Good online marketing always puts the potential customer at the center of its efforts. However, many companies focus their marketing efforts primarily on individual channels, forgetting that a good Customer Experience must be maintained across all marketing and distribution channels. Suitable online marketing channels along the Customer Journey Finding and using these opportunities is enormously important for sales success. But what do you have to pay attention to?
What are appropriate online marketing channels along the customer journey?
The first thing to determine is what the customer journey is in the first place. Many experts have made different classifications here, but the easiest way to break this down is to give a simple overview. The customer journey proceeds in the following steps:
- Attention for a product
- Interest on a product
- Search for Informationen for this product
- The Purchase decision
- The Feedback share about the product
This is important, but still too short-sighted. Because along this customer journey there are Various touchpoints at which the customer comes into contact with the company.t. This does not have to be an active contact. The initial contact is, for example, an advertising banner or an advertisement on a social network. This Touchpoint represents the beginning of the customer journey, so to speak.
The goal is to provide the customer with optimal support and appropriate content at every other point of contact from this point onward, if possible.
Know the users personae / target group exactly
It is important for this to Know your own target group precisely. This means that companies should first invest time and also money to define their own target group and create individual buyer personae. Buyers personae are a kind of pattern for specific customer groups. These can usually be very well on the basis of their own data.
Because only those who know their customers and thus also possible customers can Align your own marketing sustainably and efficiently with precisely these customers. After all, marketing must take place in the channels in which the company's own customers cavort.
To create an optimal customer experience, marketing must be adapted to the channels and to the target group.
Determine appropriate online marketing channels along the customer journey
In addition to the content, the choice of channels also plays an enormously important role, as we have already seen. The great art is to use the content and the channels so skillfully that the users find the right match for their current path along the Customer Journey be addressed. A good mix of information and pure advertising are advantageous here. In addition, it is important to Refer users specifically to other channels whenever possible. An Instagram ad with colorful pictures may arouse interest. But the impulse to buy usually comes from information.
So if the user is lured to the company's own website by the advertising, where the product and its benefits are explained (text, images, videos), this can sustainably improve the customer experience and thus significantly increase sales success.
Think out of the box - don't just focus on the online space
However, the customer journey is not limited to the purely online area. Among other things, customers can get to know the various offers and options directly on site at the company, but also by telephone. It is important that also the customer experience is not broken in these areas if possible. This is, purely technically, already a real challenge with existing customers.
With new customers, this seems to be an impossibility at first. Direct contact by potential new customers usually happens when the customer has a need for explanation. In other words, they have already progressed along the customer journey and have questions about a product or service. Companies must thus train their own employees extensively so that they can answer customers' questions competently and truthfully. This allows companies, whether they have a hotline or a storefront, to reach customers in a targeted manner and ensure an optimized customer experience throughout.
This may sound complex, but it is particularly important for products and services that require a lot of explanation, important for customer acquisition.
Conclusion: Appropriate online marketing channels along the customer journey is important for every company
Companies are always striving to improve the appropriate key figures. But this effort is not always targeted and appropriate. A lot of money is spent, especially in the area of online marketing, without keeping the goal, the customer experience, in mind.
If companies focus much more on the relevant channels along the customer journey and pay special attention to the customer experience on these channels, companies will reach customers much more effectively.
This means that, among other things, the Conversion Rate and users are won over better and more effectively for the company. Channels that are not part of the actual online marketing segment must also be taken into account. This is because users interact with a company on many levels and should therefore be optimally reached and addressed at every point of the customer journey.
