Let’s Talk Relationships

Customer-centric marketing is the way of the future. If we want to be successful in this new landscape, we must focus more intently on putting the customer’s experience first.

It is time for us to rethink some of those old marketing strategies and focus more intently on putting the customer’s experience first. So, let’s take a look at three of the most significant customer-focused shifts in the industry:

It’s the Age of Personal Ads

Tie your campaigns to real people and connect your customers’ past purchasing history to their intent to purchase. You can make your messaging more relevant by focusing on simple insights about your consumers, and offering personalized recommendations. As an online advertiser, you can offer an individual buyer targeted advertisements and recommendations that enhance the real-time shopping experience while increasing sales.

The fact is that until now, this has posed a challenge for marketers pushing to connect with consumers more personally and more accurately. The reason for this is that our consumers are spending 60% of their digital media time on mobile devices, and cookie-based technologies are not designed for mobile environments. From this perspective, 2016 is going to be a year of real change. We’ll be witnessing more and more marketers moving over to technology solutions that help them personalize and stay connected to an increasingly mobile audience. We want to leverage this mobile experience with new technologies that build strong loyalty, use an emotive connection to the brand, and increase sales.

Interacting and Engaging

2016 is the year of the everyday people, the regular men and women—not the celebs. Today, consumers are no longer sold just by the traditional brand ambassadors—the professional athletes, actors or musicians. In this era, it is individuals with a broad reach on social media who define trends, and our success is measured in tweets, follows, likes, retweets, shares and subscribers.It means that we’ve moved into a new place this year, where campaigns must provide an opportunity for immediate engagement.

Those that encourage interaction end up with a more viral reach. We should expect to use social media channels as the primary arena of customer interaction, delivering messages, benefits and real value that make your fans share, keep them engaged and involved, and create viral reach.

 “Straight Talk” with On-Target Content

Stated differently, 2016 is being touted as the year of content marketing for brands. Developing creative content that is leveraged together with advertising strategies is a necessary way for marketers to reach customers more directly. If you are looking for more effective results from marketing activities, you should take two tracks simultaneously.

In addition to using targeted advertising, you can provide your audience with high quality, relevant content, that delivers real value and embeds your brand as an inherent part of the content. By using today’s cutting-edge technologies, one can develop authentic relationships with fans, and have a greater impact on the customer experience—so that you improve your bottom line.