Thinking Outside the Box for the Customer Experience

Take a look at some of the exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com over the last cou­ple weeks and you’ll notice a recur­ring trend of cus­tomer-focused mar­ket­ing. The most effec­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies begin with the needs and wants of the cus­tomer in mind. In fact, the suc­cess of any brand is often tied to its com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing a qual­i­ty cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is so impor­tant that brands who want to main­tain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage need to be open to try­ing new things that might seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive at first but can make all the difference.

Stephen Upstone, CEO and founder of LoopMe, encour­ages mar­keters to take advan­tage of auto­mat­ed opti­mi­sa­tion when using data to tar­get cus­tomers. With smart­phones cre­at­ing tril­lions of new data points every day, the capa­bil­i­ty of one ad ops man­ag­er to uti­lize all of that data to opti­mize a brand’s ads is severe­ly lim­it­ed. Upstone argues that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence gives brands the abil­i­ty to adapt their adver­tis­ing in real time, using the learn­ings they gain from auto­mat­ed opti­mi­sa­tion. It also gives brands a com­pet­i­tive edge over oth­er brands who are still rely­ing on humans to opti­mise their ads at a much slow­er rate.

Natanael Sijan­ta, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Mer­cedes-Benz Cars, dis­cussed why his com­pa­ny adver­tised its new E‑Class mod­el car on Amazon’s home­page at the Dmex­co Expo­si­tion and Con­fer­ence in Cologne, Ger­many. Ama­zon, of course, doesn’t sell Mer­cedes-Benz Cars, and it might seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a com­pa­ny to adver­tise its prod­uct on an e‑commerce site that doesn’t sell its prod­uct. Sijan­ta explained that the com­pa­ny is always look­ing for inno­v­a­tive ways to com­mu­ni­cate with their cus­tomers. Giv­en that cus­tomers go to Ama­zon for reviews on prod­ucts they’re inter­est­ed in, the move makes com­plete sense.

Matt Atkin­son, group CMO of Saga, recent­ly spoke with CMO.com about the need for the dif­fer­ent teams in an organ­i­sa­tion to work togeth­er. These “inter­nal part­ner­ships” are the key to mar­ket­ing suc­cess. He made the point that the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is impor­tant to every part of a busi­ness. The com­pa­ny suc­ceeds or fails as a result of its abil­i­ty to work together.

Celia Roma­niuk, group design direc­tor at Fjord, shares her thoughts on why com­pa­nies like Uber, Airbnb, and Kick­starter are so suc­cess­ful. Cer­tain­ly advanced tech­nolo­gies have helped, but the under­ly­ing rea­son for their suc­cess is their under­stand­ing of peo­ple and their focus on design­ing their busi­ness­es around “cre­at­ing bril­liant ser­vices for them.” Roma­niuk goes on to share three rules for com­pa­nies who also want to focus on peo­ple and design.

Klaus Som­mer Paulsen, CEO, cre­ative direc­tor, and founder of Adven­ture­LAB, dis­cuss­es the impor­tance of sto­ry­telling in a brand’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Sto­ry­telling has been an impor­tant com­po­nent of human civ­i­liza­tion in shar­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion and val­ues from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. Paulsen shares that brands who focus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing their brand sto­ry cre­ate some­thing mem­o­rable for their cus­tomers that sets them apart from the com­pe­ti­tion. He also offers some tips on how to make your brand’s sto­ry more engag­ing for an audience.

We invite you to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and learn from some of the mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the indus­try. Please let us know what you think.