Stop Marketing Like It’s 2015 and Get Ready to Market Like It’s 2016
E-commerce 3.0 and the marketing revolution - what is it all about?
Everywhere you turn, you're being sold something and for many, these marketing messages seemingly fall on deaf ears. Customers are bombarded daily with (mostly) irrelevant and untimely content.
Brands and retailers must not only consider the wants and needs of individual consumers, but also proactively anticipate their behavior and preferences - then engage with them on their terms. Today's savvy consumers want you to know them, without being intrusive. They demand exemplary service and more relevant experiences across all channels.
Welcome to the marketing revolution.
The modern consumer's engagement with digital is absolutely transformative from a retail perspective. People expect a personalized experience from a business at every touchpoint and a positive experience no matter which channel they access.
This means identifying and offering the right product or service and always at the right place and at the right time and through the right devices. It's also about understanding the customers core attributes and learning to sell in a way that resonates deeply and gets them wanting more. And as the number of channels continues to rise – and it will – the need to embrace multichannel marketing will become not only a good idea, but a critical one.
>Go from Selling to Fulfilling Needs
We know from other areas of retail that good recommendations in the right place and time are important. If a waiter knows how to recommend a good wine with your meal, wine sales and revenues increase. Brands and advertisers now have to collaborate to offer purchasable products and services that are relevant to each person's context and intent.
The key to success is to shift from the old style mass marketing of standardized offers, homogeneous messaging, and general irrelevance to the new ecosystem where context, relevance and customization replace standardized marketing.
>Go Beyond the Intuitive Guesswork of Recognizing
Sure, a trekker might want trekking gear; however, it is more important than ever to look into what individual customers are doing, where they are going and what they may need. Then you can truly provide an intuitive experience that is likely to be rewarded with a purchase.
>Look at the Customer Experience as a Journey
Optimizing the customer journey means putting the customer at the center and aligning the communication with the windows of opportunity when customers are ready to be approached, engaged and persuaded.
Take the time to know the context of your customers and their needs, they will realize the huge potential of yet undiscovered revenue streams.
Customer experience is one of the most powerful competitive differentiators and context-optimization is an important driver.
>Present Meaningful Choices
Marketers compete emphatically to sell more things to more people by offering them more choices. However, today's explosion of consumer options can stall our decision-making or overwhelm us to the point where we choose nothing at all. The proliferation of options results in no sale, where fewer options might have resulted in more sales. Having more variety appears to be appealing initially, but ironically can sabotage a company's marketing plan. Simply put, often, less is more.
So if not more choice, what do consumers actually crave? Nearly 9 in 10 consumers say customized experiences influence their buying decisions. It is not about limiting the choice, it is about meaningful choice creating a relevant customer experience has to be based on what customers not only need, but also what else they might want.
When it comes to engaging customers, marketers should:
- Consider the customer's needs first, not yours
- Exceed your customers' expectations
- Provide a seamless experience on every channel and device your customer is using to engage with you
- Give consumers what they want in the easiest way possible
- More data means more customization – make sure you are using every bit of information for the benefit of the customer experience, but without being intrusive
Benefits of data driven contextual selling and marketing that focuses on the needs of the customer:
- Improved cross-sell and upsell opportunity
- Relevance leads to average order size increase
- Creating a value-added relationship between the company and the customer
- Automated incremental revenue opportunities
- Increased customer retention
Customers are Ready to Move On and So Should You
Consumers are more connected, vocal and demanding than ever before. What they want, above all, is a personalized experience.
With all the modern technology and easy access to information, products and opportunities, customers are expecting companies to present them with the perfect products, services and activities at the right place and time (context) when they are most likely to want it (intent).stuff - guaranteed.
To learn more, schedule a demo, or get started with Epteca's Marketplace Ecosystem, please visit http://www.epteca.com.
About Epteca
Epteca is the pioneer of context marketing in the world of merchandising of branded products and ancillary services within the aviation and travel industry, a USD 280 billion market. The unique end-to-end platform with predictive algorithms matches customers context and intent, creating new service opportunities while enhancing the customer experience in all the phases of their journey. Since 2013, Epteca has been working with over 60 leading travel and consumer brands helping engage and inspire their customers with contextual, highly relevant and timely information and offerings. Epteca can accurately anticipate not only what customers require, but also what they are likely to want or do during their trip. Epteca delivers on what until now has been an elusive dream: the right offering, presented to the right customer, at the right place and the right time – guaranteed.
