Key Takeaways :
- Understanding the concept of Customer Experience
- The ways through which customer experiences can be enhanced
- Examples of the approach defined for enhancing customer experience.
What is the definition of marketing?
Every marketing technique which has been put forward by Marketing gurus involves an end goal which is sales. The company measures the end goal in terms of profit margin and increase in revenue. Sales are like a win for business in exchange for customer satisfaction. Though, customer satisfaction is driven by its prime factor which is Customer Experience.
Marketing has evolved over the years. Technological advancement and new horizons opening for connecting brands and customers have made marketers run towards different marketing approaches.
There is no way to define marketing as it keeps changing and becoming broader. With new obstacles knocking on the door, marketers develop new and innovative ways to deal with them! Hence it is better to discuss the purpose of marketing rather than define it.
When the entire globe was facing a pandemic, i.e., Covid 19; reaching their target audience emerged as a new challenge for marketers which was solved by them adapting the digital approach.
The digital approach of marketing comprises all the activities where communication is performed via digital mediums. Though, each activity directly or indirectly focuses on building a positive customer experience.
Developing Customer Experience is the key driver of growth in 2021 and it is the main reason behind the setup of numerous trends in the digital transformation of companies. 2022 has experienced rapid growth in digital trends. Most of the digital trends are focused on building a strong relationship between buyer and seller to enhance loyalty and ensure customer retention. Another highlight of 2022 which acted as a catalyst in this process is RAPPORT BUILDING.
Rapport helps in gaining the trust of customers by portraying care toward their needs through effective and polished communication.
External link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ug3KKsAgDI
Every year is the customer’s year. The 21st Century is witnessing a massive shift in perceptions of marketing. Marketers are no longer required to persuade people in the favour of their company. Instead, the emphasis has been shifted to providing exceptional customer experiences, which will ensure a revisit of users and customers for more. Positive business culture and excellent customer service help in framing an effective framework of Marketing. To give an example, Redbull has a different marketing approach when we talk about the energy drink space. They spend more than 30% of their earnings on marketing and branding, making its visibility very evident with the tools of relatable content and emotions of the community. They have sponsored so many college fests and events which led to building a community that does the part of making the brand profitable and helping them to grow its market share through brand recall and brand positioning.
Ensuring that CX is in motion and the focus is still on existing customers rather than capturing new ones is a big part of the process of catering to great customer experience.
According to market research, a loyal customer is more valuable than a new customer as it costs five times more to convert a new potential customer than to keep the existing one.
It’s always worth the effort to keep your customers happy. Happy customers play a great role in doing word of mouth. Such customers also help to build your brand’s reputation and awareness by talking about your company and products to their friends and family. Customers pleased with your product or service are excellent (and free!) brand ambassadors and influencers. Many of the trends and technologies mentioned above can be beneficial to increasing customer retention rates.
Customer experience is the utmost priority for business these days as people believe in people and their experience. E-word of mouth has spread so much that now people check online reviews, check what others have to say about the brand, and then go for the final phase which is to purchase. All goals along the buyer’s journey and the content within them are set by having the aim to provide excellent CX. Over the last couple of years, consumer preferences shifted from a desire for low prices to a desire for an entertaining, positive customer experience from the companies with which they do business. Today’s customer is a smart customer who not only relies on advertisements and information provided by sales assistants. Instead, they will do their research from a variety of different sources – they will use social media, blogs, video reviews, and other online information to form an opinion about the products and services they’re thinking about purchasing. They will also rely on the official information provided on the brand’s website. Over 80% of smartphone users research information on their smartphones before attempting to make an in-store purchase. The vast majority of users read online reviews before making a traditional or online purchase.
Along with the customers, marketers also adopted new methods to ensure a positive CX. There are now many ways through which a company can interact with the customers and add value to their proposition which helps to enhance customer experience some of those approaches are:
1. Visualization of Story-Driven Content
Customers rely more on the things which they can watch or hear rather than only read. With the rise of smart speakers and voice search in recent years, it’s easy to understand that visuals and design content is more essential than mere textual content. Although the innovation in the field of voice search is undoubtedly influencing the way to create content now, which shouldn’t be overlooked. According to studies, people prefer visual content over just text. The growth of image-focused platforms like Pinterest and Instagram is providing evidence of this ideology. Google, Pinterest, and several other companies are investing in visual search technology as well. 62% of millennials are more interested in visual search than any other new technology. Visuals are also easier to recall than written information. Including data visualizations, infographics, images, and videos in your text not only makes it more interesting and appealing but can also help your message to be more easily absorbed.
So now storytelling may also involve the purpose of the brand, values-driven, and the journey of the brand hidden behind it. People don’t buy products, they buy people. The storytelling performed in Disney stories or Harry Potter made us believe that fairytales and Hogwarts exist. Every child who watched Harry Potter imagined the creation and magic tricks to be real. As far as brands are concerned, an example of Nykaa can be considered which carries a clear message of empowering girls with their products and services. Storytelling marketing can take place in a variety of mediums, as demonstrated by Coca-innovative Cola’s augmented reality (AR) campaign. – https://youtu.be/6Ht2Vvr4nio
2. Personalization: Is the Key to The Heart of your users
When a customer has two relatively equal products in front of them and has to make a choice, I’m betting on the brand that won their heart. Personalizing marketing to meet your customer’s needs is one way to engage their hearts as well as their heads. A person when targeted directly has a high chance to be converted from a lead to a user/customer. Consumers today are bombarded with targeted advertisements from multiple channels, to the point where they have begun to tune them out.
Traditional marketing is losing its effectiveness; therefore, what is the solution?
Personalized marketing messages create a genuine bond between the brand and the target audience. Marketers have to innovate communication delivery in a more personalized manner other than just customizing the emails with “customer’s first name” and cheesy pop-ups. Provide them with content that will warm their hearts. AI advancements, coupled with high data collection and insights from social media and other sources, have made it possible and simple to hyper-personalize everything from material to design to specific recommendations and everything in between. Adam Pasick wrote a piece for Quartz in 2015 about the “magic” behind Spotify’s “Discover Weekly”: A curated playlist of songs that it believes a given user will enjoy. It is carried out, like other personalization and suggestion platforms, primarily through the use of an algorithm that determines a user’s “taste profile” based on listening behaviour and the most popular playlists among the entire Spotify audience. The system is from Echo Nest, a “music intelligence company” procured by Spotify in 2014, as per Pasick. Here’s a great illustration from the article that depicts the operation visually:
3. Automated Marketing Communications
Marketing automation is intended to automate and simplify time-consuming tasks associated with modern marketing and sales roles. Automation tools allow you to identify your target audience, create relevant content and generate tasks automatically based on consumer behaviour. Companies that use marketing automation see an increase in web traffic and buyers, as well as increased retention and loyalty. Marketing automation, when combined with personalization engines, engages prospects and customers through highly relevant content, converting them into loyal customers. You can build personalized, one-to-one connections with a seemingly infinite number of customers at scale by streamlining this process. You’re probably wondering if marketing automation is a good fit for your company. The beauty of marketing automation is that it can assist your company in maximizing previously successful efforts. Attracting new audiences through effective marketing strategies is the first step, but marketing automation is a good bet if you want to do more to nurture those people so that they become customers. Marketing automation automates segmentation and targeting processes, sends personalized messages to each customer based on their profile, and efficiently delivers personalized experiences to your customers.
Some statistics related to it:
The adoption of automation technology is accelerating at an astounding rate-
- Marketing automation is “very important” to 91 % of users’ overall online marketing efforts (Demand Gen Report, 2018).
- Marketing automation tool spending is expected to reach $25.1 billion per year by 2023. 2020 (Martech Today)
- Marketing automation is used by 79 % of high-performing businesses for three years or more. 2020 (Venture Harbour)
- Marketing technology now accounts for 29 % of the total marketing expense budget, with advertising accounting for 21 %. (2019, Gartner)
- The biggest benefit of automation, according to 74% of marketers, is “saving time” (Demand Gen Report).
- Currently, 68 % of marketing executives use a marketing automation platform. 2020 (Salesforce)
Some platforms which deal with automated communication in marketing are Leadsquared, salesforce, Gupshup, and many more.
4. Usage of AI Data-Driven Marketing strategies:
There is no excuse for not knowing what your customers want in this day and age. Now many tools are available to marketers that allow them to collect a ton of information at various stages of their marketing campaigns. The times of broad, untargeted mass communication are over. The digital age has increased reach while decreasing pinpoint targeting accuracy. Big Data rules the world. 90 % of all data in the world has been generated in the last two years, and we are currently generating over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day. Businesses now have more intelligence data on which marketing strategy is based than ever before, but the value is not in the data itself, but in what you do with it.
Data is priceless to the modern marketer. Despite this, more than 80% of marketers say it is difficult to implement a data-driven strategy. Increased data leads to increased complexity. To maximize efficiency, today’s marketing leaders must devise strategies that cater to a greater number of customer segments and channels. It’s difficult to manage hundreds or thousands of different micro-campaigns. While technology can certainly help in this regard, marketers who do not keep their skills up to date may find themselves drowning in data. Difficulties in gathering, updating, sorting, and analyzing data, poor data quality and managing data across departments and silos are frequently cited roadblocks. Data has numerous applications in marketing, ranging from enabling micro-segmentation and personalization to identifying emerging trends. Martech created an infographic that clearly shows how marketing has volume, from push marketing techniques to pull marketing techniques.
Bots, AI, conversational marketing, and live chat are all terms that sound a little scary. AI technologies have become relatively common marketing tools, particularly in industries that have live sales teams available most of the time. Your team will have zero probability of missing out on customers who are ready for information if conversation opportunities are made available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In 2021, 47 % of marketers say they will use bots for marketing, up from 45 % last year. Bots and AI are now much easier to use and integrate into websites. Every tool you use incorporates AI, which is becoming smarter and helping to predict your needs and make your job easier. Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a key tool for conversion and optimization. The use of AI by marketers has increased by 190% from 2018 to 2020. You must have seen Live Chats and Chatbots for queries and support in swiggy, Zomato and so many other places. It not only helps in solving customer problems instantly but also forms a persistent connection between the brands and their target audience. It also helps in assessing customer needs and enhancing the customer experience.
Marketers are using AI-based products for:
- Personalization and ad targeting
- Automation and conversion
- Driving revenue and repeat purchases
- Improving efficiency
- Customer support and upselling
- Campaign management
- Optimization
- Content creation
Rupam Sharma
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Palak Sharma
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Dharmit Rane
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