- CX discipline leader, Spark Foundry
Olia Krivtchoun leads the CX discipline at Spark Foundry. Previously, she worked as head of digital at Initiative Australia, and as director of client strategy at Isobar, North America. Olia is particularly interested in the interaction and value exchange between brands and consumers.
For businesses and advertiser categories currently experiencing a slowdown in consumer activity, now is the optimal time to get started on projects that have been of high importance, but low urgency.
Reviewing your owned assets is one of them. Their importance to your business should not be underestimated. It can reduce customer churn when it’s more cost efficient than acquiring new ones, and it can drive sales in a new or under-performing channel.
Here are some simple and practical ideas for improving your customers’ digital experience, and getting your business ready for the post COVID consumer world.
Recalibrate Content
Start by reviewing your content to determine whether it still resonates with consumers. Is it sensitive to the post pandemic, financially conservative, socially-minded consumer? Adjust where needed.
Tackle it channel by channel. Speak to your call centre staff, have a look at your recent Facebook comments, reviews or emails from customers. Better yet, speak to customers. Give them a call, deploy a site survey (even free ones) and visit your retail partners.
Whether you’re webrooming more than before, or selling directly to consumers online, expand on content to make it easier for them to get what they need – whether it’s additional product information, in-situ shots, alternate versions of assets, or the implementation of ratings and reviews.
Optimise Site Experience
You’re likely to be among the 78 per cent of marketers [source: IAB] who have spent less on digital media over the last few months, so consider how to do more with your organic and earned traffic, and reduce the loss of prospects and consumers to your competition.
There are plenty of free analytics tools which will help you start. Develop funnels, understand where drop-offs are happening, and test what the reasons could be. Approach it with the question, ‘What could we be doing better’? It could be something as simple as decreasing page load times.
Recently, my team and I worked with a financial services client which made improvements to its company’s mobile assets, and as a result saw leads via the mobile channel increase by a factor of six times.
If you’ve invested in paid stacks such as Google Analytics 360 or Adobe, then even better. Now is the time to capitalise on their extended features.
Focus on Customer Retention, Investigate Churn
Particularly when budgets are limited, it’s worthwhile investigating churn. Depending on your category and specific business dynamics, keeping a customer can be 5-25% more cost efficient than acquiring a new one.
A simple way of examining this is by pulling as much granular data as possible on churn rates into a visualisation platform and explore.
Which audience segments are responsible for the most churn in your business? Is churn related to where they’ve come from? How long have they been a customer for, or what product mix did they use? Have you reached out to them? Is there an EDM or phone call that you can put in to lower the churn rates?
If you’re able to, move a casual customer to become a frequent one by offering discounts, a loyalty layer or bonuses such as free shipping. It may be much more cost effective than prospecting for a new one.
A food client we recently worked with implemented a $10 off repeat purchase, resulting in a double digital uptick in sales.
E-Commerce: Embrace Changed Behaviours
If you haven’t to date, start thinking about how to improve your e-commerce presence. It doesn’t have to mean going it alone. Start where audiences are and grow from there – relying on retail partners, including Coles, Woolworths, Amazon and eBay, and tap into their infrastructure.
Focus on suggested improvement to your content, which can also be deployed on e-commerce platforms in order to command more of the virtual shelf.
Also, be brave. Some of our auto clients are trialling test drives to the door. Other brands, such as Sephora, are delivering the key brand services such as make up consultancy in a digital way. Experiment with emerging channels and different ways to deliver on your brand promise.
Of course, not all marketers find themselves in the same situation. So in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, my advice for brands is, ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’.
Tags: digital marketing, data-driven marketing