Why Brands Need to Realign Themselves With Today's Digital Audience
In recent years, brands and marketers often have gotten left behind and are forced to play catch up in order to get new customers and maintain a solid customer base. Digital and mobile technologies have taken a front-row seat in customers lives. Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality are confounding the lines of demarcation between the human and the digital.
In fact, “Almost half of the brands admit new digital channels and smartphones have caused the single greatest change in how customers engage with them.”
Experiencing change is hard enough, but being forced to adapt to change is difficult. The difficulty brands face is adapting to vast changes in the digital age while delaying a personalized experience for customers. Even as they embrace new technologies, this is where many struggles to find a balance.
As AI and VR make its way to the front of the room to take over our experience, more and more brands find themselves unprepared to fall in line with these innovations. A lack of connected systems and strategies make it nearly impossible to deliver relevant experiences.
As customers do more research on their own, sales teams have less time to influence the buyer journey. Marketers are left to develop campaigns that fit with the ever-changing needs of customers. Brands have never had to work as hard as do now to ensure relevant messages are crafted that get watched and listened to by the right people at the right time in order to complete a sale.
Marketing, sales, and customer service teams can make better use of data and work more closely to influence the buyer journey in a number of ways:
1 Build a core team
A small team comprised of marketing, sales, and customer service individuals can help to ensure all views are represented when approaching the buyer journey and make the transformation process more efficient.
2 Align departmental goals
Each department cannot work in a silo if the overall goal of the company is to be met. Marketing, sales, and customer service must work toward a common goal and establish points of measurement along the way.
3 Get everyone on one integrated platform
Integrated tools are the best way to ensure each department is on the same page. One consistent view of current and potential customers is helpful in understanding the buyer journey and where buyers take detours along the way.
