If marketers hope to take complete charge of the customer experience, they must start out with one goal in mind: make a meaningful difference in the lives of customers. By knowing what truly matters to customers, they can lead the way in designing a signature experience that will create true brand loyalists.
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Customer experience has become a top investment priority for CEOs. They finally realize that CX leaders generate faster and more sustainable growth by delivering a superior experience that leads to stronger customer relationships. Where most companies struggle, however, is turning their CX ambitions into a coherent and effective strategy across the organization. It requires a planning framework that connects segment-specific customer expectations and needs with the design of a unique brand experience anchored in a differentiated value proposition. The customer experience is managed over time through a set of evergreen programs that are designed to create continuous value as the relationship matures. [Click image to enlarge].
With people now spending a couple of hours per day on social media it is vital for brands to have a visible presence on the various platforms where they can engage in direct conversation with customers. Yet for many companies social media remains a sideshow to their core marketing programs. They have not quite figured out how to harness the conversational power of social media to manage relationships with customers. Nor have they fully integrated the use of social intelligence to drive marketing strategy. To get the most out of their investment – which typically ranges from 10-20% of the marketing budget – marketers need to develop a more systematic approach to social media strategy and planning. [Click on image to enlarge]
A common challenge for all marketers is to prove the value of their contribution to the business. The thin evidence they usually serve up in defense of their spending is invariably greeted with skepticism by the CFO whose job it is to make sure the money is being spent wisely. To secure greater buy-in, marketers must prove they are making a real difference in achieving the business results that senior management actually cares about. They need to be able to show clear cause and effect in the form of an integrated performance measurement framework that incorporates both attitudinal drivers (the emotional catalysts that explain buyer behaviour) and the marketing performance metrics that directly ladder up to corporate measures of success. (click image to enlarge)
Building a distinctive brand today has become exceedingly complex. It is hard to win the attention of the marketplace – hard to stand out in a sea of sameness – hard to rise above the clutter – hard to win the loyalty of fickle buyers. And the dizzying array of communication options makes media planning an exercise in guesswork. To succeed brand managers must set out to capture the imagination of potential buyers and follow a rigorous stepwise process to achieve their goals.
As the legendary marketing academic Theodore Levitt once said, “If you’re not thinking segments, you’re not thinking”. Business success hinges on identifying and responding to customer needs. So segment strategy needs to be the starting point of the marketing planning process. The goal is to invest in the segments that offer the greatest opportunity for profitable growth and long-term relationship building.
There has been in recent years a Cambrian explosion of technologies to automate and enhance just about every facet of the marketing process. Today a typical marketing stack is made up of many 3rd party SaaS apps and tools, often loosely integrated. Because different functional areas of marketing have their own preferred tools, a marketing automation system can start to look like a bloated “frankenstack”. The many moving parts must be tightly welded together so that they work in unison to deliver a better customer experience.
In order to deliver a more unified customer experience, marketing must adopt a new customer-first planning model which connects brand building strategy and goals with the design and management of programs that govern the customer relationship. Marketing investments should be based on increasing customer value and retention, aligned with the corporate growth objectives and revenue goals of the business.
Most marketing departments still function like a message assembly line, manufacturing branded content and pushing it out through various distribution channels in the hope of being noticed. That model is a vestige of another era when all that mattered was winning audience attention. A new, more holistic model is required, focused on improving the quality of the customer experience, using data to drive strategy, experience design and interaction planning.
For most marketers the goal of delivering a unified customer experience remains a utopian vision, stymied by internal siloes, fragmented systems and the sheer complexity of orchestrating cross-channel interactions in real-time. For marketers to turn that ambition into reality, they need to take the lead role in designing a seamless end-to-end experience aligned with the customer lifecycle. By drawing a precise picture of that ideal experience, and creating a transformation roadmap to achieve it, marketers can finally close the gap between what customers want and their actual experience.
Designing more meaningful experiences for customers depends on segmenting them into unique groups based on both their past behaviour and their prevailing attitudes and beliefs. Defining those segments requires the integration of behavioural profiling and attitudinal research, leading to the creation of more vivid personas that can drive program design.
To connect with people today a brand must stand for something more than the functional role it plays — it must reach them on an emotional level. A brand identity model is required to come up with a single unifying idea that shows how the brand can make a real difference in people’s lives.
Customer Lifecycle Management involves the structuring of marketing programs around the different stages of the customer lifecycle, from the initial buying journey to continuous engagement as the relationship matures over time. As knowledge about customers increases through successive interactions, marketers can improve the quality of their experience through individualized treatment of their needs.
Marketing’s contribution to the health of a business is hard to prove and therefore constantly subject to challenge. Yet a strong foundation for measurement is crucial if the right marketing investments are to be made. A Unified Performance Measurement system is required which presents a more holistic picture, showing how every key marketing measure ladders up to the corporate definition of success.
Digital advertising now accounts for over half of all advertising in Canada and is growing at an annual rate of 25%. Over 80% of that expenditure is driven by programmatic advertising – the automated buying and selling of online ads – which requires a complex ecosystem (or “ad-tech stack”) of interconnected platforms, tools and services. This AdTech Ecosystem matches available ad inventory from publishers with bids from online media buyers, auctioning the ad space in real-time, all in the blink of an eye.
To earn the right to be a trusted brand, marketers need to adopt a new customer-first planning model, designed to support the needs of customers at every stage of the relationship lifecycle. The goal: create a seamless, more unified experience, which makes it easy for customers to interact with the brand, anytime, anyplace.
A critical success factor in delivering a great customer experience is the ability to offer quality content to customers. But producing relevant, timely and useful content consistently over time is a challenge for most companies. Marketers are simply not accustomed to thinking like publishers. A content publishing model is required, linking the brand value proposition to the creation, distribution and promotion of content.
Companies now realize that a great customer experience is the biggest driver of competitive advantage. But delivering a winning experience across multiple touchpoints is a complex undertaking. It demands new thinking, new systems, new capabilities, new processes – most of all, the strategic embrace of Customer First Thinking where serving the needs of customers is not just a corporate sentiment, but a way of doing business. Because what matters to customers is not the promises a brand makes – it is the promises a brand keeps.
If marketers hope to take complete charge of the customer experience, they must start out with one goal in mind: make a meaningful difference in the lives of customers. By knowing what truly matters to customers, they can lead the way in designing a signature experience that will create true brand loyalists.
Social media is on the cusp of a new era as people retreat behind closed doors to join private groups where they can safely interact with their trusted circle of family and friends. Marketers will have to reset their social strategies and intensify their efforts to form communities of interest amongst brand enthusiasts.
Marketing is in crisis. No longer respected by corporate chieftains as a strategic function, it has been demoted to simply making ads. The only way for marketing to stage a comeback is to become a difference maker once again.
Proving the value of marketing means showing that the investment is paying off in faster business growth. But that is only possible if marketing adopts a more unified approach to measurement.
Coming out of this pandemic the time has come for every company to take stock of the role it plays in the world and define its true social purpose. But that job cannot be left to marketing alone – it demands a top down commitment to a purpose-led vision and adoption of a new governance model that treats all stakeholders fairly
The pandemic has triggered many unexpected shifts in consumer behaviour that are here to stay. Now is the time for marketers to look past this crisis and get ahead of change instead of continuously chasing it.
Marketers have more customer data to work with than ever before – so why are they still struggling to convert numbers into meaningful insight? Getting answers that lead to breakthrough strategy starts with knowing the right questions to ask.
Mastering the practice of personalization can seem overwhelming for marketers, leaving them to wonder whether the cost and effort is worth the trouble. But giving up on the dream of one-to-one marketing would be a shame
Content marketing may be nearing a saturation point. Most brand content is invisible, lost in the clutter. To have any chance of being noticed, marketers have to find a way to make the brand story impossible to ignore
The rapid growth of direct-to-consumer brands may seem like a replay of the dot-com bubble in the Web 1.0 era. But what makes this new generation of DTC brands different is a genuine love for their customers.
In an age of massive disruption, every business is under pressure to innovate. Marketers are best positioned to lead the way – but how can they balance truly breakthrough thinking with the need to deliver results today?
Relationship marketing has taken 30 years to mature into a mainstream discipline. Today its principles and practices form the bedrock of a new marketing model based on putting customer needs first.
Marketing has reached a turning point: either it abandons the brand building model first invented nearly a century ago, or almost certainly fall victim to the forces of disruption. While no one knows what a next generation planning model looks like, everyone agrees it will take a big shift in thinking to get right.
The growing number of channels and devices has made it hard for companies to deliver a unified customer experience across touchpoints. Journey mapping gives companies a fighting chance to tame the complexity and catch up to the rising expectations of customers.
Marketing personas bring the defining characteristics of customers to life, helping to build universal consensus around their needs. For brands seeking to deliver a better customer experience, it is a powerful tool to foster greater insight and empathy.
Public trust in business as a force for good in society is at an all-time low. To convince people otherwise, consumer brands must prove they are committed to making the world a better place.
Now that customer experience trumps media advertising, brands need marketing partners who will help them think differently. To stay in the game, ad agencies will need to reinvent themselves.
Ever since reward programs first became popular over fifty years ago, marketers have been trapped into thinking that customer loyalty can be bought. But customers today are looking for more than just rewards – they want to be treated honestly and fairly.
For marketers to succeed at location-based marketing, they need to create “ownable experiences” where a brand can uniquely help people in the context of the moment. Anticipating what a customer intends to do will become just as important as knowing what they have done in the past.
Now that no one is paying much attention to advertising anymore, marketers have a reason to be concerned about their future. How can marketers adapt to a world where people hardly pay attention to advertising?
For a company to deliver an outstanding customer experience, it must first embrace the values of the people it serves.
Marketers have been slow to adapt to a post-campaign world where the old familiar rules of brand-building are obsolete. To connect with customers today marketers must not only manage channel complexity, they must make the brand more relevant and central to their lives.
There are many ways to segment customers based on value. But to know who is truly valuable, data analysis must be combined with market segmentation and loyalty research. This triangulated view will not only inspire creative thinking – it can even be used to predict future behaviour.
Businesses everywhere are under pressure to give up the ‘make and sell’ model, fearful of digital disruption. But while they concede the importance of improving the customer experience, the path to transformation can seem like an impossible journey: can businesses ever hope to keep pace with their customers?
Half a century ago IBM revolutionized the computing business by separating programs from hardware. Today a comparable revolution is underway: the shift to browser-based applications in the cloud. But that poses a dilemma for marketers: how do they combine multiple standalone applications to form a unified marketing ecosystem?
In this age of uninhibited self-expression, when almost everyone has something to say or share, marketing must modernize its communication model to have any chance of joining the conversation.
Robert Rose is one of the early pioneers and evangelists of content marketing and the author of “Content Marketing Strategy”. When you stop to consider the numbers, it must be very hard these days for any content creator or producer not to be completely cowed by the odds of building a meaningful audience. Estimates vary […]
Koen Pauwels is one of the foremost marketing scientists in the world and the author of “It’s Not the Size of the Data, It’s How you Use It”. If you can make one broad generalization about marketers it is that they probably hated math and science in high school. Even today, with the business […]
Brent Chaters leads the Marketing Transformation practice at Accenture and is a noted expert and popular speaker on search marketing”. Any way you look at it, these are troubling times if you’re in marketing. You’ve got AI coming full speed at you, maybe about to take away your job. No one understands what you […]
David Allison is the founder of the marketing research agency Valuegraphics and the author of “Death of Demographics”.. The legendary Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt once wrote that, “If you’re not thinking segments, you’re not thinking”. He added, “To think segments means to think beyond what’s obviously out there to see.” Levitt felt that […]
Howard Tiersky is a leading authority on digital transformation and the author of the best-selling book “Winning Digital Customers”. There are many legacy companies today sleep walking toward their grave. They’re about to be engulfed by a fast approaching wave of momentous change which they are totally unprepared to face. It’s no longer a question […]
Peter Fader is a leading authority on customer analytics and the author of the best-selling book “Customer Centricity”. Just about every CMO will tell you their top priority is growing topline revenue. Where they might differ is how they go about achieving that growth. There are two prevailing schools of thought. The first is that […]
Alison Simpson is the new leader of the Canadian Marketing Association and an award-winning marketer with experience in all facets of the profession. Marketers have plenty to worry about these days. Their budgets are under closer scrutiny than ever. They are being asked to do more with less, just as the discipline grows more complex […]
Greg Brown is responsible for digital sales experiences for BMO North America supporting the Personal, Business Banking and Wealth businesses. These days few people ever visit their local bank branch anymore. Certainly not to do their everyday banking. They prefer to do it online from the comfort of their home, or using their bank’s […]
Ulli Appelbaum is a world-renowned expert on brand positioning and the author of “The Brand Positioning Workbook”. Whiter teeth – or fewer cavities? Longer lasting – or more reliable? Everyday low prices – or quality and selection? Tastes great – or healthier for you? Driving performance – or comfort and luxury? All are examples […]
Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized author, speaker, futurist, and marketing consultant whose latest book is “Belonging to the Brand”. “Markets are conversations”. That was the opening line in the classic marketing book “The Cluetrain Manifesto” published in the year 2000. The authors urged marketers to give up mass messaging and speak with a […]
Matthew Seagrim played the lead role in revamping the Scene loyalty program, now called Scene+. For thirty years the AIR MILES Reward Program has ruled the skies in Canada. Its familiar blue membership card can be found in the wallets of roughly 10 million Canadians. But in recent years AIR MILES has lost altitude. […]
Scott Goodson is the Founder and CEO of Stawberry Frog and the co-author of the book “Activating Brand Purpose”. Practically every corporate boss these days has it on their to-do list – coming up with a business purpose beyond making money. Most of the time they feel it’s a bit too touchy-feely an assignment […]
Jan Kestle heads up Canada’s largest marketing analytics company and is a longtime leader in the field of geodemographic segmentation. As a nation, we often describe ourselves in terms of what makes us different. English versus French. East versus West. Affluent versus poor. Urban versus rural. Elites versus working class. Progressives versus conservatives. But those […]
Colin Shaw is one of the world’s foremost experts on customer experience and the author of “The Intuitive Customer”. You hear it practically everywhere these days – the mantra, We Put Customers First. A claim every business now believes it needs to emphatically declare. It shows up in corporate mission statements. On wall posters. In […]
Professor Kumar is one of the world’s leading marketing scholars and the author of “Intelligent Marketing”. In 1960 the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing published a landmark article by a Pillsbury executive named Robert Keith titled “The Marketing Revolution”. In a succinct 4-pages Keith chronicled the evolution of marketing at Pillsbury from the founding […]
Neil Bendle heads up the Marketing Accountability Standards Board and is the co-author of “Marketing Metrics”. They are two solitudes – operating in isolated siloes, regularly clashing with one another, insistent on their point of view. So why do finance and marketing act like they are on opposing teams? Why the rancour? The lack of […]
Chad White is the Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting and the author of “Email Marketing Rules”. It remains the Rodney Dangerfield of marketing channels. Taken for granted as a low-cost tool. Often underfunded. Given minimal resources. And certainly, treated with little respect, especially relative to other, more glamorous channels, like TV advertising, or […]
Fred Reichheld is a Bain & Company Senior Advisor and the Creator of the Net Promoter System. It’s been touted as the “one number a business needs to grow”. A number based on asking just one survey question – the so-called “Ultimate Question”: “How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or […]
Martin Kihn is Salesforce’s SVP Strategy for Marketing Cloud and the co-author of “Customer Data Platforms”. There’s a tug of war going on in the marketing world these days between two opposing schools of thought. On one side are the creatively minded brand marketers who remain convinced that the only sure way to achieve long-lasting […]
David Raab is the Founder of the CDP Institute, and a widely known expert and consultant on marketing technology and analytics. A single source of the truth – a 360-degree view of the customer – a “unified profile” – the “golden record”. Call it what you will, it remains a utopian vision for most organizations, […]
Battered by the pandemic, and facing even more disruption ahead, the retail industry is in crisis. With even more stores expected to close in the coming years due to declining foot traffic and the flight to ecommerce, retailers will need to offer shoppers a more distinctive experience if they hope to survive. A new retail model is needed, argues retail futurist Doug Stephens, which will pull shoppers away from their screens and entice them to shop in person.
Marketing technology is now essential to business success. Yet marketers continue to struggle with the complexity of their bloated marketing automation solutions, citing lack of application integration amongst their toughest challenges. The answer, according to HubSpot’s marketing technology expert Scott Brinker, is to develop more open and compatible platform ecosystems that make it easy for marketers to add on any application they want.
David Kincaid is the Founder and Managing Partner of Level5 Strategy, a brand consultancy, and the author of “The Brand-Driven CEO”. As the world awakens from this pandemic-induced slumber after what seems an eternity, brands will be facing a very different looking marketplace. A fatigued consumer population, whose buying habits have been warped by a […]
The year of the pandemic may have been the tipping point for the reimagining of retail. Many retailers, slow to adapt to omnichannel commerce, were pushed to the brink of insolvency. In Canada, one retailer has stood out above all others in shifting to a customer-first model, the century-old Canadian Tire. A big part of its recent success is due to its 10-million member Triangle Rewards program, launched three years ago under the stewardship of Senior VP Shawn Stewart who sees it as a vehicle for deepening the retailer’s relationship with customers.
Under pressure to act fast during the pandemic, businesses sped up their digital transformation plans, compressing their timetables from years into months. Now they face the next phase of evolution, what digital prophet Brian Solis calls the “novel economy”. For businesses to adapt and thrive, says Solis, they must take a more profound and humanistic approach to transformation.
Slow to awaken to market disruption and too reliant on ad spending, the global agency holding companies have seen their valuations plummet in recent years. To reverse their fortunes, they need to transform their service model. MDC is leading the way, aided by an infusion of capital from the new CEO Mark Penn, who is set to turn his collection of “partner agencies” into a “modern marketing company of choice”.
Marketing has always been on the front lines of change. Each seismic shift has brought a new set of challenges. But now, in this new world of “infinite media”, marketing is facing its greatest challenge ever. The only response, Mathew Sweezey believes, is for marketing to pivot from harnessing media to creating experiences that help customers in the context of the moment.
The world is awash in mediocre content, mainly because most brands struggle to find something meaningful to say. Yet in times of crisis, when people are feeling anxious and concerned, there is never a better time to speak up. The key is the ability to show empathy, Ann Handley argues. She urges brands to “do less” and “obsess” about producing higher quality content that matters.
Most loyalty programs today do little to make people feel more loyal to the brand. They are mainly promotional tools designed to drive repeat sales by giving away margin in the form of redeemable currency or discounts. Which is why it may be time to reimagine loyalty programs, according to Bryan Pearson, transforming them into dynamic platforms that are a more integral part of the customer experience.
Marketing as a discipline is going through an identity crisis due to the radical shift in the buying behaviour of people. The answer, for some companies, is to ditch the classical marketing function in favour of a broader mandate that makes the customer experience more of a corporate priority. But just fixing what’s wrong is not enough, according to Jay Baer. Companies must also offer customers an experience so memorable and unexpected, they’ll be keen to talk about it with everyone they know.
Today the world is awash in content as brands engage in a dizzying dogfight for attention. Marketers may have reached a saturation point, where no matter how good the content may be, the chances of it being noticed are remote. Yet content marketing budgets keep growing which means the content glut will only get worse. The answer, according to Randy Frisch, is to map the content experience to each stage of the customer lifecycle.
A new wave of disruptive technology is coming – yet most companies are still getting used to the idea of a digital-first world. According to Mitch Joel, decoding the future is crucial if companies hope to survive the coming storm. There is only one sensible response: to “reboot” their businesses, as fast as possible.
Marketing’s new mandate, according to Professor Niraj Dawar, should be to find out why customers buy from their company, not the competition, and then double down on that advantage. Marketing needs to do much more than find new buyers, he argues – it has to take charge of the entire customer relationship.
Design thinking has taken on a central role in freeing the corporate imagination. It leads to Big Ideas about innovative products, services and business models. But what’s missing is a broader view of the end-to-end customer experience. Which is why Experience Thinking, a new evolving field, fills a critical gap in the innovation process. In this interview van Gelderen explains his framework for reimagining the customer experience and his unique approach to the research and design process.
The ad-based web is at an inflection point, in urgent need of reform. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Acuity Ads, one of the fastest growing adtech companies in the business, Seraj Bharwani recognizes the challenges facing the industry. In this wide-ranging conversation, he shares his perspective on the past and future of digital advertising, as well as his ideas for industry reform.
The concept of relationship marketing is facing an “identity crisis” according to Jagdish Sheth, one of the world’s leading marketing academics. Scolding marketers for treating customers like “ID numbers”, he proposes a new “purpose-driven” form of relationship marketing where customers have a more transcendent, values-based connection with brands. He calls it “share of heart”. Professor Sheth explains his reasoning in this wide-ranging and thought-provoking interview.
In 1993, AT&T launched a marketing campaign called “You Will”. In a series of memorable TV ads, it depicted future applications of technology that turned out to be eerily accurate. Each commercial showcased a different product innovation AT&T had been working on. “Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your Computer?”, one commercial asks. Another begins by wondering, “Have you ever gotten a phone call on your wrist?”. Each commercial ended with the signoff: “You will”.
Businesses are “drowning in data but starving for insight”, as the saying goes, and that problem is about to get worse. As society becomes increasingly connected, marketers are facing a rising tide of digital interactions. Somewhere inside that massive pool of data are the answers to questions marketers haven’t even thought to ask – yet are essential to creating a better customer experience.
Customer analytics has come a long way since banks first started building Customer Information Files in the 1990s. “CIFs”, as they were called, were the primitive forerunner to what we now call “data lakes”. Just getting access to data was the main barrier back then – closely rivalled by the suspect quality of the contact data. Today the biggest analytical challenge for banks isn’t the limitations of technology: it’s embedding data-driven decision-making into the operational DNA of the bank.
He is universally acknowledged as the “Father of Modern Marketing”. His classic textbook “Marketing Management” is now in its 15th edition. He has been called the “most influential marketer” of all time. Wold-famous marketing academic Philip Kotler shares his perspective on the future of marketing and “why it will be markedly different”.