CX: Changing Consumer Marketing Practices in the Digital Landscape

 

Digital transformation has brought new marketing technologies that have evolved the industry. Web and mobile platforms now give marketers access to consumers in more invasive ways than ever before.  And through the rapid growth of digital marketing practices, we have discovered the importance of the customer experience (or CX).   

In the Digital Revolution, we have seen a how the focus on optimized user experiences gives web and mobile platforms drives digital traffic and engagement, and this focus has translated into the consumer marketing landscape: "companies are prioritizing digital investments—for example, in 5G, artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, and the Internet-of-Things—to help deliver enhanced customer experiences and outcomes … For marketing, this means that a function that was once guided by art and science is now a discipline driven by technology and analytics. In fact, marketing operations has become one of the most valuable functions within a business, albeit a function that is still in transition" (Worthington, 2022, p. 20). Journey mapping and analysis allow marketers to understand their customer's interactions with a brand and to improve this experience in order to achieve their goal.  

Customer experience is essential across all marketing sectors, but it can especially be seen in the B2C and D2C space for customer acquisition and retention, “by using the customer decision journey retail marketers can uncover the cognitive paths of their customer audience and reveal clues why business performance may be not as desired. Practitioners can use the decision-making journey tool to evaluate a brand experience by looking at customers emotional experiences over the course of the journey in order to close the gap between actual and desired brand experience” (Lynch & Barnes, 2020, p. 486). 

Research shows that nearly 70% of digital shopping carts were abandoned in 2021, and a recent HubSpot article suggests that this is due to the lack of focus on customer journey (Agius, 2022). So when strategizing effective customer journey maps, some of the best practices include: 

• setting specific goals to understand the aim of the initiative
• conducting direct customer and customer service representative research to understand pain points and current journey gaps
• creating buyer personas and multiple journey maps for each
• assessing digital and physical customer journey touchpoints
• continuously assessing data insights to optimize experience  

References

Agius, A. (2022, March 7). How to create an effective customer journey map. HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-journey-map#whatis

Brand marketing vs direct marketing: What's the difference? [Image]. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brand-marketing-vs-direct-whats-difference-kal-nahal

Lynch, S. & Barnes, L. (2020). Omnichannel fashion retailing: Examining the customer decision-making journey. Journal of fashion marketing and management, 24(3), 471 – 493. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-09-2019-0192

Worthington, S.L.S. (2022). Navigating the marketing technology landscape. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 50(1), 20 – 23. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMR.2021.3133424