EVOLVING CUSTOMER JOURNEY
For many businesses before the pandemic, the customer journey was rather straightforward primarily evolving around established physical and digital touchpoints. For clothing and retail, consumers would be exposed to digital and offline advertisements, visit stores to check out products, make purchases or order online. However, with the pandemic ongoing, consumers around the globe have been limited to their homes shifting the entire journey online, and this has led to a loss in the physical experience with many brands amplifying their efforts to streamline the online journey. In such a dynamic scenario, it is important to map the new and evolving journey and identify pain points in the customer funnel that may lead to lower conversions or increased churn.
TRANSFORMATION IN INDUSTRIES
Despite the fact that many companies use different approaches to conversion optimization, the effect of COVID-19 has exacerbated marketers’ struggles in trying to appeal to customers on a psychological level in order to promote sales. While categorizing customers on a wide level may save time and money for larger scale conversions, the strategy can leave some businesses vulnerable in light of the pandemic’s major effect on consumer mindsets.
Today’s marketing focuses on establishing trust between businesses and their customers, but following the pandemic, this aspect of the industry may become strained. As a result, now could be a critical time for advertisers to adjust their funnels and rethink who their true target audience is. Marketing analytics has evolved into a money-making method for companies to better understand consumer behavior, but in the aftermath of a transformative pandemic, it’s worth taking a closer look at how the art of converting customers has radically changed within respective industries.
CHANGES IN E-RETAIL INDUSTRY
As compared to physical purchases in stores or collections from local hubs, the number of people are shopping online or via dedicated applications. Consumers are starting to choose ecommerce, trusted labels, recycled products, and more local physical stores over more discretionary spending, signaling a major change. This has resulted in a huge expansion in the courier industry as they grow to keep up with demand. Many interstate courier services offer fast, reliable deliveries that make shopping online more convenient and sometimes cheaper than shopping in person.
New challenges for marketers in a post-COVID-19 society, particularly in terms of adapting to changing channels through which customers interact with campaigns and brands. Another growing challenge is maintaining relevance through multiple touchpoints, such as multi-brand outlets, e-retailers, the brand website, brick and mortar stores, and other channels. With the support of CRM systems, communicative avenues, and incentivization, this will be critical in gaining customer loyalty.
These difficulties are followed by the need to shift promotional resources away from out-of-home, print, and trade marketing and toward more interactive marketing strategies. COVID-19 has altered not only the way customers interact with brands and shop, but also their psychological purpose.
HOW NOTABLE COMPANIES ENRICHED THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY
When Netflix entered the market with its digital library, the company effectively changed the way movies were being consumed. The new customer journey was much more digitized and seamless, removing much of the friction and pain points that came with DVD rentals offered by prime competitor Blockbuster. When the pandemic struck, it was a unique scenario for the company as on one hand, there were more consumers stuck at home seeking entertainment, whilst on the other, the pandemic was negatively affecting the creative industry limiting the quality and output. In this case, the company had been in a good position at the start of the pandemic as many of its new shows were in post-production and were aptly released during the lockdown leading to wildly popular releases at a time when the rest of the competition couldn’t churn out enough. The company’s machine learning AI platform built to keep users hooked and loyal by creating a personalized experience has also allowed the company to keep customer churns to a minimum. The company managed to surpass 200 million subscribers during the pandemic, and projects a further 6 million growth this year despite record levels of customer churn worldwide.
Spotify, the free music streaming platform with a large userbase saw its earnings plummet as advertisers increasingly cut their budget. The company decided it was time to pivot, and the brand completely changed its strategy during the pandemic. The company focused on original content and podcasts to cater to consumers who also had more time on their hands. As a result, the company signed exclusive deals with artists and began curating playlists and podcasts, leading to both an increase in revenue and more enjoyable content for its userbase, increasingly loyalty and reducing churn.
A unique campaign saw Ralph Lauren partner with popular social networking app, Snapchat to drive sales online. Whilst most fashion labels turned to E-commerce, Ralph Lauren took it a step further. Users of Snapchat have long sported bitmojis – a feature in the app that allowed them to create cartoon avatars of themselves. The campaign allowed users to dress their bitmojis with Ralph Lauren’s exclusive collection of 12 unique looks and over a hundred ways to style their bitmojis. This not only introduced users to the fashion line, but also allowed users to view how the clothes would look on their avatars. Users were then able to directly order the clothes that their bitmojis were wearing, making for a unique customer journey, and adding enjoyable customer touchpoints.
STRATEGIES TO KEEP UP WITH THE EVER-CHANGING DIGITIZED ERA
One of the most critical techniques for ensuring effective transformation is change management, which is possibly one of the reasons the CIO job is now one of the most coveted and paid in business today. Companies working in today’s market environment are constantly handling more than just staff, clients, and goods. They’re also dealing with the adoption of emerging technology, the emergence of new business opportunities, and changes in the way customers choose, communicate with, and apply expectations to their products. In a nutshell, modern companies must be able to deal with transition. They’ll have to change their management practices to do so.
Be aware of what digital transformation entails for your business.
A transition that propels a company toward digitization is known as digital transformation. This change, however, is not solely due to technological advancements and their implementation. It’s all about looking at the changes and figuring out how to incorporate them through the prism of your own business. Define what digital means for your company; assess your technological resources, the risks involved, and how digital transformation will affect your company’s revenue. You can build a better plan with this knowledge, which is a necessary first step in starting the journey in the right direction.
Become more customer-focused
The customer’s age is at this stage. Today’s digital customers are well-informed, have high expectations, and are willing to switch brands without hesitation. Looking at how the future is shaping up, it’s clear that only the most forward-thinking businesses will be able to forecast future trends, build customized goods, and provide unforgettable experiences for their consumers in the years ahead.
Adopt a data-driven mindset
Cloud computing services (before investing, go through aws vs azure vs gcp comparison), predictive analytics, artificial learning, and big data are being used by forward-thinking companies to boost creativity, customer loyalty, and real-time decision-making. As a result, technology ecosystems are constantly developing to enable disruption as well as transformation. Allow your IT teams to learn and improve their data collection skills. They should be able to extract actionable lessons from data, translate it to metrics, search for trends, and use these findings to enhance the business processes through continuous learning. However, don’t confine your data-driven approach to sales and marketing. Data will help you define your strategies for employee recruitment, retention, customer service, and other aspects of your company.
Focus on Solutions, Not Products
Introducing new products is an inevitable part of running a company, and it also attracts new competition. Businesses should concentrate more on delivering strategies that solve the product’s main problems in order to stay ahead of the competition. As an example, the pandemic led to nearly all printing houses shutting down as the emphasis shifted to the digital space. A few businesses and groups of students, however, needed more help from the print medium, be it in form of catalogs, brochures, or bound books. As a result, they introduced online delivery services to stay afloat. In this way, a bond is formed between the company and its customers, which results in long-term loyalty.
GIVING WHAT CUSTOMERS NEED AND BEING WHERE THEY ARE
With the pandemic being far from over, and many changes that are here to stay, companies that fail to adapt their customer journey face the risk of increasing friction in their funnel, reducing their reach, and ultimately seeing their revenues plummet. Digital and analytics tools may allow businesses to identify gaps and pain points for customers, and can ultimately help in streamlining new services and service delivery methods. However, we need to look at the bigger picture of what’s possible and what simply won’t work anymore – or at least for the time being. For most businesses, this entails a rapid shift to online, E-commerce, home deliveries, and designing the customer journey online. For others that may need to pivot their entire business models like AirBnB or Spotify, the challenge is far more ambitious. The ultimate challenge is to be where the customers are and giving them what they need.
By Orobi Bakhtiar
