Fueling the Customer Decision Journey by Understanding Intent

I took the stage to discuss navigating the complexity of today39s customer journey with Nikki Isaac global strategic agency analytical lead for Microsoft Advertising Nikki presented new research from Microsoft Advertising around the Customer Experience Quotient CXQ a term they coinedCXQ looks at the marketer39s ability to better understand and market to the customer decision journey the combination of these two competencies makes up a marketer39s CXQ Unsurprisingly Microsoft found that only 20 percent of marketers surveyed fall into the category of quothigh performance in the CXQquot meaning they are quotexcellentquot at both and are achieving a high return on investment as a resultHow can marketers increase their CXQ aptitude Nikki suggests that the key lies in a few important best practice data strategies that were uncovered in the research which surveyed more than 200 marketers and agencies in the US and UK According to Microsoft Advertising marketers who have a better understanding of the full customer decision journey see an average 45 percent incremental lift in their ad spend39s ROIWe39ve been talking about better understanding the customer journey for years But marketers still struggle in this regard as evidenced by their low CXQ aptitude One reason Many marketers only have visibility into portions of the customer journey They also struggle with what39s measurable and what39s not And they focus only on what they can see and measure amp8212 often the final conversion amp8212 unintentionally relegating all efforts to lowerfunnel strategies and constraining investment into the holistic customer journeyTo respond to these challenges I advocate a new approach intentbased marketing As customers move through their decision journeys their mindsets and intentions are constantly shifting Who they are amp8212 eg their demographics lifestyles affinities amp8212 becomes less important than what they want That means to both understand and market to the customer journey marketers must differentiate identity from context This enables us to personalize brand experiences to people39s intentions at each stage of the journey delivering relevant experiences that match their intentions not just their identitiesUnderlying this approach is a framework that maps different mindsets to stages in the journey To illustrate At Performics we39re reading the level of concreteness in peoples39 search query language to identify exactly where people are in their journeys The more concrete the search query the closer the person is to purchase We score ads and landing pages to ensure that they match the level of concreteness and specificity of the consumer39s mindset as shown in this case studyAn approach rooted in intentions enables marketers to untether themselves from the idea that the journey is linear Customers don39t generally follow a specific set of steps from unaware to aware to consideration to purchase This traditional funnel partitions the roles of channels into inflexible buckets preventing budget fluidity and relevant personalization Additionally an intentbased approach better aligns with customer expectations surrounding trust and privacy Instead of chasing customers with remarketing tactics amp8212 based on identity amp8212 that may be annoying or intrusive we can let the customer give us their signal of intent before presenting them with a relevant and assistive experienceMarketers looking to understand the customer journey at scale must also use an effective data strategy as Nikki suggested The key to this lies in combining traditional attributebased audience definitions with customer intent signals The merger of firstparty CRM data thirdparty data and intent data creates an especially powerful aggregate dataset that marketers can use to build highpropensity audiences and crosschannel experiences aligned to customer intentThe truth is that digital disruption will continue to accelerate an understanding that the customer journey is only going to become more challenging The industry will continue to focus on this theme Siloes and walled gardens will further fragment and isolate the views of the customerMarketers must ensure that consumers get value for the data they agree to provide while respecting their privacy As long as brands keep consumer intent at the forefront amp8212 relying on frameworks data strategies and machine learning to extract greater understanding from data to optimize the journey amp8212 they39ll be ready to deliver more value to customersClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Fueling the Customer Decision Journey by Understanding Intent

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Esteban Ribero

FEMA and the Ad Council Encourage AANHPI Communities to Enhance Disaster Preparedness in New PSAs - Ad Council InSites

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Fueling the Customer Decision Journey by Understanding Intent

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Esteban Ribero

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