Consumers Want Personalized Content, Research Suggests Brands Are Having Trouble Delivering It

Marketers are struggling to keep up with the heightened demand from consumers for relevant content, according to findings a new survey conducted by Lucidpress , a web-based brand templating platform.

“As humans, as consumers, we've become used to high-quality content that is also personalized,” said Owen Fuller, CEO of Lucidpress. “We get that on our phones, we get that in the on-demand world we live in. So we expect that from businesses we are talking to.”

The study found that out of 452 professionals, 85% reported an increase in demands for content over the past year, while effective personalized content could increase brand revenue by 48% on average. 

“We need to make sure we're accurate, we're compliant, that we're conveying things in the way people really want to receive them,” Fuller adds. “That is creating a lot of pain in a number of businesses."

The study outlines four key factors that prevent organizations from meeting these heightened demands. 

First is off-brand content: 77% of respondents reported seeing off-brand content at their company, while 68% said brand consistency contributed between 10% and 20+% of their revenue growth. “For a company that does more than $10M in sales per year, that’s millions of dollars lost due to inconsistency,” the company said.

Second is impersonalized content: 32% reported that most of their content is personalized, while 43% said the majority of their customer base expects content to be personalized. Only 21% said that 75% of their total content is personalized.

Third is a lack of confidence in content creation: 28% of respondents reported that consumer decisions impacted by their content came to less than 25%. Almost one third (27%) consistently measure the ROI of the content they create.

The last factor is the general constraints to creating content: It took 39% of respondents around one week or more to fulfill content requests, while only 11% were able to fill requests within a day. 

Large and small organizations are affected differently by this demand for content, but may require a similar solution. 

Smaller companies that lack the specific expertise in designing high-quality content may experience “a downstream effect,” according to Fuller, “where there’s no choice but to do the best with the tools you know how to use.” 

Fuller believes smaller businesses can benefit from working with a specific technology and/or partner that provides good templates. “If they can get a bunch of templates that are applicable to them, that are easy to manipulate, that's going to be the best thing they can do.”

Eighty-two percent of respondents reported using templates. But are they using them effectively?

The point of template usage, according to Fuller, is that no one has to be a professional designer in order to create content that connects with consumers. “That’s the magic of templates if you pull it off,” Fuller said.

Template platforms, like Lucidpress, remove much of the human error associated with content creation by locking or partially locking down “very granular components” like the company logo or colors while allowing one to adjust text or images instead. 

Fuller thinks larger organizations, which have the money to hire graphic designers and the expertise to create templates, need to invest in an organized system “that allows them to get those templates out and meet people where they work.”

“The demand tends to outstrip what your expert people can do,” added Fuller. All types of companies “can really benefit from a systematic way of scaling design throughout their organizations.”

Why does personalized content matter? Fuller attributes successful personalized content to the nuts and bolts of marketing: “translating the truth of you in the language of your audience.” 

“It’s just relevance,” said Fuller. "You see it, you look at it –– 'Oh, this is meant for me. They know who I am. They know my situation'."

Remember in 2013 when Nike lost Steph Curry as a client to Under Armor because they showed a repurposed slide with Kevin Durant’s name on it during the pitch meeting? According to Fuller, this is a perfect example of non-personalized content that could cost a company millions.

 “If I see these signals that tell me 'you don't really know me, or this isn't really for me...you're swimming against some pretty strong currents,” added Fuller.

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