2. Mapping to the Customer Journey
Customers have needs, emotions and questions that they want fulfilled from your brand. If you can’t be a reliable source, then they’ll go elsewhere. To fulfill these needs, map out a path for EVERY digital strategy that your team is undertaking.
A journey map’s goal is to put the customer top-of-mind for an organization, allowing the company to adapt and optimize, ultimately allowing for enough agility to meet the demands of the customer. The final result is conversation, overall growth, customer satisfaction and loyalty. You might think that aiming for “satisfaction” might be underselling what your brand can do, however, Forrester and inmoment’s survey proves otherwise: 38 percent of buyers associated the emotion of satisfaction with positive brand experience, and 40 percent of those buyers chose that same emotion to describe their experience with brands to which they are loyal.
Accomplishing a customer journey map can be done with a few simple steps outlined below.
- Step 1: Choose a Buyer Persona(s) to Focus On
If you haven’t developed your buyer personas yet then I highly encourage you to check out PAN’s eBook, How to Master Buyer Personas.
- Step 2: Understand the Goals of Your Chosen Persona(s)
This is where you can put your marketing and sales relationship to work. Your marketing team will need to rely on the sales team to gather some of this information, while simultaneously working to connect with current customers.
- Step 3: Establish Your Touchpoints
Don’t rely on every channel possible to connect emotionally with your customers. Have your marketing team analyze your integrated measurement reports to determine your most effective channels.
- Step 4: Visualize
Marketers understand the impact that visualization can have on engagement and conversion rates with their assets. So, why don’t we do this more for ourselves? Get your team to re-focus on the visualization of the customer journey – pre, during and post purchase decision.
- Step 5: Analyze
To set your team up for success in the future, make sure results are analyzed for optimizations and insights to increase value and enjoyment for your customer.
3. Telling a Story They Can Connect With
Storytelling in marketing is a powerful tool, but how many marketers have truly mastered this in an integrated sense? Every year PAN Communications conducts its own study focusing on the state of content marketing, and last year we found that a whopping 57 percent of marketers believed they were not effectively integrating their content and marketing efforts.
Integration between earned, owned, paid and shared should be at the cornerstone of your digital marketing campaigns. To tell a story that truly resonates with your audience, you need to have a cohesive landscape to work with. Remember that if you’re telling an impactful story it won’t be the same for every channel and persona. Lay the groundwork first.
Coordinate with your PR team, your content marketing team and even your influencers on the designated message. Influencer marketing has taken off in such a rapid fashion over the last year because of the added emotional connection with their audience. If you haven’t set this channel into motion yet, utilize PAN’s eBook and get started: The Power of Voice: The Art & Science of Influencer Marketing.
Keep an eye out for increasing trends that will help to personalize, tell a story and map to the customer journey. I predict AI will be at the forefront of this helping to pinpoint emotional appeal, subject matter, style, tone and sentiment.
CMO Insights is PAN Communication’s marketing leadership series. We examine the pain points of today’s CMO, how to effectively and emotionally impact the customer along their path to purchase, trends at the forefront of today’s digital landscape, alongside insight from experts. Interested in continuing the conversation? Let’s discuss @MarkCNardone.
