When it comes to marketing, new companies also have to learn to crawl, walk, and run in order to create a complete customer experience. What does this mean? It means that you must move from Digital Marketing to Experience Marketing and then continue onward to create Brand Experience.

In order for your business to grow and gain new customers, you need to engage on a consistent, coherent, and personalized basis with them.

Most of us can agree that to progress at something you must plan, practice, and persevere. A musician learning how to play an instrument is an accurate example of this. They plan by finding a mentor to help them understand their new instrument.

Before the rise of the Internet, businesses knew who they were selling their products to. Their pool of potential customers was mainly limited by physical factors

Last time we learned that most companies are doing some kind of Digital Marketing, primarily focused on attracting customers. This is a good first step, but it can’t end there

Amazon.com does it right. They hired a thousand tiny butlers to serve up personalized recommendations that are appear right before your eyes. .

It is one thing when you make decisions that affect your life. It is another thing when you are making decisions that affect Jane, your better half. The cascade effect of a bad or uninformed decision can sometimes be felt for days, months, or years afterwards. Hopefully you will learn from your mistakes and Jane will be a forgiving soul. But if you are smart about it, you will research and get feedback from others in your situation. You will look for guidance and use the provided wisdom to make the right decision. Your efforts will pay off as your decision-making skills flourish and you grow closer together in your relationship while navigating any bumps in the road.

What if our world was based upon guesses? What if all decisions were made by not really knowing the facts, but by just winging it? For starters, I wouldn’t trust any mode of transportation, whether on the ground or in the air. The reason I feel safe inside a metal cage with wheels barreling down the road or in a metal bird with wings soaring through the air is because someone took the time to test all aspects of their creation. From the age of discovering fire to the current digital age, the reason that most things work correctly and predictably (more or less) is because theories were formulated and assumptions were tested.

Our world is filled with campaigns. Most marketing that you see is part of a campaign which is part of a larger marketing plan. Some campaigns are obvious and straightforward, like political campaigns geared towards the general population. Make no mistake, the marketing teams that are put in place by politicians for this task are sophisticated and data-driven. The goal is to get your vote. By producing and implementing multiple campaigns designed to appeal to different political, social, and economic leanings, they strive to hit their mark. Whether they are successful or not is sometimes up for debate. What they can’t factor in is the torpedoing of the campaign by the candidate themselves with their own antics.

We’ve all heard of it in some variation or another. The outrageous marriage proposal where the man goes all out to impress his fiance to be. He takes her to an exotic beach, spells her name in the sand, hires a band to play their favorite song, and then boom – he pops the question. She cries and says “Yes!” and then it’s wedding bells and they are off to happily ever after land.

One of the easiest ways to build a relationship with someone is to spend time with them and get to know them better. You go from strangers, to acquaintances, to friends, to possibly best friends, and then, should it be the right situation - to life partners.

Did you ever go into one of those big box stores and try to find something on your own? Then when you are about to give up, you see someone with a name badge on. Ah ha, you think. Now I’ll find what I am looking for.

Your palms are sweaty. You’re nervous. Now that you’ve got the first date with the lovely, bespectacled Jane, what will you say? As a business, you are acutely aware that a customer’s initial impression is the most important one. Like any first date, the last thing you want is an awkward and uncomfortable experience. Thank goodness you invested in Sitecore’s Experience Marketing Platform and can move strategically forward in your courtship with Jane.

What if you had the ability to predict the actions of your customers, so much so that you felt like a fortune teller? You could finely hone your marketing campaigns and bring more sales leads to fruition so often that it would seem like magic. In this age of the customer, many companies are wondering how they can make the most of the data that is available to them to do just that.

The Director of Experience Marketing at Americaneagle.com, Tim Ahlenius, recently wrote a Sitecore blog post on the “age of the customer.” With the rise of the internet and easy search options, it has become a battle for companies to distinguish who their customer really is and how to directly market to each individual customer needs and wants.

Google’s Shopper Analysis report allows you to gain invaluable, up to the moment, clear insight and understanding into the nitty gritty details of consumer behavior. With this report, customer product engagement, viewing, cart initiations, abandonments, payment methods, and transaction completions are no longer a mystery. Remarketing campaigns will become your go to tool as you work to capture any lost sales.

Digital experience management is the collection of processes and technology used to provide a consistent experience to customers across all channels. These channels may consist of email, social, web, mobile, and video.

Sitecore promised us at Symposium in September this year that they would be releasing Sitecore platform version 8 and I’m happy to report that it finally arrived this past Friday!

You spent an appalling amount of time creating content, trying to engage with the online community and posting social network updates, but have nothing to show for it. You even updated your website to include all the latest bells and whistles. What are you doing wrong?

Sitcore releases version 7.5. The main benefits of the new rollout include improved performance with scalability, single customer dashboards, seamless integration with critical marketing tools, and a global reach via the Sitecore® Experience Database™ - Cloud Edition.