Marketing is more complicated than ever. You may own the brand, but customers call the shots, evaluating products and services on their own terms and expecting the consideration and purchase process to conform to their individual preferences.
The selling cycle is no longer a linear progression, but a fluid journey that requires different types of communication and content specifically designed for each decision stage and each channel. To drive revenue growth, companies need marketing strategies and tools that conform to this new reality.
What you risk by sticking with what you’ve always done
It feels like the whole world has changed (it has), and that an organisation’s entire marketing approach needs to do the same (it does). Consider these eye-opening statistics:
• “Since 2009, customers are valuing an ‘average’ experience less and have even less patience for variability in delivery.” McKinsey & Company
• “66% of global customers switched service providers due to poor customer experience last year.” Accenture
“Customers have never been less loyal to brands, doing business with whoever’s got the best offer when they’re ready to buy and switching to someone else next time. Providing an exceptional, memorable experience is paramount. 86% of consumers said they would be willing to pay more for a customer better experience.” 2011 Harris Interactive Customer Experience Impact Report
If you’re like most marketers, you aren’t sure where to start and may feel overwhelmed. Alas, sticking to the status quo is not an option—and deep down, you already know that. As Deloitte put it in one blog post, “CMOs now should actively plan and manage multi-channel experiences that require new technical and analytic capabilities to feed simultaneously to the channels their customer prefers to use.”
Marketers who fail to act will see their companies lose relevance, get dismissed or forgotten by prospective customers, and struggle to compete. They may also find themselves looking for new jobs.
Today’s challenge: Why the status quo just doesn’t cut it
Your website is just one tool. One-way communication is dead; multi-directional outreach is a must. This means engaging customers and prospects in an ongoing dialogue in which you continuously provide value and respond to customers’ and prospects’ needs as they arise.
It also means you have to understand where your website fits into your larger brand ecosystem, and devise an omni-channel strategy for coordinating both online and off-line efforts. According to Deloitte, more than 60% of customers who interact with brands do so through multiple channels. So, as a marketer, you need to:
• Be where your customers are, participate, and respond. This requires audience research to understand their behaviours and motivations, so your brand can be ready with just what they need, when they need it.
Provide customers with the ability to do whatever they do on a desktop on a mobile device—whether that’s making a purchase, signing into an account, or watching a video.
• Keep all communications consistent and on brand across shifting channels. Does the experience hang together and stay just as effective when users move from desktops to tablets? Does the same story continue when users talk to sales and to customer service? A communications plan that captures every channel where your brand should be present in a single view makes marketing efforts more efficient.
Customers never sleep. The 24/7 world demands real-time experiences. You have to stay vigilant, engaged, and one step ahead, exceeding expectations.
Your competition isn’t what you thought. You’re not just competing with other companies anymore; you’re competing with everything on the Internet that’s limiting your audience’s attention span. That includes cute cat videos and whatever other viral sensations are taking up the time you wish prospects were spending with your content.
The traditional sequential customer journey is a winding road. Out with the sales funnel, in with a complex daisy chain of circular interactions as customers conduct their own research, seek out word-of-mouth advice from peers and industry influencers, and bounce back and forth between lifecycle stages before making decisions.
Big data is only getting bigger. Marketers are under growing pressure to collect, understand, and use tonnes of data, and show measurable improvement and results. This is new territory for most marketers, who need to answer tough questions such as:
• How do we focus our efforts when the whole world is a virtual marketplace? Answer: The only way is to look at the numbers and see what people are (or aren’t) doing with your content.
• How do we assess our performance across so many touch points? Answer: According to McKinsey, “Measuring satisfaction on customer journeys is 30% more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual interaction.”
Time to take the plunge
The Internet has created a 24x7 “always on” society. Potential customers could be anywhere, and might make purchase decisions without encountering your marketing messages or visiting your website. These potential customers expect their experience with your brand to be responsive and authentic, and each of them expects to be treated as a VIP.
Marketers don’t have the luxury of watching and waiting. You need to act now.
By Grant Halloran, Global Vice President and General Manager Infor Marketing Management Group.
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