Today’s digital marketing teams are constantly trying to bring together different customer-facing roles into one cohesive unit, a unit capable of improving the customer experience and one capable of providing a complete marketing message. However, with multiple channels to manage, and multiple customer-facing roles to deal with, how does a digital marketing team improve the customer experience when customers have so many touch-points?
Sales, marketing, engineering, customer service, and technical support are often at loggerheads, each one believing they alone understand what’s best for the customer. These business functions often see each other as a hindrance. Sales questions the value of leads generated by marketing, while engineering, technical support, and customer service wonder aloud why the customer’s initial requirements were so misinterpreted by both marketing and sales.
It’s common for these silos to operate apart from one another. In fact, companies often create goals and objectives for each of these business functions that are in direct conflict with each other. However, the outdated and tired strategy of passing customers off to the next channel and hoping for the best is long gone. Here are some simple holistic strategies to improve the customer's experience.
Map Out the Buyer’s Journey
Do this as a team. It’s never about just one channel. It’s never about one role having a better understanding of the customer than others. Only together can each of these aforementioned business functions properly map out the customer’s journey. Start from the initial request all the way through to the after-sales portion of the customer’s journey. Identify all touchpoints and areas where interaction is expected by the customer.
Make sure to account for different buyer personas. Each will move through a different journey in a different manner and time. Some personas will require more input at the front of the queue, others during the buying process, and yet others after the sale. Your entire team must understand how each of your buyer personas moves through their own personalized journey.
Improve Customer Touchpoints
Identify the gaps in your service and messaging. Itemize any areas that need to be improved. Isolate recurring problems or messaging issues. Understand why certain personas abandon their journey altogether. Is this happening with a specific buyer persona at a specific point? Are certain personas complaining about a lack of support after the sale? Are they frustrated by your company’s inability to provide them with the answers they need?
Improving touchpoints isn’t just about synchronizing your marketing message. It’s ultimately about improving how customers are serviced and clarifying the role digital marketing must play in reinforcing your message and improving the customer’s experience. The last thing you want to do is use one solution for all problems. Remember, each buyer persona is different and each will require different service levels and input from various channels.
Expand Your Digital Marketing Footprint
Growing your business comes from having brand champions. The more satisfied and wowed your customer base, the more they’ll return. Customer retention and loyalty are revenue drivers. However, far too many companies fail to reintroduce their customers back into the fold. Their digital marketing strategies are great at initiating interest, welcoming the customer on board, and securing that all-important first sale, but they fail to guide the customer back into another journey.
Your digital marketing strategies should be all-encompassing. It’s not enough just to generate a lead. It’s not just about increasing your click-through rates on digital advertising, improving your conversion rates, and using content to drive interest. Your inbound marketing strategies should be part of the entire journey. They should support the customer with relevant information at every step of that journey. Make sure your digital strategies are focused on increasing customer retention by guiding the customer back to your enterprise. See this as a never-ending and continuous feedback loop.
Upgrade Your Content
Generic content doesn’t work. Me-too content is an absolute waste of time. Mapping each of your buyer personas means you must customize your content across each buyer’s journey. It means using different content pieces for different personas at each touch-point.
Start by identifying a common theme within your content and spread out future pieces based on that theme. You’ll be able to use a variation of the same idea for gated content on social media, news items on your company’s blog, and within insight pieces for different email marketing campaigns.
Integrate Your Entire Team With a Content Calendar
You have all the resources you need to address each of your personas. Your engineering and technical support teams can provide invaluable insight with how-to videos, podcasts, and webcasts. Your sales and marketing can provide up-to-date information on emerging trends, news, and best business practices. Your customer service and the after-sales team can use content to reintroduce customers into another journey.
A content calendar makes it possible to bring these resources together. It will help you plan content in advance while ensuring your entire digital marketing strategy is aligned with upcoming trade shows, exhibits, conferences, holidays, and special events.
Embrace Automation and a Faster Speed of Response
It’s well understood that the faster you respond, the more likely you are to win that customer’s trust. Faster response times on incoming inquiries mean more sales. However, increasing response times across your entire digital marketing strategy doesn’t come from just wanting to get back to customers faster. It comes from embracing automation and having a platform capable of responding on time, every time.
Analytics, metrics, and data enrichment are essential to a proactive digital strategy. Knowing which data to use and leverage means having a team that understands how best to identify the data that leads to winning business and retaining customers. Marketing automation is one solution, but another involves data enrichment software that helps you focus on the data that matters while ignoring the rest.
Your customer service and customer experience will improve once you've brought all your channels together. Doing that means mapping out the buyer's journey, understanding each of your personas, closing any service gaps, and having a digital marketing team up to the challenge of providing one all-encompassing message.
If you need a digital marketing agency to help you bring together all these players so that your customers view your company as their first and only choice, then contact us. We can provide an assessment to determine which processes are working for you and which are not. Connect with us today.
Written By: David Carpenter
