Strange as it may seem, modern-day, state-of-the-art, digital marketing is finding wisdom in principles that were present a thousand years ago at the beginning of commerce — in the medieval marketplace!
For a long time, these age-old principles didn’t matter. Technology brought your brand into potential customers’ homes, but you were still far removed from them. You could get away with making promises that you didn’t really have to keep. Then, when mass-market mail order came into being, businesses no longer even had to see their customers to earn their profits.
But, we live in a VERY different world today. Technological advances have placed into our pockets what used to be considered supercomputers, and blazingly fast processing speeds and nearly universal Wi-Fi opportunities have made real-time communications with your customers not only possible — but also expected.
In 2014, the number of connected devices exceeded the world’s population — and this ever-increasing number of devices that customers have access to is also changing how they want to interact with brands across their customer journeys. Smart thermostats, fitness bands, cars, solar panels, and even toothbrushes are connected now; and you must create seamless, relevant, exceptional experiences for your customers — or risk doing irreparable damage to your brand.
Villagers and Merchants of the Medieval Marketplace
Noted marketing consultant Mark W. Schaefer describes the interactions between villagers and merchants in the medieval marketplace and calls out four distinct features of these experiences:
1. They Were Highly Personal and Interactive.
“You stood face to face with your seller, looked them in the eye, and bought with a firm handshake. You purchased goods from people you knew and trusted.” Today, you must know your customer’s needs and wants, and you can determine them to a high degree of accuracy with the hundreds of pieces of analytic data that is available.
2. There Was Immediacy.
“If somebody felt wronged or cheated, you knew it right away.” With the access that today’s customers have to nearly unlimited information, you’d better be straight with them all along the way — from the opening pitch to the product description to the after-sale support and everything in between!
3. Success Depended on Word-of-Mouth Recommendations.
“The most successful shopkeepers knew that word-of-mouth reputation was essential to sustaining your business and that partnering with influencers could help spread the word about their business.” A satisfied customer will tell half a dozen family members and friends. Dissatisfied customers, on the other hand, will post their negative experiences on social-networking sites and tell 500,000 people! Today, cross-channel communications and personalized customer experiences help insure your brand’s relevance.
4. There Was a Primal Need to Connect.
“People…love the social aspects of the marketplace, and most of all, talking about their new finds.” Today’s social-networking opportunities allow people to instantaneously share their shopping experiences, having fun with the good ones — and ranting on and on about the bad ones!
Technology today, according to an Econsultancy report on real-time marketing, allows us to craft a larger ongoing experience, one that “communicates dynamically and systematically with a consumer using timely data as input and a personalized message as an output.”
To Evolve or Dissolve?
Not every business will retool and become digitally savvy. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies on the S&P will most likely be unable to evolve to meet the expectations that accompany new technologies and will shutter their doors over the next 10 years.
“The bar in the customer’s mind is extremely high,” says Wade Forst, senior director of emerging experiences at Razorfish. “Their expectation of seamlessness and transparency and personalization is very high. They don’t care about the silos and your organization, and they don’t want to be treated like a new guest whenever they step outside of one technology and into another or into the real world.”
Customers expect brands to deliver continuous personal experiences that connect their mobile web interactions with their brick-and-mortar ones — and improve both. And everything is becoming a channel because of the Internet of Things (IoT). Your customer’s lightbulb and thermostat are now your clients!
Future-Proofing Your Organization
It’s a tall order. So, what can you do to make sense of all the pieces and begin future-proofing your organization? Following are four ways you can both succeed in the world today — and prepare for the world that’s coming.
1. Know Your Connected Experience Capabilities.
Begin with understanding how you can create connected experiences right now and then go from there. This process includes a detailed audit of the channels you’re already using, an assessment of new channels you could be using, and a realistic evaluation of how much effort it will take to create or repurpose content across those channels.
2. Discover the Journeys of Your Key Personas.
You need to really understand who your customers are and what drives them to you. And, because things change so rapidly, you’ll need to continuously reevaluate your understanding. If you’re constantly immersing yourself in what your customers need, you’ll always be prepared when new channels or opportunities arise.
3. Look Into the Future.
As you’re looking ahead, it’s important to focus on the experiences you’re delivering instead of the products you’re offering. Certainly, products are still important, but competitive advantage simply can’t give you the same head start it used to.
4. Build Your Connected Infrastructure.
By now, you have a pretty good idea of what you are capable of, so the last step is to reorganize your company and build an infrastructure that makes creating these connected experiences possible.
Luckily, while the process of becoming an experience business that delivers truly connected experiences requires work — it’s worth it. Huge opportunities are on the horizon, and if you start moving now, you’ll be ready to take advantage of them in whatever forms they take.
You can learn much more about building tomorrow’s business today in Adobe’s new information-packed whitepaper, The Sum of Its Parts.
The post Sum of its Parts: 4 Steps to Get Started with Connected Experiences appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.