Report Preaching to the converted The goal of marketing is to deliver sales leads to grow customer conversions at the point of purchase. Oris it? In a reshaped digital world where consumer experience and ongoing engagement are key, where does that leave the definitive metric of sales? How do marketers balance the need to meet such short-term goals with the desire to build long-term relationships? Words: Martin Bewick M If we look 10 years ahead, the customer of 2028 is going to have their wishes catered for in an almost perfect way Ivan Mazour, founder and CEO of Ometria cDonalds reported a sales increase of 5.5 per cent, year on year, in the fourth quarter of 2017 the most recent set of figures available. It was its 10th consecutive quarter of growth, while its full-year sales were also the companys best in six years. Were these figures the result of a new ad campaign, product innovation or a revised pricing structure? In analysing the success, CEO Steve Easterbrook suggested something more ambiguous and pointed to improvements in consumer perceptions of the brand. Customer satisfaction scores were up across Watch the River Island Labels are for Clothes campaign video the board when it came to service, taste and quality. Brand perception and operational metrics, he said, go hand in hand. The improved sales were about everything we do. He might have added, in the words of rock singer Bryan Adams, that everything we do, we do it for you because a focus on the whole breadth of the customer journey, rather than simply driving sales at the till, was what had powered the uplift. Will such thinking shape marketing strategy in the coming years? Such questions represent a dilemma for marketers, who might be seeking to develop long-term strategies for customer engagement and loyalty, but who are also tasked with hitting short-term targets. However, for many marketers analysing macro and micro trends in consumer behaviour, it is becoming clear that its no longer enough to see conversion the ring of the till as the only goal. Raising expectations Ivan Mazour, founder and CEO of Ometria, a customer marketing platform for retailers, says that, in future, customer expectations will be raised and technology willhavepushed it there. The job of moving customers towards conversion will become more complex. If we look 10 years ahead, the customer of 2028 is going to have their wishes catered for in an almost perfect way, he says. Were seeing the trend towards this already. Whenever they look for something specific, theyll be able to find it within seconds, simply by speaking to a virtual assistant, whether theyre at home or out and about. They will be able to see the product on whichever screen is nearest to them, in real time. But as more product options become available to us, its likely well start to know less about what we want. For marketers, this is where the biggest shift will come. Technology will help us understand a customers mood. Are they likely to be interested in something theyve seen before, or are they feeling adventurous and want to see something completely different? It will help them find the most relevant products for that very moment and this interaction really will be the new marketing. What is implicit is that marketers wont be able to roll out a one-size-fits-all sales message and assume that a certain percentage of the audience will make a purchase. Marketing at the moment is still about campaigns, says Mazour, but in 2028, itwill be about understanding when an individual consumer is open to the potential ofmarketing, or whether theyre too busy and its actually the wrong time to show themsomething. Marketers will need to be even more smart in delivering relevant and personalised messaging. Experience before sales Mazour says he can already see a polarisation in how customer journeys are perceived. Theyre either working well, or theyre not working at all, he says. Brands of the future are going to be lumped into one of two buckets. Bucket number one is for organisations who care about the customer over and above everything else, and for who the marketing strategy is not sales-focused and about driving revenue. For them, it will be about making sure every single customer walks away from an interaction feeling more engaged, happy and excited. The second bucket will be full of brands that customers want to block and not communicate with ever again. Theres no gradient here. People dont sit in the middle. Youre either in the first bucket, or the second. Its black and white. In a world where consumers have little brand loyalty and many options, Mazour also says large-scale generalisations about consumers no longer suffice. Consumers are a mass of unknown people about whom you can aggregate data on a large scale. A customer, however, is an individual. Its someone who matters to you on a personal level and who you truly understand, or want to understand, and someone who you want to make realise that you care about them. The idea of the consumer was great when identifying big trends back in the day, but the world has moved on. It will be the customer, not the consumer, that matters for the marketer of the future. Creating connection Despite the effects of hyper-personalisation and in-the-moment relevance, its unlikely that large-scale ad campaigns will disappear. They may change, however, to reflect a more customer-inclusive attitude. High-street retailer Superdrugs latest campaign, for example, eschews the brands traditional and direct messaging of price offers and pack shots for the hashtag #BeautyWithoutBias and a series of vlogs that explore health and beauty issues facing people in the LGBTQ+ community. It follows a similar campaign by fashion retailer River Island. The River Island campaign, Labels are for clothes, featured body confidence activist Sabina appearing alongside the message Do not shrink; model Stav Strashko with the message Virgin Atlantics Four 100% woman (she was born male); muslim Zara (born in Britain but with Pakistani heritage) with Es of experience the message Do not stereotype; and Asianna (who models both as a man and a woman) with the message 100% gender free. We are celebrating the individuality and diversity of our brand and customers; we believe labels belong on clothes, not people, said River Islands customer director, Josie Cartridge. At Virgin Atlantic, the fragmented nature of customer journeys, But why would a brand seek to push beyond its traditional comfort zone like this? and the aim of extending lifetime value through trusted longThe wasfour to increase share of voice and share of mind by getting people to term relationships, is reflected in a strategy builtaim around pillars of customer experience thetalk fourmore Es. about the brand, says Alistair Green, global chief strategy officer at creative agency Studio Blvd, which created the campaign. To do this means making an emotional connection with peopleand, in River Islands case, standing for something Engagement that is clothing Ensuring Virgin connects with customers in beyond the right way and and fashion alone. You might not be a big enough brand to start a cultural conversation on your own, personalises its messaging. soits a case of having to join in finding a conversation that an audience is already involved in and passionate about. Excitement The customers risk, of course, Creating opportunities to surprise and delight both inis that cherry-picking a cause can generate claims the airport and on the flight itself. ofinauthenticity. You have to tread a fine line here, says Green, and be true to your own heritage. If youre not true to yourself, customers will find you out. Look at the many public Excellence backlashes in cases Creating frictionless, seamless processes across the entire of greenwashing, for example. But you also cant be too myopic andstuck in your own business to make it as easy as possible for the customer to do brand world, unaware of what the wider world is talking about. Ivealways been taught that what were trying to do is reflect our audience, or changes in business with the company. that audience. Such fresh, contemporary, inclusive messaging might create increased cut-through, Efficiency does it lead increased sales? Maintaining a process of continuousbut improvement and to stripping Its not new information to say that people make brand choices first and buy out waste to keep prices down for customers. products second, says Green. Its easy to slip into a mode where all you do is sell products. Quite often the product is not particularly distinct, and thats where brand choice becomes important. The aim is to get into that sweet spot where a consumer will always check out your brand if they decide they want to buy something. You want to be in that top five brand consideration set, and to get from seventh spot on the list into the top five, you need customers to think that brand stands for what I stand for; we have a connection. The speed read Think beyond conversion as being the only goal for marketing Hyper-personalised messaging may provide better connections with customers than campaigns Using brand experience to extend customer lifetime value should be a priority for marketers Short-term goals will need to be balanced by long-term strategy Building advocacy Creating a sense of connection via a different route is Marina Cheal, chief marketing and customer officer at Reevoo, a user generation content platform. We help brands connect with their purchasers and take them on an advocacy journey, starting with ratings and reviews, but taking them up the advocacy ladder, she says. We know that relationships are built on trust, and that emotional connections help to make it happen. In the form of customer reviews, or more formalised advocacy, user-generated content (UGC) can help steer or streamline the journey towardsconversion. Marketers can take heart, Cheal says, that return on investment (ROI) remains central to the process. Reviews are ROI driven, she says. You can use the long tail of words in a review to attract SEO traffic and bring consumers to your product. Reviews also increase engagement and dwell-time on a site which means you dont lose people as soon as theyve arrived. UGC can raise awareness off the site, too. Vloggers or bloggers can advertise a product, or produce content around a product that will drive further engagement. But, the critical thing is that customer reviews and UGC can also bring a significant uplift on conversion. We build metrics into any UGC product, so we always know how well it is performing. Choice of metrics For Cheal, conversion metrics remain a central tenet of the wider brand experience indeed, she describes the point of purchase as the primary moment of trust. However, she explains that for marketers, the dream is perhaps not such short-term measures of success. Again, the wider customer experience is crucial. A truly engaged customer is someone you havent had to try too hard to get to talk about you, she says. Everything you do as a marketer should be helping to influence the right customer the one you want to buy your products or services. You needto get them talking, sharing and referring, as well as making repeat purchases and extending their lifetimevalue. But, if thats the holy grail, then how do you get there? People are less trusting about brands, and they want to be more in control of the relationships they have with them. They also want to discover information themselves they want to pull it out, rather than have marketers push it at them. One of marketers jobs, therefore, is to tell stories and inspire people. I also think one of the most interesting developments in recent years has been the growth of subscription models in which people are buying into a brand or retailer but not actually making that single, standalone purchase. From food retailers such as Graze, to consumer electronics, boiler maintenance and power tools as well as the way cars are financed were starting to see that experience is just as important as the product itself. This has a big effect on marketing metrics such as cost per acquisition. It means youre looking at customer lifetime value, rather than one-off purchases. This might require you to invest much more up front, as youre expecting to see repeat purchases down the line. And yet, theres often a chasm between, on the one hand, performance marketing and short-term goals, and, on the other, long-term equity and brand experience. The way these are measured against the needs of the business as a whole, can be a real challenge. At Ometria, Ivan Mazour concurs. Marketers need to focus on customer-related metrics, he says. Its not just about whether youve hit your sales numbers for the day or the week, its about the lifetime value of the customer about loyalty and whether theyre coming back, and about how much theyre worth in the long term. Of course, short-term priorities are going to arise and there will be pressures from different parts of the business to deliver on revenue and get those conversions but marketing needs to operate a long-term strategy. cim.co.uk/exchange The aim was to increase share of voice and share of mind by getting people to talk more about the brand Alistair Green, global chief strategy officer, Studio Blvd