Personalisation Is Not The Strategy

Relevance matters, but consensus moves B2B buying decisions

I learned this while working on ABM; the idea sounded simple.

• Find the right account.
• Understand who you’re talking to.
• Then customise the experience.

The CEO shouldn’t get the same message as the Marketing Head; the Marketing Head shouldn’t get the same message as IT, and the person visiting the website shouldn’t necessarily see the same experience as everyone else.

So we started connecting the dots.

• The message changed.
• The video changed.
• The website experience changed.
• The context changed.

And something interesting happened.

We started standing out, not because the content was louder, not because we produced more AI-generated content.

There was already plenty of that.

We stood out because the experience felt built for the person on the other side. But getting there wasn’t easy.

Personalisation sounds easy. It isn’t.

Anyone can add a person’s name to an email.

Anyone can write:

“Hi John, noticed you’re the VP of Marketing…”

That’s not personalisation, that’s mail merge with better manners. Real B2B personalisation starts with understanding:

• Who am I talking to?
• What are they trying to achieve?
• What problem are they dealing with?
• What value can I actually add?

And most importantly: Why should they care right now?

That’s where ABM gets interesting. Because you’re not just personalising a message. You’re trying to create a relevant experience across the buying journey. The message, video, website, ad, follow-up, sales conversation- that should connect everything.

But there’s another problem

The more you personalise, the easier it becomes to create fragmented stories.

Think about a typical B2B buying group.

• The CFO sees: Reduce costs.
• The Marketing Head sees: Generate better pipeline.
• The end user sees: Make my workflow easier.
• IT sees: Integrate without creating another mess.
• Procurement sees: Reduce risk.

Every message can be perfectly relevant.

And yet the buying group can still struggle to agree on one thing:

Why should we actually do this?

That’s the part personalisation often misses.

We get so focused on making the message relevant to the individual that we forget the decision is often made by a group.

Relevance gets attention; consensus moves decisions.

This changed how I think about personalisation.

I don’t think the answer is: One message for everyone.

But I also don’t think it’s: A completely different story for everyone.

The better model is: One business thesis. Multiple translations.

Let’s say the business thesis is: The current process is creating unnecessary cost and slowing growth.

Now personalise it.

• For the CFO: Show the financial impact.
• For the Marketing Head: Show how it affects pipeline and execution.
• For the end user: Show how it improves the workflow.
• For IT: Show how it integrates and what implementation involves.

Different conversations. Same underlying reason to care.

That’s the sweet spot.

This is where ABM gets misunderstood

ABM isn’t just:

“Let’s create a personalised email for 20 people.”

That’s account targeting.

Good ABM goes deeper.

• You understand the account.
• You identify the stakeholders.
• You understand what matters to each person.

Then you connect those individual concerns back to a shared business problem.

Think about the flow:

Account

↓

Business problem

↓

Central value proposition

↓

Stakeholder concern

↓

Personalized experience

↓

Shared buying case

That’s a much stronger model than simply creating five versions of the same campaign.

The website matters too

This is where we saw the difference in our own work.

When personalisation was limited to the message, it was easy for the experience to break.

Someone could receive a highly relevant message and then land on a generic website or watch a personalised video and then see completely generic follow-up content.

The story stops.

The experience becomes disconnected.

When we started reflecting the context across the experience, things became more interesting.

• The message connected with the video.
• The video connected with the website.
• The website reinforced the same problem.

Suddenly, personalisation wasn’t just a line in an email.

It became an experience.

And in a B2B world increasingly filled with AI-generated content, that distinction matters.

Because when everyone can produce more content, context becomes harder to fake.

But don’t personalise for the sake of it

Here’s where I’d challenge marketers.

Before building a personalised campaign, ask:

Who exactly are we talking to?

• Not just their job title.
• What are they responsible for?
• What are they trying to improve?
• What pressure are they under?
• What would make this conversation valuable to them?

And then ask one more question: What’s in it for them?

That’s important.

Because personalisation shouldn’t be a one-sided extraction exercise.

It shouldn’t be:

“I researched you, so now you should buy from me.”

That’s creepy.

Good personalisation creates a value exchange.

I understand your context → I bring something relevant → you get value from the conversation.

That’s the win-win.

The personalisation test I now use

Before launching an ABM campaign, I’d pressure-test it with five questions:

1. Do we know who we’re talking to?

Not just the company. The actual stakeholder.

2. Do we understand what they care about?

Their priorities, problems and responsibilities.

3. Does our message connect to their reality?

Not our product features. Their business situation.

4. Does the experience connect?

• Email.
• Ad.
• Video.
• Website.
• Sales conversation.

The story should feel consistent.

5. Does every stakeholder eventually arrive at the same business reason?

This is the big one.

If everyone gets a different story, you’ve personalised the campaign.

If everyone gets a different perspective on the same business problem, you’ve built something much more powerful.

The real job of personalisation

I’ve stopped thinking about personalisation as simply making marketing feel more human.

That’s part of it. But in B2B, there’s a bigger job.

Personalisation should help a buying group understand the same business problem from different perspectives.

• The CFO needs the financial case.
• The Marketing Head needs the growth case.
• The user needs the workflow case.
• IT needs the technical case.

But they shouldn’t walk away believing they’re evaluating four completely different solutions.

They should all understand: Why this change matters to the business.

That’s when personalisation starts doing real work.

Not personalisation for the sake of personalisation.

Not another AI-generated message with someone’s first name inserted.

Personalisation with intent, context. Personalisation that creates consensus.

Because the goal of B2B personalisation isn’t to make one person say:

“This was written for me.”

The real goal is to make the buying group say:

“This makes sense for us.”

Connect with me, Murugan A and let’s collaborate.