It’s that time of year again when the seasonal festivities get underway and the focus for the nation’s digital marketers has already shifted well into the realms of 2016. The key New Year marketing predictions are being debated, and the biggest trends range from more mobile-focused online advertising and a new swathe of video ads, to the imminent release of wearable technology and its implications for the industry.
Whether the predicted trends are based on fads, fact or fiction, one area that will undoubtedly remain high on the New Year resolution list is the continued focus on the online user experience as a whole. Every marketer knows that a customer’s experience of the Internet is unique to them, and against a backdrop of increasingly complex consumer purchase behaviour, getting the online experience right and relevant has become the ultimate marketing challenge.
Perhaps the best way to address this is to look at today’s most successful performing websites and identify why they are leading the pack in terms of online presence, popularity and sales. The answer lies in the overall user experience and those that have the strongest elements of personalisation.
If we use star performer Amazon as an example, this year the company recorded its biggest ever day of trading, selling more than 7.4 million items during the recent Black Friday sales, an increase of 35 per cent year on year. That may have been a seasonal spike, however the online retailer has seen sales grow consistently in recent years and it is no coincidence that it seems to have created the most engaging and effective user experience. The personalisation aspect is key, particularly the creation of recommendations based on past purchases and browsing behaviour.
That brings us back to the trends and predictions of 2016, and it is those methods that make the ultimate user experience which will continue to surge. Everything from marketing automation, to building customer personas and content personalisation will be fully exploited by marketers looking to maximise every opportunity with online customer touchpoints.
The personal touch
Customised content is already a well-established trend in the online arena and is a way of exposing users to content that is served up based on their previous site behaviour. In the future we will see much more of a multi-pronged approach that provides summaries of customers’ interests, motivations and behaviours. Individual’s browsing behaviour will be monitored through visited pages, campaign clicks and searched keywords, demographics based on age, gender and job, and customer context from the time of day, device/browser used and location.
This insightful and detailed data can then be used to create user personas and the content tailored for each individual visitor. This would need to be supported and enabled by the right tools, such as an enterprise level CMS solution.
Marketing automation
We will see a greater focus on marketing automation, and the software and tactics used to allow companies to buy and sell. In today’s online arena, it’s about nurturing prospects with highly personalised, useful content delivered at exactly the right times, to help convert prospects to customers and encourage existing customers to spend more. It may not be the easiest marketing initiative to execute, however automation is extremely useful in creating new leads and the various touch points that make up a customer journey, whether it is through emails and newsletters or special offers and competitions. Companies can customise their approach, and develop and deliver perfectly timed, bespoke messages to different customer segments.
User personas
In 2016, user personas will remain a key part of online marketing initiatives, in a bid to create reliable and realistic representations of the company’s key audience segments for reference.
User personas are developed and iterated on in the backend of the company’s CMS system based on the user data gathered from onsite behaviour, it provides a clear picture of how customers are likely to use the site and describes customers’ backgrounds, goals, and values.
This data can then be used to tailor the customer journey and overall experience by implementing online marketing tools such as content personalisation and marketing automation.
These representations should be based on qualitative and quantitative user research as well as web analytics. It is important to remember to not create a persona for every different type of customer or scenario. Different customers will share common goals, objectives and requirements and therefore can be put into the same persona.
We could all play the prediction game and debate the next wave of trends on the online marketing horizon (and it’s great fun to do so). However, whatever the year, the focus for marketers should always be on the customer.
