As ecommerce companies focus on improving their product selection, customer service and supply chain, many of them overlook a key opportunity for differentiation—content marketing.
How can marketers improve their omnichannel content marketing efforts?
Leverage micro-moments of influence.
With all the channels available to consumers today (think: mobile web and apps, organic and paid social, online advertising, websites, digital signage, Internet of Things and text messaging, among others), the customer journey is anything but linear. Consumers’ thoughts, interests and motivations are fragmented and change by the moment. “Micro-moments” of influence can help them decide what they want, how they want it, where they want it and when.
According to Think with Google, “micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to a device—increasingly a smartphone—to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something or buy something. They are intent-rich moments when decisions are made and preferences shaped. In these moments, consumers’ expectations are higher than ever. The powerful computers we carry in our pockets have trained us to expect brands to immediately deliver exactly what we are looking for when we are looking. We want things right, and we want things right away.”
It is up to the modern marketer to be ready and take advantage of these micro-moments when they occur with the right content that is not only personalized, but also context-specific to what consumers need at that moment in time. In order to do that, marketers must take advantage of the right technology, which leads us to our second point:
Build the right digital experience technology stack
In order to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time on the right device or channel, you’ll need to build the right digital experience technology stack. Here are three characteristics to look for:
- Best of Breed: Look for a solution that enables you to integrate best-of-breed solutions in order to give you the richest set of marketing capabilities. Seek out vendors that have a robust partner ecosystem and certified technology integrations to support the customer journey every step of the way.
- Agile technology: Agile tech helps companies quickly seize the opportunity for differentiation, advancing ahead while competitors with less flexible digital ecosystems wait for their existing systems to catch up. This offers a true competitive advantage in a world where differentiation is increasingly hard to come by. So instead of an all-in-one monolithic suite, build an agile stack chosen from the world’s best point solutions as part of a digital experience hub.
- Highly Interoperable: In order to do that, you’ll need technology that is highly interoperable with any system, from CRM systems to e-commerce to DAM, ERP and so on. This approach helps marketers quickly adopt and capitalize on technologies that place the customer at the center of every interaction for competitive omnichannel experiences (and saves you precious time integrating products).
Consider Content-as-a-Service
Customers demand great digital experiences across all channels. Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) can help deliver content quickly and consistently to customers on their channel of choice. All marketers have to do is create content and CaaS allows it to be pulled wherever it needs to go via an API. Unlike traditional web content, CaaS content is separate from presentation, meaning content only needs to created once, rather than separately for each touchpoint.
By adopting these omnichannel marketing strategies, you’ll essentially future-proof your marketing, enabling you to not only meet the online shopping experiences demanded by customers today, but in the days to come as well.
Michael Gerard is CMO of e-Spirit.
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