Now, Let’s Build the Experience

If you have laid a solid CX foundation and framed your long-term CX solution, you are likely a B2B infrastructure marketer working at a B2C pace. Building onto the customer experience takes all the basic elements you’ve established (insights, brand, messaging, content, data and technology) and builds on the established alignment.

If you can confidently say you’re ready to explore these major marketing challenges, it’s now time to build the customer experience.

Personalization (If/The Thinking)

Requires leveraging all the varying pieces of data you have on the customer (the “ifs”) and ensuring customers get the information they need at the right time, right place (the “thens”). For example, if you have data on someone that shows they already own your product and data on another that indicates they are thinking about purchasing for the first time, we can deliver each of them a different message based on where they are in their journey. This takes a sophisticated strategy to make sure you have the right tech stack in place and that those platforms are talking to each other properly.

Omni-Channel Orchestration

Leverages the content, data and technology strategy to truly implement a cross-channel environment to meet the customer where they are. This might include social, email, web and SMS messaging, along with allowing the customer options for buying in brick-and-mortar, e-commerce or mobile environments. An omni-channel strategy ensures that your customers have a consistent experience across different platforms and devices. And it’s just as important to make sure to tie the in-person and online experience together so they’re not disjointed.

Predictive/Prescriptive

If your data model and orchestration are in order, you have opportunities to test hypotheses and let machines help you learn what’s working in your marketing efforts. With the right technologies, artificial intelligence takes CX to the next level. It encourages your customers to believe that your brand really knows them — in some ways better than they know themselves.

Some of these concepts are on the “cutting edge” of most infrastructure brands’ current capabilities. However, with a strong 3-year roadmap, the foundational work can lead to innovative ways customers can buy products and engage with brands — building loyalty in an unparalleled level in the market.

“MAINTENANCE IS TERRIBLY IMPORTANT.” ~ Manolo Blahnik

Maintaining Great CX: Shifting with the Solution

Even with alignment and process, the world keeps shifting around us. As an infrastructure marketer, you likely see these problems and feel that finding solutions is part of your job. Start by bridging B2B/B2C trends.

Whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, these disciplines are becoming integrated. This intersection is where we think the success of the future CMO or CX Lead lives. Many basic B2B marketing strategies are no longer enough; they are simply the threshold to stay in the game. B2B infrastructure brands are winning by tapping into these B2C strategies. Because at the end of the day, a B2B buyer is still a person. They want an experience like they are getting in their consumeristic life, when they’re shopping on Amazon or browsing content on Spotify.

Three Key Pillars to CX Success

Offer timely information, win with ease. B2B customers want two-way information and open communication. B2C customers want you to simplify the process. Understand expectations and then build data, CX approaches and technology strategies to map the opportunities that will most enhance the customer experience. The best marketing leaders will offer avenues to share information and simplify processes in ways that feel highly personalized to the buyer — regardless of industry or segment.

[Information sharing → process simplification]

Lead with logic, win with emotion. B2B customers want relational, logical information to help them make buying decisions. B2C customers want emotional connection, awareness and ease of transaction. The best marketers will achieve both: offering content that educates and explains, and awareness efforts that continue to build brand loyalty.

[Logical + emotional]

Know your customers well, then win by personalizing to new customers. B2B marketers know their target intimately. Usually, they have worked with them for years. In B2C, the funnel is wider, and take-share marketing reigns supreme. The best marketers will not only target lists and accounts, they’ll become experts at data capture, content management and personalization. They’ll find new customers to keep pace with evolving demand.

[Target your customer list (ABM) → finding new customers]

To dive deeper into building and maintaining the customer experience — as well as Phases I and II — check out The Big Lil’ Book of CX. It is loaded with tips, tricks and tools that you can use today to solve the CX challenge.