Experience marketing is the game-changer that CMOs and business leaders need to connect with customers and drive growth. Our comprehensive 10-step checklist guides you through the process of creating a strategy that prioritizes the human element, engages customers, fosters growth, and helps you gain a competitive advantage.
Experience marketing is the recipe for success that marketers need to cook up a storm and leave their customers hungry for more.
Because copyright matters. How to cite this article: American Institute of Business Experience Design (2023). Experience marketing done right: A comprehensive checklist for CMOs and business leaders. Retrieved [date you accessed the article], from [copy and paste the URL of the article page].
Marketing executives are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to connect with customers and drive business growth. However, with the advent of digital channels and the challenges posed by the pandemic, traditional marketing strategies are no longer adequate. Consequently, experience marketing has emerged as a powerful tool for CMOs and business leaders to engage customers, foster growth, and gain a competitive advantage. Whether you're a newcomer to experience marketing or an expert, this 10-step comprehensive checklist serves as your guide to creating a winning strategy that prioritizes the human element. So, let's dive into each element.
1. Define your target audience with a focus on customer experience
In experience marketing, it's crucial to focus on the "experience buyer persona" rather than just the traditional buyer persona. An experience buyer persona takes into account not only basic demographics but also the customer's pain points, preferences, and expectations when interacting with your brand. This approach enables businesses to create a personalized and engaging customer experience that resonates with their target audience.
In traditional marketing, businesses often focus on creating a buyer persona based solely on demographics such as age, gender, and income. However, in experience marketing, it's important to consider the customer's pain points, preferences, and expectations when interacting with your brand. By creating an experience buyer persona, businesses can gain a better understanding of their target audience and create a more personalized and engaging customer experience.
For example, a business selling home fitness equipment may target a middle-aged demographic interested in weight loss. However, an experience buyer persona would consider factors such as the customer's fitness level, previous experiences with fitness equipment, and preferred workout styles. Armed with this information, the business can create personalized workout plans and offer equipment tailored to each customer's needs.
A personalized and engaging customer experience can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher sales, and greater overall success. Therefore, defining your target audience with a focus on customer experience and creating a buyer persona that takes into account their needs, preferences, and pain points is essential in today's competitive business landscape. By doing so, businesses can create a more personalized and engaging customer experience that drives customer loyalty and ultimately leads to greater success.
2. Set clear goals that align with customer experience
In order to ensure the success of a marketing strategy, it is imperative to prioritize the customer experience. To achieve this, it is essential to set unambiguous objectives that are in line with the desired customer experience. These objectives could encompass a wide range of goals, such as enhancing brand awareness, fostering customer loyalty, or increasing sales. Regardless of the desired outcome, the primary focus should be on creating a positive experience for the end user.
One effective approach to achieving these goals is to regularly solicit customer feedback. This feedback can provide valuable insights into how customers perceive a brand and where improvements may be necessary. It can also help identify the areas customers value most, enabling marketers to concentrate their efforts accordingly.
For instance, if one runs an e-commerce business, reducing shopping cart abandonment rate could be a crucial goal. To achieve this, one can collect feedback from customers who have abandoned their carts to pinpoint any issues or pain points they may have experienced. Based on this data, one could modify the checkout process to make it more user-friendly and reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment. The business goal of reducing shopping cart abandonment rate is then aligned with customer experience by improving the checkout process.
In this case, setting concrete goals that are focused on the customer experience is essential for any marketing strategy. By doing so, brands can create a positive experience for their customers, increase brand loyalty, and ultimately drive sales. Soliciting customer feedback regularly and making adjustments based on the insights obtained is a valuable practice that can help achieve these objectives.
3. Craft a compelling story that connects with customers
In experience marketing, the logic is that businesses should focus on crafting a story that captures the value of their market segment from the perspective of the consumer. This is in contrast to traditional marketing, which focuses on the value derived by the company and communicated through channels.
To connect with their audiences, businesses need to deliver stories that resonate with their customers by understanding their needs and desires. This can be achieved by conducting market research, gathering customer feedback, and engaging with them on social media platforms. Once a business has a deep understanding of its target audience, it can craft a story that resonates with them on a personal level.
For example, let's say a business wants to market a new line of environmentally-friendly products. They could create a story that resonates with their target audience by highlighting the impact of pollution on the environment and how their products can help reduce the carbon footprint. By focusing on the value captured from a consumer perspective, the narrative is likely to connect with the audience on a deeper level and create a stronger bond between the brand and its customers. On the other hand, in traditional marketing, the focus is on the company's value proposition and not necessarily on the customer's needs and desires. For instance, a company may market its products by stating that they are the best in the market in terms of quality and price. While this may be true, it does not necessarily create a strong bond with the audience.
In conclusion, in experience marketing, it is essential to capture and share value that speaks directly to consumers. By developing a narrative that connects with customers and showcases your brand's values, mission, and unique selling proposition, businesses can create a positive experience for their customers and strengthen their brand-customer relationship.
4. Choose the right channels that align with customer experience
In experience marketing, businesses should focus on various types of channels, including human, digital, and physical, to enhance online-offline engagement, in contrast to traditional marketing, which tends to focus on one dominant channel at a time, such as digital.
For example, in experience marketing, a business may use a combination of online channels, such as social media and email, offline channels, such as events and physical stores, and human interaction, such as customer service representatives, to create a seamless and personalized customer experience. In contrast, traditional marketing may solely rely on digital channels, such as email marketing, to reach customers.
To implement this task, businesses can start by identifying their target audience and their preferred channels of communication. By doing so, businesses can create a tailored marketing strategy that aligns with their customers' needs and preferences. For instance, if a business's target audience is primarily active on social media, they may focus their marketing efforts on social media platforms to reach and engage with their customers.
Therefore, the importance of hybrid channels and the emotions they generate in experience marketing cannot be overstated. Businesses that focus on creating a seamless and personalized customer experience across multiple channels are more likely to build lasting relationships with their customers and drive business growth while enhancing customer experience.
5. Create engaging content that adds value to customers
Developing engaging content that adds value to customers is an important part of any marketing strategy. There are many different types of content that can be used to engage customers, including videos, blogs, podcasts, or webinars. One way to create engaging content is to develop content that entertains, educates, or inspires your audience. This type of content can be used to build relationships with customers, and can help to keep them engaged with your brand.
For example, a company that sells outdoor gear might create a series of videos that showcase different outdoor adventures, such as hiking, camping, or kayaking. These videos could be used to educate customers about different outdoor activities, while also inspiring them to get outside and explore. In addition to creating content that entertains, educates, or inspires your audience, it's important to make sure that the content adds value to the customer experience. This means that the content should be relevant to the customer's interests, and should provide them with information or insights that they can use to improve their lives.
Ultimately, the goal of experience marketing is to create content that covers different types of consumer experience value. This means that in contrast to traditional marketing that often integrates one or two values, experience marketing focuses on creating content that covers a wide range of values such as emotional, social, educational, and functional.
By doing this, businesses can create more engaging and effective content that resonates with customers, and helps to build stronger relationships with them.
6. Personalize the experience for each customer
In traditional marketing, personalization is based solely on data analytics, which often fails to capture the context and meaning in customer or user experience. Experience marketing, on the other hand, uses experience marketing analytics, which combines big data with immersive and ethnographic techniques to propose a highly personalized experience to each consumer.
This approach allows businesses to tailor their content, messaging, and offers based on individual customers' behavior, preferences, and history, while also taking into account their unique context and experiences. By doing so, experience marketing ensures that personalization creates a positive experience for the customer.
For instance, using traditional marketing, a coffee shop may offer a coupon for the customer's next purchase, but this generic approach fails to create a meaningful connection with the customer. It also doesn't account for the fact that the customer may only be interested in a particular type of latte or may prefer a different type of coffee altogether. As a result, the personalization offered through traditional marketing may not be relevant, leading to a negative customer experience, and a missed opportunity for the business to create a loyal customer. However, a coffee shop that uses experience marketing analytics may observe that a particular customer always orders a latte with extra foam. Using this information, the coffee shop can create a personalized experience by offering the customer a loyalty reward for their frequent purchases, and by suggesting new flavors of lattes that align with the customer's preferences.
In conclusion, experience marketing analytics is a game-changer for CMOs and businesses when it comes to customer experience and revenue. By taking a more comprehensive approach to personalization, businesses can create a more meaningful connection with their customers and drive higher engagement and loyalty. This not only leads to increased revenue but also strengthens the brand image and reputation of the business.
7. Optimize the user journey with a focus on customer experience
Integrating various touchpoints in the customer journey can deliver immense value for both businesses and customers. It allows for a more seamless and personalized experience for customers, as they can easily navigate through different touchpoints and have consistent interactions with the brand.
One example of implementation is a customer service chatbot that is integrated with a company's website and social media channels. This chatbot can help customers with their queries, provide product recommendations, and even process orders, all without the need for human intervention. This not only saves time for both the customer and the business, but also ensures a consistent experience across various touchpoints.
By continuously improving the user journey and enhancing the customer experience, businesses can build a loyal customer base and gain a competitive advantage in the market. In summary, it is crucial for businesses to focus on optimizing the user journey with a customer-centric approach to deliver value and enhance overall experience.
8. Measure and analyze results with a focus on customer experience
To have both quantitative and qualitative measurements of customer experience, businesses will need to use various methods of data collection. Quantitative data involves numerical measurements, while qualitative data focuses on subjective experiences and opinions.
One way for businesses to measure customer experience quantitatively is to use customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys typically ask customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1-10. Businesses can also use metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) to measure customer loyalty and ease of use, respectively.
To measure customer experience qualitatively, businesses can use methods such as focus groups and customer interviews. These methods allow businesses to gather in-depth feedback from customers, including their opinions, feelings, and experiences. They can also use social media monitoring tools to track customer sentiment and identify common themes and issues.
For example, let's say a business owns an online store selling clothes. They can use quantitative metrics such as website traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rate to measure the effectiveness of their website. They can also use customer satisfaction surveys to gather feedback on the overall shopping experience and Net Promoter Score to measure customer loyalty. To gather qualitative feedback, they can conduct focus groups with customers to understand their opinions on the quality of their products, customer service, and website design. They can also monitor social media platforms to identify common complaints, issues, and areas for improvement.
By using a combination of quantitative and qualitative measurements, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their customers' experiences and use the insights to improve their strategy and tactics.
9. Prioritize customer experience in the design of your experience marketing strategy
A human-centered design and innovation process prioritizes the needs and preferences of customers and involves them in every step of the design and development process. This approach focuses on understanding the customer's needs and wants, and designing products and services that meet those needs and wants. In contrast, a product-centered design and innovation process focuses on creating a product or service that the company thinks the customer needs, without much input from the customer.
A financial institution providing online banking services can improve its platform by implementing a human-centered design and innovation process. By keeping in mind the needs and preferences of its customers, the institution can create a user-friendly, secure and efficient online banking platform. Involving customers in the design process and gathering feedback through a human-centered design and innovation process can lead to a platform that has clear instructions, is easy to navigate, and provides quick access to account information and transactions. This can result in increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, which may attract new customers through positive word-of-mouth marketing.
By prioritizing customer experience through a human-centered design and innovation process, businesses can create products and services that are more likely to be successful and satisfying for customers. This approach can lead to increased customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth marketing, and ultimately, increased revenue for the business.
10. Continuously improve with a focus on customer experience
To ensure continuous improvement of customer experience, it is important to have a robust system for auditing and monitoring the implementation of customer experience strategies. This can involve tracking metrics such as customer satisfaction, retention rates, and customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and measure progress over time.
In addition to regular surveys, hotels can also integrate other ethnographic techniques to gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs and preferences. Ethnographic techniques involve observing customers in their natural environment and analyzing their behavior and interactions to identify patterns and insights. For instance, a hotel chain can conduct on-site observations to understand how customers interact with their staff, amenities, and services. By combining various ethnographic techniques with traditional customer feedback surveys, hotels can gain a more holistic view of their customers and their experience. This can help them identify opportunities for improvement and innovation that they may not have been able to identify through surveys alone.
Moreover, to ensure effective implementation of experience marketing strategies, companies need to create a new profile of marketing executives, namely the Chief Experience Marketing Officer (CXMO). This role will be responsible for overseeing the end-to-end implementation of experience marketing strategies, from planning and execution to monitoring and optimization.
By having a CXMO in place, companies can prevent wasting money and resources on ineffective marketing campaigns and instead focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences that drive business growth.
In conclusion, experience marketing is a powerful strategic framework that places the human element at the center of a company's approach. By following the steps outlined above, CMOs and businesses can unlock its full potential and create engaging experiences that customers want in the phygital age. This not only drives business growth but also creates a positive and memorable experience for your customers, making it an essential framework for the future of marketing.
Undoubtedly, research has shown that experience marketing is the next big thing that all businesses should embrace. By acquiring knowledge and skills for effective decision-making, companies can drive growth and implement a human-centered business model that allows for an effective and ROI-driven corporate strategy at all levels. This approach helps your brand stand out, connects with audiences across physical and digital platforms, and creates a sustainable competitive advantage while also making a positive impact on society and the environment.
Experience marketing is a powerful approach that places the human element at the center of a company's strategic framework. It covers all aspects and functions of a business, including HR, R&D, design, finance, management, and more, while also accounting for the various actors involved in the business experience, such as B2B customers, end consumers, employees, suppliers, and partners. This flexibility allows experience marketing to adapt and evolve over time to meet the changing needs of companies and marketers, making it an essential strategic framework for the future.
To ensure the success of your upcoming experience marketing campaign, it's important to have a clear understanding of what experience marketing entails. This will allow you and your team to define your offer, brand, digital service, platform, or product from every perspective and level. Once you have a clear definition, you can use the 7Es of the experiential marketing mix to create a comprehensive corporate experience marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goals. If you're looking for more insights into business experience strategy, design, marketing, and management, be sure to sign up for AIBXD Strawberry Experience Blog. With daily updates, you'll get all the juicy insights you need to succeed. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your business to the next level!
Whenever you're ready to get started, we invite you to explore our range of exclusive, certified course programs. Our programs are designed by top-tier experts from industry and academia to equip you with all the necessary tools and strategies to implement successful and cost-effective experience strategies that drive ROI and business growth. Join our elite global community of business experience experts and start your journey towards transforming your business today.
AIBXD offers comprehensive course programs on business experience design, strategy, and management that cater to all levels and profiles. Our portfolio includes our flagship executive education programs for CMO, CXO, creative designers, and all C-level executives. We also offer diploma programs for entrepreneurs and project/product managers, as well as online course certificates. If you are unsure which program would be the best fit for you, try our fun and easy-to-use AIBXD Course Recommender™. By answering just five quick questions, you can get a personalized course recommendation immediately.
If you're tired of wasting money, resources, and energy on traditional marketing techniques, we can help. Our AIBXD consulting and market research services can assist businesses in starting the experience and phygital marketing transformation. Feel free to check them out and see how we can help you optimize your marketing strategy.
Cite this article as: American Institute of Business Experience Design (2023). Experience marketing done right: A comprehensive checklist for CMOs and business leaders. Retrieved [date you accessed the article], from [copy and paste the URL of the article page].