Navigating A Multi-Channel World: Creating Customers & Advocates

Today's multi-channel world has created a myriad of choices for both customers and marketeers. Customers are bombarded with product information that has even penetrated into personal platforms such as Facebook & Instagram. Marketeers are challenged to place the right investment to justify the highest ROI, optimal for engaging customer at the right point of their evaluation journey.

The truth is, there is no longer a sequential customer journey in a multi-channel world. Without a clearly defined roadmap, how exactly do you identify where your customer is and what assets do you deploy at each stage?

One way to approach this challenge is to look at the issue in three layers - Firstly, market to the customer from a cohesive, end-2-end journey perspective. The overall brand messaging is pivotal, ensuring that your assets/activities in different parts of the journey are building up to an integrated campaign approach. Secondly, going deep matters. Understand what is the motivation for your customer's behavior and what he/she is trying to achieve (for example, a customer who downloaded an industry benchmarking report may be looking to justify why your brand has strong product execution roadmap/vision). Finally, experience sums it all. Our decision to engage with a specific brand in life is often moulded by the emotional efforts needed to interact with the brand. The winner is often the brand that makes the customer's journey - the easiest, most enjoyable and valuable!

"Customers" as we described, are humans after all. Establishing an easy way to engage, proliferate and advocate may potentially be your new "compass" to navigating in a multi-channel world.