Why B2B Buyers Love Personalization

The desire for personalization among B2B buyers is growing louder. At a time when solution options seem endless, standing out is critical—and personalization is the answer to true differentiation.  

According to Gartner, 86% of B2B customers expect companies to be well-informed about their personal information during interactions. Personalized experiences have the power to make customers feel seen, appreciated, and understood, forging the trust necessary for growth in the B2B world. Personalization allows brands to tailor their content and messaging to align with individual buyer needs, establishing a strong connection that fuels loyalty and accelerates conversion. 

Moreover, the intricate nature of B2B buying decisions necessitates personalization. Most buying decisions involve an average of six stakeholders, each with distinct needs, concerns, and priorities. Through personalization, marketers can implement multi-stakeholder messaging, a tactic that’s vital in engaging larger buying committees and influencing conversions. 

So how can you amplify your personalization efforts? In this blog post, we’ll delve into why personalization is key to more impactful B2B marketing strategies and how to ensure you’re delivering more personalized buyer experiences.  

Why Personalization Matters More Than Ever 

Buyers today spend more time conducting independent solution research than ever before. With research indicating that only 5% of the buyer’s journey is spent with a salesperson, marketers need to engage key decision-makers through personalized content and messaging that speaks to their concerns to make a lasting impression. And with buying cycles also taking longer to complete, it’s important to map that content to where the customer is in the buyer’s journey through a full-funnel approach to stay top-of-mind through the entire decision-making process.  

Changing buying committee member demographics are also driving the demand for increased personalization. Millennial buyers aged 25-44 are increasingly shifting into decision-making roles and are expected to make up three-fourths of business buying teams in 2024. These buyers are digitally motivated and self-guided in their solution research process. Having grown up surrounded by recent technological advancements, they have preconceived notions and expectations of their buying experience. They know that they’re signaling their interests and identity through their content consumption and online behaviors and that providers can use these insights to deliver more relevant interactions. Millennial buyers don’t just want personalization—they expect it.  

How to Create More Personalized Customer Experiences 

The biggest misconception about personalization is that you can check the box on it just by adding the target buyer’s name. The reality is that personalized experience goes deeper than that. You need to understand the buying committee personas and map relevant content and messaging to each stage of the buyer’s journey to truly own the customer experience. Here’s a closer look at how to do just that.  

Lean on Data 

Data is key to unlocking personalization and building in-depth experiences by tailoring content to funnel stages. Not only does it assist with identifying and prioritizing the key buyer personas within buying committees to influence decision-making, but it provides insights that allow you to align your content with the trending topics your target customers are researching.  

Due to the growing complexity of most B2B buying processes, you need access to multiple sources of data for the clearest picture of who to engage and what content will resonate with them the most. Each buying committee member has their specific concerns and wants to find a viable solution to solve them. Data-driven insights around these concerns allow you to create content and messaging that educates them about your solution, motivates them through the funnel, and persuades them that you are the ideal solution to partner with to reach their goals.  

Engage Buyers Based on Where They Are in the Buyer’s Journey 

Personalization isn’t just about the content you use—it’s also how you engage them. Not all buying committee members progress through the buyer’s journey at the same rate. One person might be in the consideration stage while everyone else is still in the awareness stage. Mapping content to where individuals are in the buyer’s journey is the most effective way to present them with the content and messaging needed to get them to a unified decision faster. Here’s how that looks: 

The suggested assets and content types above help you segment and map out your content to each stage. There‘s no magic number for content types—focus instead on what type of content delivers that extra level of personalization.  

Review Campaign Performance and Optimize Your Approach as Needed 

Data-driven personalization strategies must be constantly measured, tested, and optimized for the best results. Given the resource intensity of your multi-channel account-based marketing efforts, you can’t afford to run a campaign only to review and measure the results at the end. Purchase decisions are long and complex; triaging what went wrong at the end means losing out on time, investment, and most likely a sale. You need an agile approach that allows for continuous adjustments as the market shifts.  

Paying attention to engagement and pipeline metrics uncovers important campaign optimization opportunities. These insights allow you to take a data-driven approach to optimization that generates more revenue from target accounts, improves the ROI of your marketing efforts, and increases win rates through more relevant and personalized marketing content for your target accounts.

Personalization and AI: Scaling Impact at the Right Time 

Personalization is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s what today’s buyers expect. But meeting that expectation at scale? That’s still a major ABM challenge. According to Gartner, 63% of digital marketing leaders say they’re struggling with personalization, even as pressure grows to deliver more relevant, tailored experiences across every touchpoint. Meanwhile, only 17% are using AI solutions and machine learning across their marketing efforts, revealing a significant gap (and a huge opportunity). 

Forward-thinking B2B marketers are already closing that gap. A survey by Madison Logic and The Harris Poll found that 67% are increasing their investments in AI tools to power lead generation, content creation, and real-time analytics. By leveraging machine learning for B2B targeting, marketers can analyze buying group behavior in real time—identifying patterns, intent signals, and content preferences that would normally require hours of manual effort. These AI ABM strategy insights can then be activated to drive more effective account engagement at every stage of the funnel. 

For example, you can train your AI agents to identify key decision-makers in a target account are researching specific topics (like cloud migration or ERP solution providers) across third-party sites. That data can then be used to trigger dynamic content blocks on your website, tailor predictive CTAs, fuel real-time chat interactions, or personalize outbound messaging and inform sales on accounts warming up to specific message.  

Tools like ML SmartReach™ are making this kind of AI-powered personalization scalable within account-based marketing programs. ML SmartReach streamlines the entire process by combining ML Insights, powered by Madison Logic’s market-leading intent data, with generative AI to craft account-personalized emails and call scripts. This bridges the gap between sales and marketing by aligning personalized content and automated outreach—resulting in more meaningful B2B engagement and, ultimately, more closed deals. 

Personalization Across Paid and Owned Media Channels

ABM success depends on delivering the right message at the right time, wherever your buyer is. To make that happen, your paid and owned channels need to work in sync, creating a more personalized buyer experience and multi-channel ABM experience across touchpoints. For example, if a buyer visits your website (owned media) and reads a case study on compliance in healthcare, they should then see a related whitepaper or message in your paid content syndication—reinforcing the same narrative, not introducing a new one. 

Paid Media Personalization Tips 

When it comes to personalizing paid media campaigns, it can be tricky to balance broad reach with tailored account-based personalization that resonates with different buyer personas and stages in the customer journey. The good news is that by using data-driven strategies, B2B marketers can create more relevant and effective paid campaigns that drive ABM engagement and conversions. 

Here are some tips on how to personalize your paid media efforts: 

• Leverage Intent Data: Use intent data to target prospects based on their buying stage, serving different creatives to top of funnel (TOFU) researchers versus bottom of funnel (BOFU) decision-makers. 

• Run Account-Based Advertisements: Run account-based ad campaigns that personalize messaging by company name, industry, or known pain points. 

• Create Dynamic Advertisements: Create dynamic ad variations by persona, using platforms like LinkedIn and programmatic advertising to customize copy by job role or title. 

• Leverage Retargeting: Use behavioral retargeting to follow up. For example, if someone downloads a white paper, show them a demo ad rather than a top-of-funnel blog. 

• A/B Test: Test headline personalization with dynamic tokens such as industry or location to increase click-through rates. 

Owned Media Personalization Tips 

Personalization on owned media channels is all about creating relevant, engaging experiences that speak directly to your prospects’ unique needs and interests. When your website, emails, and content hubs feel tailored, visitors are more likely to stay engaged and move forward in the buying journey. Achieving this level of personalization requires using firmographic data, behavior tracking, and smart lead segmentation to deliver the right ABM content at the right time. 

Here are some tips on how to personalize your owned media channels: 

• Customize Web Content: Use reverse-IP or CRM data to dynamically swap out hero images, headlines, or calls-to-action (CTAs) based on the visitor’s firmographic data, like company or industry. 

• Personalize Email Nurturing: Trigger email workflows based on specific actions like content downloads or webinar attendance, ensuring follow-up is timely and relevant. 

• Segment Content Hubs: Organize your content into hubs that allow users to self-select their journey. For example, offer a “Show me solutions for [eCommerce buyers]” option. 

• Leverage Past Interactions: Recommend content similar to what visitors have engaged with before, much like Netflix or Amazon do with personalized suggestions. 

• Keep It Consistent Across Touchpoints: Make sure the messaging and content prospects see in your emails align perfectly with what they encounter when they visit your website. 

B2B Personalization Example: Flexential Case Study

For many B2B organizations with a broad portfolio of solutions and a diverse audience, delivering the right message to the right account can be a major challenge—and Flexential was no exception. Erin Pak, Head of Demand Generation, had been using content syndication and display advertising, but struggled to see which messages were actually resonating. Without clear insight into account engagement, it was difficult to know where to focus. 

That shifted when Flexential started working with Madison Logic. With ML Insights, Erin’s team gained a clearer view of which accounts were actively in-market and how to prioritize outreach. Rather than relying on recycled lists, they were able to discover new, relevant contacts that aligned with their target accounts. By combining that intelligence with a multi-channel ABM strategy, they saw stronger engagement across the board—including a 22% increase in registrations, website traffic, and leads, and a 25% lift in conversations. 

Unlock the Power of B2B Personalization  

The potential to amplify engagement, strengthen customer bonds, and accelerate conversions has made personalization a cornerstone of successful B2B marketing. With the right data and ABM tools, delivering this kind of experience becomes far more achievable. By leveraging ML Insights, marketers gain a clearer understanding of what buying committee members care about—so they can deliver relevant content at the right moment and continuously optimize based on real-time signals. 

As the ABM platform built for personalization, Madison Logic enables marketers to track paid campaign engagement, surface surging intent topics, and refine performance through actionable measurement. And with integrations like Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe users can extend this intelligence into their owned media strategies—using MLI Topic Scores and intent data to personalize website content, email campaigns, and more. 

Ultimately, personalization is about showing your buyers that you’re paying attention, and that you’re ready to meet them where they are, with content and solutions that matter. It’s that level of thoughtful, data-driven engagement that builds trust and drives growth. Ready to explore how Madison Logic can help personalize your ABM programs? Request a demo today.