Customers are voting with their wallets, and there is a growing gap between their expectations and businesses’ focus in their planning and product relevance. What’s the answer? Data is the “secret sauce” when it comes to converting “likes” to leads and purchases. That’s from the Constellation Research webinar hosted by Anametrix last week − “Transforming ‘likes’ to leads and data to dollars .” The webinar featured Constellation’s R “Ray” Wang, CEO and principal analyst, and Gavin Heaton, VP, principal analyst; both are global thought leaders in digital-marketing transformation and authors of influential blogs (Ray writes Software Insider and Gavin, ServantofChaos). Under the auspices of Constellation Research, they advise companies worldwide about how to improve buyer interactions with brands across all channels. And, as they argued in the webinar, this is vital information given the fact that consumers leapfrog from one touchpoint to the next, making decisions long before businesses see them in the traditional marketing funnel (attract, engage and convert).
“You need to rethink the marketing funnel from the outside in,” says Wang. Today, the customer journey is better described by a model Constellation Research calls the 5Ds as consumers “discover, debate, deepen and decide.” Marketers need to understand all the customer touchpoints across paid, owned and earned media (POEM), using data to see patterns and correlations for use in improving results.
Constellation Research offers a model that defines elements key to success in multichannel marketing: 
- People Centric: Your customer base should be defined broadly in terms of culture, community and credibility.
- Delivery and Communication Styles: Understand the strength of channels as they vary by such elements as demographics. Content is important but only by how it fits within the community culture and credibility.
- Right-Time Drivers: Context is king with consumers flooded by information they may not care about.
Their advice to marketing teams: map the path to engagement, identifying which touchpoints are “hot” and which are not. Aggregate the data to determine where the channel transitions are taking place. Understand what allows a buyer to move from one stage of the customer journey to the next. Find out what happens with consumers who either make the decision to buy or drop out. Identify the channels that convert consumers to customers.
A hypothetical example reveals the complexity of a typical customer journey. A consumer finds her auto insurance is expiring and decides to comparison shop for new coverage. She searches online among insurance carriers and is targeted by an online ad, which offers a number to call. She calls the call center, and details are fired into the CRM System, which generates an insurance quote that is emailed to her. That all seems straightforward to the insurance company and its marketing team. But that’s not all that’s going on in the mind of the consumer, who then goes to her network on Facebook or Twitter to see if there might be a better deal or better coverable at a similar price. A reply from a trusted source (credibility) might include a link to another insurer and another offer. An online calculator allows her to compare offers.
What does the marketing team need to do to influence a consumer in a customer journey that has now includes multiple touchpoints (search engines, websites, online advertising, call centers, emailed quotes, Facebook and Twitter networks)?
Five opportunities for right-time data:
- Understand what happens when different channels are active
- Map the hot paths for customers and validate those paths and touchpoints
- Correlate cross-channel data to reveal patterns in customer behavior
- Determine the source of traffic and conversions – is social media driving web traffic and conversations, or is it content strategy and paid banners?
- Use marketing analytics to show gaps in your process and where engagement opportunities exist.
Interested in how to map the customer journey or use right-time data to engage buyers? Share your views about the customer journey across paid, owned and earned media. Post a comment below. Or engage with us at Anametrix any time on the Web, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+.
