Personalize the Buyer's Journey with Smart Modules

Through HubSpot’s Smart Modules, you can customize your user experience and truly tailor it to their needs. No longer will they have to wade through information that is not relevant just because of the nature of how a company operates—you are able to provide them with meaningful content for when they need it most.

Marketing professionals nurture leads and prospects with quality content, but that isn’t always enough in today’s world. Understanding the basics of smart content helps ensure you are providing your most valuable content to each visitor, regardless of where they are in the buyer’s journey.

With HubSpot’s smart modules, you can create “dynamic” content geared toward different contacts that can be used in your emails, forms, web pages, landing pages, and templates based on the interests or past behavior of the user. This helps create an experience that’s customized for the user at that moment and can help turn them into customers.

What is Smart Content?

Smart content is the aspects of a website, ad, or email that change based on the interests or past behavior of the viewer. This allows you to create an experience that is customized specifically for the visitor or reader at that moment.

HubSpot smart modules take into account your visitors’ location, language, device type, referral source, and demographics. A great example of smart content is Amazon’s recommendation engine.

How Does Smart Content Work?

HubSpot uses cookies stored in a visitor’s browser to identify who is visiting your site. If there aren’t any cookies available, HubSpot will look at browser settings, such as preferred language, IP address, and device type. If the visitor meets any of the criteria for the smart rules, your smart content will appear; otherwise, the designated default content will appear.

There are 8 categories for smart rules:

• Ad source allows you to show content to viewers based on the ad they’ve clicked
• Country displays content to your viewer based on their country, which is determined by their IP address.
• Device type targets visitors accessing your site via mobile, tablet, or desktop.
• Referral source shows visitors smart content based on how they found your site.
• Preferred language allows you to personalize your content based on the language set within the visitor’s web browser.
• Contact list membership shows different content to visitors who are members of a specific HubSpot list.
• Lifecycle stage displays different content based on a visitor’s Lifecycle Stage property value.
• Query parameter shows content based on the query parameters in the visitor’s page URL.

As of now, HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise customers can create smart CTAs, forms, and rich text modules on landing pages, website pages, or email.

Stages in the Buyer’s Journey

Today’s marketing requires creating an experience that encourages trust at any and all stages of the buyer’s journey. It’s more than writing blog posts, it’s personalizing content.

There are three stages in the buyer’s journey:

• Awareness Stage - The prospect is aware of a problem or opportunity and is conducting research to more clearly understand, frame, and give a name to their problem or opportunity.
• Consideration Stage - The prospect has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity. They are committed to researching and understanding the various available approaches and methods to solving the defined problem or opportunity.
• Decision Stage - The prospect has decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach and is compiling a list of available vendors and products. They are making a shortlist and are ready to make a final purchase decision.

While smart content allows you to provide your visitors with new and increased content each time they return to your site, keep in mind that a healthy mixture of static, dynamic, and conversational content is best. Look at smart modules as a means to build upon your user experience rather than focusing solely on it.