Why online marketers need to embrace personalisation

The proliferation of online content in this digital age can be a double-edged sword where publishers find their selves trying to dauntingly break through the noise while readers find themselves struggling to self-curate through it.
This overwhelming sea of content is often a major challenge for marketers aiming to attract and maintain an audience.
"As a digital publisher, you only stand a chance if you remain relevant. And you can only remain relevant if you personalise your content," writes Assaf Dudai, a content marketing consultant and writer.
Readers arrive on digital publications from social networks, newsfeeds, aggregators and various other secondary sourced. This can prove to be a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges for publishers, Dudai explains.
The challenge being, readers who arrive to a publication directly spend triple the time on a site than those who come through a link elsewhere, according to a report by the Pew Research Center.
On the flip side, there are opportunities when publishers get an increased traffic of readers that would have never otherwise considered visiting the site.
"These accidental visitors are a golden opportunity. They fulfill the digital publisher's first task - being discovered online. It is then up to the publisher to deliver a great content experience. And in this case, great means personalized," says Suman Sharma, a digital marketing consultant based in the UAE.
Be it the accidental or the intentional visitor one is targeting with any content, it is important to keep in consideration the possible devices they could be browsing from.
"Your website should be responsive, or mobile-friendly but that goes without saying. What is more critical is to consider the type of device as a way to deduce, or at least speculate, on the visitor's state of mind and attention span," says Sharma.
As a norm, desktop and laptop readers are more likely to suggest a willingness for a lengthy reading while mobile content, as a general rule, is best served short.
Another way to personalise the content experience is by actively serving relevant content to the website visitor rather than hope that they stumble upon it from among the thousands of pages on your website, recommends Dudai.
Asking the readers questions that help the publisher gain a better insight about them can also contribute to making the content more relevant. "It's up to the digital publisher, based on industry and subject matter, to figure out which questions are most revealing and useful to further personalize future visits to the website, as well as for email and newsletter interactions between the brand and its readers," he adds.
One of the benefits a personalized content experience reaps right away is the prolonged time readers spend on the site - due to a deeper engagement - which usually translates to a higher advertising revenue.
But the most valuable benefit is reaped over time - the strengthening of the relationship between a brand and a person, which can prove to be the brand's most competitive advantage after all.
 
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. Views expressed are her own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.