The basis of marketing is to understand customers. What are their expectations, their desires, their problems, etc. by putting them at the center of any action or decision. Marketing automation allows to go further in this process.
Traditionally, depending on the type of product or service we offer, we identify our target, i.e. the target customer, and segment the market. This segmentation is usually done by demographic data (age, income, level of education, nationality, occupation, etc.), psychographic data (attitudes, lifestyle, personality) or behavioral data (type of use of a product, for example).
Today there are many more forms of segmentation based on data we obtain from consumers’ online behavior:
The segmentation becomes very precise, including elements such as consumers’ intentions (purchase intention, information search or inspiration…), their interactions with a brand (sharing or evaluating information on social networks for example), their perceptions of a brand (in relation to online comments) or their geo-positioning (location information given by a connected device).
User expectations
In parallel, consumers have never been so demanding of a brand:
The starting point (maybe we forgot at some point), is that they want to be treated as human beings, not as numbers or “IDs”. They are not just a wallet, a prospect to be converted into a customer. They want human-to-human relationships, not business-to-consumer, Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C), as we usually think.
They want to receive quality inputs, in the form of high value-added content that uses the same language as their own. Those inputs should be based on their problems, their doubts, their passions or their intentions at any given moment.
They want immediate, personalized and consistent responses to their requests, on all communication channels, online and offline. How many times have we explained the same story to different customer service operators? How many times have we received banner advertising for a product we have already purchased? The organization of a company does not matter: the fact that marketing is not connected to sales or customer service is not the problem of the customer, who wants the experience with the brand to be as seamless as possible.
On the other hand, today’s consumer demands more from the brand than a product or service, he needs to know what are its values, what is its vision, how it takes responsibility for social or ecological aspects … What does the company do with the personal and behavioral data it is giving him, how is its loyalty rewarded?
The brand has to empathize with the consumer, to feel what he feels, and to provide in real time the appropriate response to his request, in an ” ultra-personalized” way. This is when we talk about unitary segmentation, that is to say, formed by a single consumer (a utopia for marketers?).
Automate communication
In order to offer this degree of customization, there are several stages:
- First we must capture as much information as possible in the form of data from all users.
- Secondly, we must structure this information. This is done thanks to datamining , which allows us to discover behavioral patterns in the huge amounts of data received. Of course, the finer and more detailed the pattern and the smaller the segment, the greater the possibility of personalization.
- Thirdly, we must know at what stage of the buying process the user is at. It allows us to determine their intention and needs: they may be at the beginning of the process, asking themselves general questions or looking for inspiration. They could also be already decided to buy a product and are actively looking for a supplier for a specific and immediate need. If you want to know more about the Customer Journey, we recommend this blog article where we give you all the explanations…
- Finally comes the automation of communication, which makes it possible to send the right information in real time and on the right channel. This requires pre-established content elements adapted to each situation (type, format, length, etc.). The final content is created based on the analysis of behavioral data and user intent.
Of course we are talking about a background work that requires time, methodology and a certain budget. Relying on experts is advisable to ensure a correct implementation of the tools (software, chatbot…).
In B2B, Adobe’s Marketo is a good example of an automation tool. For those who want to go deeper, here is the link.
All of the above leads me to this conclusion: it seems a paradox, but automation is synonymous with the humanization of the relationship between the company and the consumer.
Do you have the same opinion?
