5 Tips for Using Content Marketing Automation
for Personalization

Here's the bottom line: as your business grows and expands, it becomes harder to be more personal with your customers. Sure, you can rely on AI-generated content, but then your brand loses some of its personality. To prevent this, you'll have to employ some clever tactics and blur the line between automation and Personalization.

Contrary to what many believe, content marketing automation and Personalization aren't required to be two different entities. They don't counteract each other, nor should you tackle them separately. 

If you're unsure how to implement Personalization in your content strategy, we've got you covered. In this guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about content marketing automation and how to optimize it for Personalization.

What Is Content Marketing Automation?

Content automation is the process of using specific software to automate repetitive tasks and deliver a customized experience for prospects. This type of content is typically too numerous for your business to tackle manually.

With 70% of marketers investing in content marketing, this is too important of a prospect to overlook.

One of the most common forms of automated content marketing is email marketing. For instance, when a customer purchases a product from your website, they may receive an automatic email from your company confirming their purchase and thanking them for their patronage.

As you make more and more sales, it becomes impossible to respond to each one individually. This is where automation comes into play.

The Possibilities of Automation

Before moving forward, here's a quick look at some of the things that can be achieved through automation:

• Keyword research
• Content idea generation
• Marketing automation tools
• Email newsletters
• Social media content distribution and scheduling
• Live chats
• Email follow-ups
• Running ad campaigns

When you automate content marketing, it saves tons of time and money. That's not to mention how efficient your company becomes as it grows and gains a more extensive client base.

How to Automate Personalization

Automated Personalization starts with your content strategy. Before you can personalize your content for your target audience, you've got to understand your demographic. 

Keywords, behaviors, and interests are imperative in what kind of content you put out there. That's why you must do your research and stay up to date with trends within your niche. Once you've got an idea of who's consuming your brand, Personalization becomes much more manageable.

The next step is deciding what you want to automate.

Your personalization methods will vary depending on how you implement automation in your content strategy. A good rule of thumb is to follow what similar brands are doing. Take note of what's working in their content strategy and what isn't.

5 Tips for Personalizing Content Marketing Automation

Each brand is different and will follow a unique path to automation. Of course, some things don't change from industry to industry and become universal rules of success. 

These five tips encompass these rules and act as a guide that you should follow regardless of what you're marketing.

1. Send Personalized Email Follow-Ups

When a customer makes a purchase or interacts with your company's customer service, it's good practice to have a follow-up confirmation email. As you gain more customers, it becomes harder to send each message individually. Eventually, you have to make the switch to an automated system. The best CRM systems can really help you stay on top of all the customer communications. 

Just because you've switched systems, it doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice personalization; there are a few adjustments you can make, so each message sent seems more personal. 

For example, if you happen to sell courses online, and one of your customers bought a course from you needing specific marketing advice, you can create a really personalized follow-up. In that follow-up you can give pointers to the course sections where they can get the specific help they were asking for. 

You can also take it a step further by using data on your target demographic to modify the tone of your automated emails. Once you tailor your company voice toward your customers based on the information you've gathered, your email marketing becomes incredibly effective. 

Additionally, having real conversations really helps you get feedback from customers. This feedback is invaluable for improving your products and services. 

1. Use Social Media Management Software For Personalization

Most businesses already use at least one marketing automation tool, whether they acknowledge it or not. 

One you should definitely include in your digital strategy is systematic and automated social media management, which helps brands schedule, edit and automate content publishing. If your business relies heavily on social platforms (let's be honest, most do nowadays), then you'll probably want to employ one of these tools.

Using social media management software for personalization is an important aspect of automated media posting. It allows you to schedule posts to air when your target audience is most active and uses keywords that appeal to them the most. Furthermore, the data gathered from this software are invaluable to your company as they provide you with insights to enhance your customer journey and experience.

1. Personalize AI-Generated Content Ideas and Content

AI has become incredibly advanced in recent years. In fact, the best AI writing tools can include such SEO keywords, and will generate content and topics based on your input. 

Of course, AI can only go so far, and you'll still end up with a product that feels somewhat "robotic." 

One way to combat this is with a paraphrasing tool, which allows you to take already existing content (such as outdated website descriptions or AI-generated articles) and make it more optimized for reading. Once you make this small adjustment, you create the illusion that your content was fully made by a human being, and it will connect better with readers.

Overall, your best bet is to use a mix of optimized AI-generated content and handmade content. This way, you'll save a bit of time but also maintain consistently high-quality content.

1. Run Automated Ad Campaigns

Funnily enough, automated ad campaigns are vastly more effective than ones run by humans. And the best way to personalize these campaigns? Let the algorithms and data-gathering tools work their magic. 

See, campaigns run on media sites such as Facebook are mostly run by software. This algorithmic software utilizes AI learning to increase its effectiveness beyond a normal person and will ultimately provide better personalization than anyone else. You have the option to manually input details for your campaign, but it's typically best to rely on the software.

1. Personalize Keyword Research

Instead of using tools to only find keywords related to your select topic, use these devices to pinpoint keywords associated with your target demographic as well. This means isolating the behaviors, personalities, and other characteristics of your audience to generate ideas at a more personal level.

You can accomplish personalized keyword research simply by reaching out to existing customers, creating personas, and having automated surveys on your main website.

Key Takeaways for Content Marketing Automation

Customers today expect personalized experiences. That's fine and dandy, but without data gathering and automation, there's really no room for growth. Such is why you've got to do your research and learn from past experiences.

Just as long as you follow the tips in this guide and stay true to your roots, your brand will be running at maximum efficiency, and there's no telling how far you can go.