Today’s buyers have begun presenting marketers with new challenges, as targeted buyer personas adapt their media consumption to new and evolving technologies. As a result, marketing budgets have continued to increase yearly. Decades ago the priority was print and radio, then it became television and now the focus is on digital marketing.

Buyers have also changed the way they interact with the increasing volume of communication that is directed towards them.  Digital channels have become the norm and with 2 billion people now online every day, this is an area which can’t be overlooked. Traditional marketing tactics are no longer relevant.

Digital has made what is arguably the most significant impact of any marketing channel.  Consumers are expecting the “wow” factor when it comes to brand interaction and this has CMOs, CIOs, and CTOs losing sleep.

In fact, Forrester found that 64% of CMOs are now responsible for delivering their organisation’s customer experience. With an increasing number of customer touchpoints, content as king, and personalisation as major requirements, the scope of this responsibility is vast.

Dwelling on how to jumpstart a company’s digital transformation can make technology leaders forget the real reason behind this shift: to improve the customer’s experience. Here are some tips on how to deliver the ultimate customer experience:

Let customer experience guide your company’s digital transformation

To address your company’s digital transformation, you must focus on delivering consistent experiences in both your digital strategy and within your organisational structure.

You might want to consider either merging the marketing and technology roles into a chief digital officer role or merging the two departments’ budgets. Doing so means that you would have to structure your company in a way which would allow for the marketing and technology goals and budget to synergise and drive optimal customer experience, without overlooking the bigger picture.

The customer experience should be consistent across media

Gather and understand social listening and offline channels data

To successfully roll out strategies geographically and functionally, you must prioritise your target markets and immediate needs. Pick a market and a buyer persona you want to profile, analyse that particular data, and plan data-driven, actionable items you can execute in the short term.

Achieving the desired results will gather attention from your shareholders’ as well as the approval to invest in a unique multilingual social-listening program.

Stay on top of what your audience really wants and needs

A continuous evaluation of your buyer personas, including their pain points is necessary in order to stay relevant to their ever changing needs.  Leverage online social platforms in order to stay on top of what your audience is talking about.

The monitoring tools you would use would largely depend on your target market, buyer personas, vertical and business goals. Put simply: although there might not be a silver bullet, some tools might prove more suited to your circumstances.

Plan globally to ensure branding consistency and cost efficiency

Building your strategy with a global lens will ensure brand and message consistency as well as cost efficiency. It will also provide you with valuable information around:

·         Local channels you should invest in based on the buyer persona for each stage of the consumer journey

·         The team, technology and tools you need to successfully deploy this strategy

·         The KPIs your company should be focusing on

Build with the whole world in mind

Focus on local execution to preserve cultural relevancy

Building a framework to support the execution of local tactics is essential to delivering a unique experience to your local buyer personas. Rather than trying to localise most or all of your content, you should consider producing local content. Building rapport with your local influencer plays an important role in strengthening customer loyalty and generating quality leads.

Be flexible and ready to be guided by your customers’ needs

Remember that it is your buyer personas that will guide you through your digital transformation and not the other way around. Being agile means being able to identify changes and shifts in your customers’ desires and needs and will significantly increase your speed to market.

The constant access to a wide array of digital platforms has given marketing departments an opportunity to listen, understand and add value to the customer experience.  Doing so properly is a fail-safe way to ensure continued growth and success for your business.