Consumer Engagement Complacency
As a marketer, I am going to assume you will often put yourself in the shoes of the person you are marketing towards. When you go there, do you feel like you are receiving the information you need or want to receive and how you want to receive it? “I think so” or “I hope so” are responses I have heard when this question has been asked. This is not a huge surprise to me. Most marketing communications are directional messages geared to a target audience that have general similarities. Organizations conducting their marketing efforts using the “think so/hope so” approach are probably seeing some results and have come to dismiss these results as the baseline… and this becomes the norm. It is at this point that complacency kicks in, and it continues for years with the customer experience being just “ok.”
The key to this story is don’t be complacent. Put effort into getting your data quality right, focus on advanced analytics and modeling to help draw out trends and correlations that help you create tighter target audiences, use A/B testing to find the right mix of personas and content to drive your message or call to action, build a holistic consumer engagement platform to support message delivery through the various channels required and back it up with reporting to support message attribution and performance reporting. I know it may seem like a lot to grasp, but if you want to change the impact your marketing is making on your consumer, you will need to push the envelope and strive for 1:1 engagement with highly personalized content that can be delivered seamlessly across all the channels. Your customers are expecting it, your competition is either doing or planning to do it, and you can’t afford to see customer shift their loyalties. This brings it home… according to a study by Emplifi, “… 57 percent say they would switch to a competitor if they provided a better experience.”
Ya, I get it… makes sense on paper, but how do you make it happen? It starts with a strategic roadmap focused on use case delivery and execution to drive value as quickly as possible, then building out the elements (all the fun things I just got done talking about in the previous paragraph) to help drive and deliver the use case (s). The trick is to compartmentalize into tactical, hyper-focused sprints that create iterative value quickly that can be used to drive momentum and a business case to do more while staying aligned with the strategy. So, push the envelope, don’t be complacent, and change the narrative from “I think so” or “I hope so” to “I know so.”
Although the narrative of this article applies to all industries, we recently had the pleasure of conducting a 3-part series on “Consumer Engagement in Healthcare.” The series highlighted real-world thought leadership and dialogue on how an iterative strategy coupled with sound project execution and the latest trends and capabilities can help you roll out highly effective consumer engagement platforms designed to deliver optimal experiences. Watch now!
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