Mind The Marketing Gaps In The Customer Journey
We take a look at some of the critical facts and figures of the report and offer key insights into how to create a joined-up cross-channel marketing strategy.
There is still a huge knowledge gap when it comes to understanding the customer journey. We take a look at some of the critical facts and figures of the report and offer key insights into how to create a joined-up cross-channel marketing strategy.
In this post I’ll explain how to find the holes in your sales funnel, how they got there and how to plug them.
The World is Now Digital. How consumers interact with brands has changed forever. Whether accessing your marketing via wearable technology during a commute or in the evening on a tablet, consumers expect to be able to access your content whenever and wherever they are.
But as Oracle Marketing Cloud’s third annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report reveals, many marketers are still struggling to create a seamless and consistent experience for consumers across all their channels. This leaves ROI-threatening gaps in their marketing strategies and failing to break down interdepartmental silos – all while revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of the customer’s journey.
The Integration Gap
67% of responding companies agree their priority is for all key marketing activities to be integrated across channels, but only 43% say they ‘understand customer journeys and adapt the channel mix accordingly’.
Most worryingly, only 30% of companies have ‘cross-functional/cross-silo teams to facilitate integrated marketing’, while a mere 19% have ‘measured the financial results of conducting cross-channel or integrated marketing’.
Fill The Gap By…
- Ensuring you have a clearly defined strategy in place.
- Creating a silo-busting team that promotes and coordinates individualised customer experiences across all channels.
- Putting processes in place that allow you to measure ROI.
Danger!
With no ROI measuring facilities in place, marketers run the risk of the C-Suite reducing marketing budgets and crippling cross-channel marketing strategies in the process.
The Cross-Channel Gap
It’s more than a gap. Only 7% of client-side respondents say their organisations are ‘very much set up to deliver effectively orchestrated cross-channel marketing activities’. 49% state they are set up ‘to a certain extent’ And 35% of companies are ‘not really’ set up.
What is of real concern is the finding that 62% of organisations believe their messaging, execution and delivery strategies are fragmented across touch points.
Fill The Gap By…
- Placing the focus on testing and optimising your marketing strategy to ensure cross-channel effectiveness.
- Not obsessing purely on planning, design and content.
- Ensuring that time is more evenly spent between different elements of a campaign to achieve maximum impact across all your channels.
Top 3 Roadblocks to Cross-Channel Delivery
- Lack of resources.
- No clearly defined strategy.
- Company politics/vested interests.
Seismic Shift, Ignored
51% of companies agree that they ‘focus on the customer not the campaign’. VS. 29% who disagree.
There are still companies who don’t realise that there’s been a seismic shift in marketing. The customer is now in charge, not the marketer.
The Mobile Gap
There is some positive news—the number of companies ‘integrating mobile into broader marketing campaigns’ is growing. In 2013 60% of client-side respondents had a mobile strategy in place, compared to 2014, where 76% of client-side respondents had a mobile strategy in place.
Missed Opportunity?
The focus on mobile—and its integration into marketing strategies—is still small when compared to the opportunities that the channel offers to marketers.
Remember:
- Ensure you have a clearly defined marketing strategy in place that maps the customer’s journey.
- Make your brand consistent and accessible to consumers across all your marketing channels.
- Bust silos to ensure that all departments are working together seamlessly.
- Ensure your marketing strategy isn’t paying lip service to the huge potential of mobile.
Put processes in place that allow you to measure and show ROI – otherwise the C-Suite could make swingeing cuts.