The 9 keys to driving stronger relationships—one customer at a time
Any marketer worth their weight in leads knows the benefits of personalization—and yet, a surprisingly large number of companies have not fully embraced this strategic tactic.
Typically, senior marketing professionals see personalization as a double-edged sword. On one hand, there’s no doubting that consumers and end-users value personalized experiences and tailored recommendations across channels.
Journeys, not Moments
By combining context marketing with an omnichannel presence, a brand can construct a customer journey map consisting of multiple stages. Typically, industry best practice dictates that you segment the customer journey into the following four key stages:
- Need: Every customer starts their journey with a need. For example, they want to purchase a new car.
- Research: The customer looks broadly at different brands, models, price ranges, and online reviews along the way. Over a period of days, weeks, or even months, they slowly narrow down their options.
- Decision: They make a selection from a shortlist of possible brands, factoring in past experiences, reviews, and other online information.
- Customer: They end their buyer journey by purchasing a car. Then a new chapter in the journey begins, with the onus on the car company to provide a personalized onboarding and customer service experience.
Going Omnichannel
Today’s customers are expecting to be able to engage with you on whatever channel they want, whenever they want. If that wasn’t difficult enough, they expect you to remember who they are and personalize their buying experience accordingly. And if you don’t do it, you can bet your competitors already are or are currently working on it.
This is where omnichannel personalization comes in. Omnichannel personalization is the art of developing a consistent and continuous personalized experience that encompasses all digital channels and touchpoints.
This includes website content, mobile content, social media, email, smart speakers, wearable technology, digital signage, and other IoT devices.
The goal is not just to enable the end-user to access your brand through various touchpoints, but to empower them to switch between any touchpoint at any stage in their journey without a hiccup — and without a break in personalization.
