Babies have an innate drive to grow and learn. They crawl, walk, and then of course, run. While they can’t yet grasp the concept of individual fruition, they know that they must move forward and be successful at each stage of their development. Funny enough, when we talk about the development of a new company, it is in childlike terms: born in a business incubator, in its infancy, a spinoff from its parent company, etc.
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.
So let’s define these stages. Most Digital Marketing is focused on attracting potential customers. Examples of this type of marketing are:
- Creating a static website, initiating email campaigns, and gathering statistics through web analytics
- Use of a mobile-ready site, sharing content on social networks, and distributing it through other channels (online & offline)
- Aligning your digital initiatives with your strategic & marketing objectives
- Optimizing online content to reflect customers’ perceived needs and intentions
Experience Marketing works on converting potential customers into actual customers. Here are a few examples:
- Gathering analytics from multiple channels aimed at creating actionable insights
- The further optimization of channels through testing and basic personalization
- Building strong relationships with potential customers through automated trigger-based dialogue
- Conversing with potential customers through their preferred channels
The goal of Brand Marketing is to continue to engage current customers and turn them into lifetime buyers. This can include:
- Establishing the data infrastructure to connect online and offline customer data sources into a central repository
- Using customer profile data in real time for relevant one-on-one dialogue across chosen channels
- Use of predictive analytics to anticipate the needs of potential and current customers
At which stage is your company’s marketing and, just as important, where is your competition at in regards to these 3 stages? You are not alone if you said Digital Marketing. Almost 86% of companies are only doing this first stage. Next time we’ll talk about the drawbacks of staying at the Digital and Experience Marketing stages and how Brand Experience will help keep you ahead of the curve.
