Opinion

Five ways to build and maximise the customer experience

In this guest post, Stuart Leo looks at five ways brands can accelerate the customer purchase experience.

I’m on a journey to see marketing and communications reinvented through technology, so customers have the best possible experience finding, buying and enjoying whatever it is they need.

The spirit of this purpose is connectivity – the capacity to connect people through multiple platforms, systems and applications.

stuart leo - ceo blirt.co

I’ve deep-dived into five ways you can understand, build and maximize the customer experience for your clients now:

Identify pain points and barriers

Conduct thorough and deep consumer research. If customers are not moving on to the next step of the buying process, why not? Look at your CRM and web data to determine where people are dropping off in the buying process and why.

Your content should be focused on the buyer’s pain points, not just ads promoting your product or brand. They’re looking for testimonials, educational materials, how tos and reviews. Deliver these in an engaging manner and your content will draw the buyer through the customer journey.

The Dollar Shave Club is one of the stand out examples in the industry of great content driving a buyer’s journey. Its first video in 2012 created more than 12,000 customers.

Solving customer pain points is best done by bringing together inspirational branded moments at each touchpoint of a buyer’s journey.

Track the Data Journey

The best marketing decisions are made from live customer behavior, data and insights; martech convergence. The ideal way to do this is with a solid marketing technology stack which includes a CRM and marketing automation platforms at its foundation.

Build your martech stack from the customer up to create the best picture possible of your customers.

Unlock the best prospects by scoring, grading and supporting movement throughout the entire customer journey with automation and intelligent data-driven actions from customer behaviour.

It’s critically important to understand the macro sales funnel and the micro journeys within it.

Marketing automation is more than just an email, it’s about harmonising all the digital actions that help you drive and accelerate purchasing behaviour.

Think of big brands like Amazon, Apple, Google and others where you’ve been gradually nurtured or led to a position to buy because the digital communications helped educate you through the buying decision. Marketing Automation is both the software and science of that process.content is king

Design content to accelerate buying experience

Most people create content to create leads. Let me say now, that this is not about lead generation – lead generation is just one small part of the process.

Designing content is about the customer experience and having the right content to support the buying experience across the full journey. It’s about solving the pain points, helping customers buy and aiding their advocacy.

Use content to aid awareness, education, conversion and advocacy.

Write and produce content which supports paid and earned media but also goes straight to existing customers through blogs or owned content portals.

Personalise messages, ads and the buying process

Advertising and communications have fundamentally changed. Turn your fragmented advertising, content and media into an integrated, always on, customer satisfying communications program that drives the customer journey.

Use customer data to personalise your messages across the web, email, social media and customer service.  Build a wonderful customer experience from first touch to forever.

In the old days we (marketers) used to run ‘campaigns’.  We would choose the date of the campaign launch and when it would end.  We would assume that if people were going to buy, they would do it in our time frame, when our campaign was running.word cloud - advertising marketing media

The reality is ‘campaigns’ need to start and end when the buyer is choosing to start and end them.  If your campaign needs to run for three weeks and involves email, push notifications, social media, retargeting and some customer service calls the program to run this can start now, in 15 minutes or in 24 hours.

Your martech systems need to be capable of triggering that campaign on the customer’s terms, when the customer needs the information whilst also personalizing the content and engagements.

That’s not hard is it?  Well, welcome to the experience economy.  That’s what small business to big business need to be able to do in the always-on, customer centric world of the 21st century.

Create opportunities for advocacy

Most businesses design only up to the point of sale. What your customers want is a wonderful experience to be had after the product is purchased too.

And you want this to be shouted from the rooftops by your customer! Start with the end in mind, such as a great recommendation of your product. After all, if you are only designing up to the point of sale, the only two people who will ever know about the sale is you and your customer.

This is why the advertising, marketing and tech industry is under rapid disruption. It’s not about advertising, it’s not about being the most creative, it is about being the most supportive of the customer experience.Accountant checking numbers on a document

Creating transformative experiences is the essence of being a great marketer in today’s world.  That’s why some of the biggest marketing companies in the world are not marketing groups, they’re recovering accountants. And, that’s why some of the best partners to marketers today are not media companies but technology groups.

Delivering a great customer experience is more than advertising, more than technology, more than customer service and more than media.  It really is actually doing more for our clients.  And, that’s not such a bad thing.

Stuart Leo is the founder and managing director of Blirt.co

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