Content is King

"Content is King": Contrary to many assumptions, this statement by Microsoft founder Bill Gates does not originate from recent years, when the phrase seems to be ubiquitous and worn out in online marketing. This basic thesis is the title of an essay and dates back to 1996, the beginning of the digital age. Bill Gates predicted the evolution of media and marketing more than 20 years ago and recognized the importance of relevant content.Content marketing is considered one of the most important forms of advertising today. However, good content should not be confused with the dissemination of pure product information or offers from a company. Content becomes valuable when it is relevant to the target audience and provides additional knowledge, helpful information, or entertainment. Content becomes even better when it has additional personal relevance for the recipient. Buzzwords like customer journey analysis, personalization, big data and predictive targeting are on the agenda of all marketing departments in 2018 and underline the importance of personalized content.People consider anything that is intuitively associated with danger from a developmental perspective to be important and therefore relevant. This does not necessarily have to be recognizable as such: topics about accidents or fire generate sales for insurance companies at best. Other companies rely on the "problematic" motif: "10 off-the-beaten-track London insider tips" or "Incredible weekend getaways for under €200". Relevance is also generated by fear of missing out, bargain hunting, or anything that happens around us or involves people we know.At the moment, companies are focusing on social media, search and email marketing channels, with an emphasis on mobile forms of advertising, because content relevance is also about the right time, which for many people is synonymous with "on the go". When people are waiting for something, be it a train, an appointment or a friend, their eyes tend to wander to their smartphones, often out of boredom.

Building on Data and Audience Segmentation

Personalized content does not mean delivering completely customized content to every potential recipient. The technical and editorial effort would be enormous. However, it does require the targeted segmentation of customers with similar demographics, interests, or lifestyles into specific segments. The basis for this data set can be registration emails, Website histories, analytics systems, purchase and support information, customer inquiries and complaints, and even the customer loyalty program. For greater efficiency, multiple data sources are used and combined for personalization.

Personal Relevance on Social Media Platforms

Facebook recognized the potential of recommendations early on: People trust the advice of their friends. With every ad, Facebook lists the friends who also like an advertiser, thus attracting the attention of a potential customer. Hotel reviews are the pinnacle of this type of recommendation marketing: most vacationers would be unlikely to make a new booking without checking various hotel review sites.Influencer marketing is also part of this type of relevance: however, some big YouTube stars lose credibility due to clear advertising messages and bought recommendations, so that niche influencers with fewer followers appear more credible.Sorting news chronologically doesn't work on a platform as large as Facebook, which has to categorize millions of posts every day. Facebook's relevancy, or what posts appear in the news feed, is determined by algorithms that rank everything your friends are talking about higher than purely business posts. This can be remedied with an increased advertising budget, but only if user signals predict interest in an ad.No company knows its customers better than Facebook and can deliver so much customizable content at the same time. Lookalike audiences are statistically twin audiences of a certain demographic that are interested in the same companies or products.

Personal Relevance in Search Engine Marketing

Search engines such as Google aim to provide users with search results sorted by relevance. While the PageRank algorithm (the quality of a web page is evaluated according to the number of backlinks pointing to it) served as the basis for the ranking in the beginning, more sophisticated methods are used today. For example, searches performed at the same time may not yield the same result, as Google also takes into account factors such as location and any other information collected from the user.

Personal Relevance in Email Marketing

The simplest form of personalization in email is to address the recipient personally, and this is standard practice. However, this alone is no longer enough to stand out from the daily flood of emails. Relevant content, for the defined target group, paired with click-attracting subject lines, increases open rates. Subject lines are often A/B tested. In addition, the reputation of a company or brand is often underestimated in email marketing. There is a strong correlation between reputation and relevance. More and more email marketers are now using senders such as "John from CompanyXY" or "Mary from CompanyA/B" because it means more reputation and relevance to the recipient.Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates concludes his essay by saying, "Those who succeed will advance the Internet as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products - a marketplace of content. To extend the validity of this quote for another 20 years, the word "content" probably needs to be changed to "personalized” content.