Member Article

Why customers MUST be the focus in 2016

In 2016 brands will look to increase customer loyalty and long-term engagement with customers. Data will be key, with personalised data driven marketing the year’s biggest trend. Gone is the age of appealing to the mass markets, now it’s all about using date to build personal relationships as brands strive to reach the single customer view. How exactly do you do this and what should big brands be investing in to achieve this? Trevor Budd explains how…

1.Focus on a single customer view

Creating a single customer view is critical to knowing and understanding the customer well enough to tailor engaging messaging across the appropriate touch points at the appropriate times. Technology has finally given businesses the incoming information to enable them to understand the behaviour of every single customer.

Customers are now too busy and the marketing space too crowded, so only the most informed brands are able to cut through the noise effectively, with clear engaging and relevant messages. Reaching a truly single customer view is a big ask for 2016, but the next 12 months will see marketers take significant steps towards achieving it. Customer cynosure is imperative for allowing customers, businesses, and marketers to derive more value from their relationships creating win-win-win’s for all.

2.The proliferation of automation

The biggest barrier to implementing the single customer view is resource. Endless revisions. Overflowing inboxes. Daily deadlines. Shifting priorities. Not to mention coordinating work with other departments, freelancers, agencies, and clients. Marketers are expected to deliver even more campaigns, faster than ever. The best way to free up resources within realistic marketing budgets is automation.

Automation helps clients to streamline national and international marketing processes improving workload efficiency by minimising duplication of effort and rationalising marketing output, which frees up time for marketers to work on strategic projects as well as saving costs. We believe automation will continue to proliferate in 2016 allowing CMOs and marketing directors to take control of marketing inputs and outputs again while retaining full oversight of workflow and budgets.

3.Use ’real-time’ data

Consumers are making decisions in real time across a variety of channels and brands need to have the capacity to respond to their needs, as soon as possible. The term ‘real time’ means exactly that – to understand the customer in their moment of action or response.

By and large brands are improving when it comes to responding to customers in real time, but in 2016 they need to do more than simply respond, they need to use information gathered from these ‘real-time’ transactions. Unified data is key to creating knowledge andmulti-channel analyticsmust be considered a key element of business intelligence. By understanding ‘real time’ data, brands can create and deliver dynamic content that drives response and engagement. Brands that succeed in 2016 will be those that listen to ‘real-time’ transactions and take advantage of this information to inform flexible marketing plans, develop initiatives and male strategic business decisions.

4.Understand the customer journey

The customer path to purchase spans multiple channels and devices, which is why it is important for brands to consider how they engage with its audience across the entire journey and across ALL devices.

A user’s path to your products and services must be as seamless as possible. It’s about building relevant, timely and personalised experiences and putting them right in the hand of your target audience, deepening engagement levels and delivering leads and sales. Development of a strategic approach to implementing the right channel mix for audiences ensures that all deliverables including responsive websites, mobile apps, emails, digital screens and traditional print and POS work together to create a seamless customer journey.

5.App indexing and the rise of mobile

Mobile is fast overtaking desktop traffic, which means that mobile optimised sites are a must for 2016. Google’s recent changes which will allow apps content to be included in search results; means mobile is big business and will more than likely result in an app explosion. Apps by their nature are more intuitive and convenient for today’s ‘on the move’ consumer and Google’s update allows users to quickly find and access app data in the same way as web page content. Apps won’t replace websites but should be considered as an important element of any digital marketing strategy.

Trevor Budd is Group Head of Marketing Consultancy at APS Group – marketing solutions and customer communications provider and its creative and digital agency MMP. He works with clients to translate business and marketing objectives into results driven and highly engaging marketing solutions. His clients include companies such as Superdrug, Westfield Health, Accenture and The Co-operative Group.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Laura Berry .