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3 practical steps for driving CX success as a Digital Marketer

By Joshua Price

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“Today’s consumers do not differentiate between a brand experience and customer experience. As a result, CX and marketing teams must work together to develop a unified vision and align resources to connect the brand promise and experience with the customer experience.” – Source: Forrester

In an increasingly competitive industry, companies are turning to Customer Experience frameworks to help differentiate their brand. Often defined as the sum total of a customer’s interactions and perceptions of a brand’s products and services, the responsibility for CX doesn’t sit solely within the Digital Marketing wheelhouse. However, Digital Marketing forms a pivotal part of implementing a CX strategy.

Most digital marketers are aware of the role CX plays in improving both brand perception and customer loyalty. What they’re lacking however, is the practical knowledge required to start driving CX success within their team and broader organisation. Here are three key concepts that serve as a starting point for delivering better customer experiences. 

#1 Getting your data right and data storytelling

The first step to creating a successful CX strategy is to make sure your data processes and strategy is correct. In the haste of developing CX that delights customers, an often overlooked need is the ability to measure if optimisations are having an impact. Are you capturing where your customers come from, and how they engage with your content? Do you have the right dashboards to properly analyse and present your key metrics? 

Once those key processes are in place, you can begin to analyse and draw customer insights from your data. Data is specifically essential in the ability to target, segment, and personalise content for audiences.

Being data-driven is certainly one of the most aspired-to business objectives, but it’s important to remember that not everyone has the ability to analyse and draw insights from data at a glance. That’s why data storytelling is one of the most important tools in the CX kit. Quite simply, data storytelling is the ability to communicate key insights in a simple and holistic way.

 

#2 Customer journey mapping

A customer journey map is a visual representation of not only touchpoints a customer has with your company, but also their changing thoughts, actions and goals as they move towards purchase. Typically a customer journey map will be sectioned into phases in the customer journey, from awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention. 

Amongst others, the key advantages to creating a customer journey map are:

  • Understanding what content is being delivered to your customer across different channels;
  • Providing much-needed context around what the customer is thinking at different phases of the journey so you can determine if the content you’re delivering is meeting the customers expectations; and 
  • Visualising the entire buyer lifecycle, to identify gaps or opportunities for better communication.

 

#3 Creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A core concept for companies that adhere to the Agile framework, and one you may be familiar with, is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This approach allows for the creation of a product with just enough features to be usable (viable) for customers, who then directly or indirectly provide feedback on the product. Using this approach, companies can avoid lengthy or unnecessary work.

While building an MVP is most common in software development, the technique can be just as effective when devising a CX strategy. Creating an MVP version of a customer journey optimisation, or new campaign launch, allows you to measure if what you are creating matches your customers expectations, or even better, exceeds them. This approach also ensures that you’re focusing your efforts on initiatives that work.

For Digital Marketers in particular, you could view MVPs as similar to an A/B test. Where a concept, process (or product of course), is tested in the market to determine feasibility for future resourcing and investment.

Whichever concept you decide to go with, it’s imperative for Digital Marketers and CX teams to ensure consistent and ongoing alignment of brand and customer experiences. Your business depends on it.

 

Looking for practical CX training? 

The Customer Experience Elevate course at Academy Xi is an online, 10-week part-time course geared towards providing you with the complete CX toolkit (including those mentioned above) to implement your CX strategy. Complement your existing professional expertise and boost your career with in-demand Customer Experience skills.