Most, if not all, marketers interested in customer engagement regularly ask themselves some pretty hard questions. How can we get closer to the consumer? What data is available? And, perhaps most importantly, what can we do with that data to improve the customer experience once it is available?
Understanding today’s shopper – who they are, what they do, what they say, where they shop, how often, and why – is a difficult task, to say the least. It’s no longer possible to overstate shoppers’ decision-making motivations. Brands and marketers simply must increase their intelligence in these areas.
The good news is that there are now a myriad of ways to accomplish this feat, and Ben Wang, Director of Advisory Services at PwC, was on hand at SAPinsider’s CRM conference in Las Vegas last month to help marketers gain a better understanding of their customers. Presented by SAP, the session titled, “Getting Closer to the Customer,” allowed Wang to expand on this topic and he offered a number of insights to attendees.
He launched directly into one of the most relevant and obvious players in the information gathering game today, which is social media.
“When we think about social media and customer reviews, a lot of that drives customer behavior today,” Wang said. “What is being said out there, either positive or negative, will create loyal customers and even un-loyal customers. Brands need to know how to react to these reviews, manage all these different social media feeds, and understand what to do with this information.”
Much of the data gleaned from social media is unstructured, but still essential. On its own, it can offer unique insights into consumer opinions. It can also be combined with structured data, such as customer history, to build even more useful and powerful profiles, which can then be integrated into predictive models and leveraged from a business planning and promotional perspective for future campaigns.
It all sounds so simple – just take two different data streams and combine them into a magically effective marketing plan. But, of course, the complexities involved can become overwhelming. Vast volumes of constantly generated structured data and the tangled web of unstructured data are extraordinarily difficult to coordinate. If brands are unable to accomplish this feat on their own, Wang stressed the need to partner with specialized outside data services providers.
Social media is also only the beginning. Despite its current popularity, social media is still only one aspect of a larger landscape. Shoppers still frequent brick-and-mortar locations regularly. But do the brands understand why? Wang says it is because people still want to physically touch products and they like the instant gratification it brings.
Online shopping is also growing in popularity. But, Wang wonders if marketers even understand what drives a customer to make a purchase online instead of in-store? According to the information currently available, the leading reason shoppers choose to buy online is because of exclusive deals and generous web-only promotions.
Segmentation is important for customer engagement, but understanding the differences between segmentations, and what drives the various behaviors across these divides, is really the key.
“My mom still cuts coupons today,” Wang said. “Me sending her a targeted promotion on her phone is probably not going to have an effect. But as we look at what today’s shopper is doing, there are mobile only audiences that you do want to target.”
Brands need the wherewithal, the tools, the ability, and the drive to differentiate between these segments. Different data levels can let brands dive deeper into the minds of customers to actionably influence the behaviors they want to leverage. These variables are all ultimately connected, but the dots are often hidden and scattered.
However, successful data collection and management can pull the veil back to reveal the valuable customer insights that are waiting beneath the surface.
This is the endgame that all marketers need to strive toward.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.