized for your audience
Personalized content isn’t just about creating marketing content that leads with your brand. It’s about personalizing that contentto your audience. There’s a number of ways you can create a tailored customer experience with your personalized branded content.
1. Personalize by demographic
Creating content that speaks to a specific industry or location can have a greater impact on engaging prospects and customers that fall into those demographics instead of high-level content that speaks to everyone. For instance, if you’re looking to reach a healthcare audience regarding your security solutions, it’s best to have marketing content that speaks directly to their pain points, use cases, and benefits.
2. Personalize by persona
Personalizing content to each key decision-maker enables you to connect with a wider audience of stakeholders and address their concerns more effectively. For example, a chief financial officer (CFO) may want to learn how you can solve their problems for less while an IT manager may focus on ease of use, training, and implementation.
3. Personalize by where they are on the buyers’ journey
Delivering content based on where users are in the sales funnel is crucial. For example, if a customer is in the awareness stage and comparing you to competitors, they’re looking for more information about you, the product, and your services. If a customer already has made previous purchases with you, they’ll want more personalized content that speaks to specifics
4. Personalize at the customer level
Addressing email recipients by name can substantially increase click-through rates. It may seem like a small thing, but using their first name says, “We see you” and can have a dramatic impact on how they see your business.
Let IMS360 tell your story
Creating personalized content can be hard. As the go-to IT marketing and creative agency, IMS360 helps product, software, and solution providers like you tell their story in a strategic and compelling way. To learn more, visit our catalog of services and see what fits your business needs. Ready to personalize your content? Schedule a discovery call by contacting us at info@ims360group.com or 908-361-9715.
Dive into our list of personalized and manufacturer-provided content use cases:
