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Category: Digital Marketing

  • Hyper-Personalization: The Buzzword Marketers Need to Leverage in 2020

    Hyper-Personalization: The Buzzword Marketers Need to Leverage in 2020

    It’s surreal when Spotify knows exactly what song you want to listen to next, or when Netflix brings up another binge-worthy TV show which you are sure to like. It’s surprising and reassuring that it is not a mind-reader who is running the show, but advanced algorithms powered by big data analytics who show us exactly what we want.

    Hyper-personalisation has led to brands showing us more relevant products, services, and content based on all our online habits.

    If ‘personalisation’ was the buzzword of the last decade, ‘hyper-personalisation’ is the buzzword and marketing strategy of this year. With giants like Amazon, Starbucks, Netflix, Spotify relying on AI-powered hyper-personalisation to retain and get more customers, every brand needs to turn to this fascinating experience to expand their business, too.

    What makes Hyper-Personalisation more advanced than Personalisation?

    Personalisation simply incorporates information such as your name, basic socio-demographic details to communicate with you. For example, if you visit an e-commerce website and input your name, the next time you visit the website it will use that name to acknowledge you.

    In Hyper-Personalisation, the website will send you an email at 9 a.m. about an Android phone with 6” screen with a 20MP dual camera priced at Rs.15, 000 on sale, because you searched for a ‘good Android camera phone’; your past purchases show your preference for shopping during sales; and best engagement with emails.

    Hyper-personalisation takes into account the most mundane of details and consumer patterns- your likes and dislikes; purchase history; time spent on each website; products in your online cart; frequency of online shopping; keyword searches; browsing habits; duration of online browsing; preferred time for online shopping; past tastes and preferences for food items; likes and dislikes of your closest peers, etc.

    If ‘Personalisation’ a respectful manager at an apparel store, Hyper-Personalisation is a personal shopper who has known you since you first thought of walking in.

    The argument for needing Hyper-Personalisation

    According to a New York Times article, a marketing message has only 8 seconds in which it can either grab or lose the audience’s attention. With hyper-personalisation, you are ensured that the message is extremely relevant and ticks all the boxes of what the customer wants.

    According to Accenture, more than 75% of surveyed consumers prefer to buy a product from a brand that accounts for their individual preferences before offering their products.

    Lastly, with so much stimuli being pushed our way in terms of advertisements leading to sensory overload, it has become crucial to stand out with the most nuanced and personal messaging ever to be heard.

    Path forward for Digital Marketers

    Hyper-personalisation has implications for marketing in lots of fields including but not limited to e-commerce portals, travel apps, hospitality, online streaming channels, and online courses. The discerning digital marketer needs to invest time and effort in cultivating the best insights from big data and using the data to build the most comprehensive consumer profiles. Aligning marketing strategies to focus on hyper-personalisation will be key to getting more converts and expanding business.

  • Ensuring Consumer-Data Privacy in This Era of Digital Personalization at Scale

    Ensuring Consumer-Data Privacy in This Era of Digital Personalization at Scale

    McKinsey Digital suggests that personalisation at scale is the new Holy Grail in digital marketing. When done correctly, it can improve the lives of the consumers, increase engagement, and make them loyal brand advocates. But the concept of personalisation is nothing new.

    For decades, industry luminaries are trying to personalise customer experiences based on their online behaviours. But the personalisation journey has mostly been slow, expensive, and complicated. Even in this age of modern technology where customer data is available in abundance, personalisation continues to remain a mirage for several brands.

    One of the biggest challenges for most brands aiming to deliver personalisation at scale is with regards to the security and privacy of consumer data. Over the last few years, there have been multiple data breaches and scandals, like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that have made public and even the lawmakers wary of how brands collect, secure, and use consumer data.

    But as it is said, every challenge is a new opportunity. There are now brands delivering personalisation at scale while also ensuring consumer data privacy. Here are a few strategies that are helping such brands achieve this feat-

     1. Transforming/Upgrading Digital Marketing Systems and Applications

    The first step to deliver personalisation with improved data privacy is transforming or upgrading the systems and applications used for digital marketing initiatives. The systems that generate, consume, transmit, or store consumer data should use best practices to protect data while also complying with the legal standards now applicable in countries like the USA and Europe.

    Digital marketing should be focused upon throughout this transformation or upgradation so that the team members also understand the importance of data privacy.

     2. Clearly Define Roles and Responsibilities

    For improved data security, an organisation should also focus on clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of the available human resources. This will add more clarity and transparency to the whole personalisation at scale initiative and enable the organisation to respond in case of a breach.

    The team members should thoroughly understand their responsibilities during a breach and even during the normal day-to-day operations.

     3. Data Sanitisation and Tokenisation for Remarketing

    While data encryption continues to be a popular method for increasing the safety of data when it is being transmitted or is at rest, many organisations now sanitise and tokenise the consumer data, especially for remarketing purposes. While sanitisation makes the data unrecoverable on a storage device, tokenisation replaces data elements with tokens that have no value or meaning.

    So, even when the organisation retargets a particular consumer, these advanced data security technologies ensure improved privacy.

    4. Continuous Training for Key Roles

    As per a report on Telegraph, malicious links distributed via email is the most common cyber threat for businesses. While there are advanced solutions to avoid such threats, the importance of continuous education and training cannot be overstated.

    The marketing team, especially people in key roles, should be regularly provided adequate role-based training for improved consumer data protection and overall security of the organisation.

     The Bottom Line

    Personalisation at scale is as it is challenging to deliver and ensuring data privacy only makes it more complicated. But personalised marketing has already proven its worth over the years and is now increasingly important in this hyper-competitive business landscape.

    While countries like the USA and Europe already have laws and regulations in place to protect consumer data, it is only a matter of time before other countries jump the bandwagon too. Strategies like the ones discussed in this post are being used by businesses to deliver personalisation while also ensuring enhanced protection to consumer data.

    A brands’ focus on personalisation with data protection will not just help it to comply with the laws and regulations but also improve its reputation and enable it to build lasting relationships with the consumers.

  • 6 Digital Content Consumption Preferences Of A Classic Consumer

    6 Digital Content Consumption Preferences Of A Classic Consumer

    With the evolution of technology and increasing digital literacy, the way we consume content has evolved. For brands, this has become an opportunity to create content for engaging customer experience. The growth of digital content consumption is driven by the proliferation of different content formats consumed. As digital content consumed by the new-age customer is on a rise and so is the consumer’s preferences and expectations.

    Here are 6 new-age consumer preferences for viewing and sharing content:

    1. Sharing on social media

    Although there is a general love-hate relationship between social media and users due to privacy issues, most millennials and Gen Z look to social media when they wish to share, promote or simply browse through content. With social media platforms such as Facebook offering a host of engagement options in the form of multiplayer games, live cast, an online marketplace, its billion+ users are spending countless hours every day on Facebook.

    2. Engaging with podcasts

    Consumers have a new voice. Quite literally. Be it a political podcast or a podcast listing new fashion trends, consumers are finding it easier to learn more about something they are interested in by simply downloading digital audio files of their favourite podcast. The ease of downloading the files coupled with the ability to listen to them anytime, anywhere appeals to digital content consumers.

    3. Seeking help from voice technology

    Whether it is Alexa, Siri or Cortana, more and more users are turning to voice technology such as voice assistants and smart speakers to help them through the day. Making calls, playing a song from your music app or knowing the traffic situation in your city has all beco

    me the work of advanced AI in the form of voice technology. Century old conventions such as reading a newspaper have become “old news” with Alexa playing the daily news for the consumer on request.

    4. Preference for personalisation

    A generic email from a consumer’s favourite e-commerce clothing store isn’t going to receive any acknowledgment from the consumer. However, a tailored response or email, for example, stating the name of the consumer, is more likely to engage the consumer.

    At the same time, there’s a caveat- too much personalisation may unsettle the consumer as they prefer a certain hold over their personal information and value confidentiality.

    5. Disengaging with poor quality content

    In this day and age of instant gratification, consumers do not like waiting for a video to load. Quick to load and high- quality videos are preferred. Another pet- peeve for consumers is content that is not optimised for the particular device; for example, consumers will be annoyed with a website that is not optimised to be viewed on a mobile. Consumers are spoilt for choice which means that they can easily switch content if the interface is not user-friendly or the content is dissatisfactory.

    6. Expansion of reality

    Immersive gaming is being taken to a whole new level with consumers investing in VR sets. Augmented reality is the ‘escape’ people need, and high-quality VR and AR wearables are providing the consumers just that.

    With billions being pumped into creating digital content and digital content delivery platforms, consumers have no dearth of options. They choose, like, dislike, and move on quickly, making the digital content space a uniquely fast-paced, diverse, and competitive universe.

  • 5 Digital Marketing ‘Tells’ That Are Real

    5 Digital Marketing ‘Tells’ That Are Real

    The world of digital marketing comes with its own quirks and tells. While there is no emoji that can point to a digital marketer’s tell, there are certain striking behaviours that can easily be attributed to the marketer’s attempt at harmless deceit. Digital marketers may often think of these methods and techniques as effective strategies, but a wide community of peers regard these behaviours as unconstructive and often counterproductive.

    Here are five of the biggest ‘tells’ that any digital marketer should be wary of:

    1. Driving home noisy data instead of actionable insights

    Regardless of it being in SEO, social media, or pay-per-click, a digital marketer who relies solely on hard metrics instead of helping to predict outcomes is usually guilty of winging it. Not being able to convert the raw data into information that can be leveraged to form a digital marketing strategy, is yet another ‘tell’ that any brand engaging the services of a digital marketer should be cautious of. Another folly of digital marketers is to lean exclusively on machine learning to make meaning of the data and completely forego human insight.

    If you find a digital marketer unable to articulate a ‘why’ for the data, then you know that you are interacting with one who is not completely sure about what he’s saying.

    2. ‘One-trick’ experts instead of comprehensive ecosystem understanding

    This is one tell that has two opposing yet worthy arguments. While one section believes that knowing and pushing only one type of digital marketing, let’s say Social Media, is the ‘tell’ of someone who holds little value in terms of overall brand strategy.

    On the other hand, some believe that in the vast, vast world of digital marketing with its many mediums and fields, someone saying they know it all may come across as ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. What any digital marketing team can do is leverage their collective strengths and form an image of a powerful strategist.

    3. An ‘expert’ without a portfolio

    When your C.V has impressive stats and percentages but no proof of having led successful digital marketing campaigns, the potential employer may take your expression of aptitude with a rather big pinch of salt.

    Another ‘tell’ is when you are the leader or expert on the team but haven’t actually done the metaphorical ground work. When presenting your expertise to someone else and talking about your successful digital campaigning, ensure that you mention that you had a creative and efficient team by your side.

    4. Long-term campaign on ‘default’

    While your campaigns may take-off based on default settings or data points, it does little to reach the right audiences without regular tweaks and human inputs. Your default setting for a particular ad may have target a whole city but it is only wise to presume that you will have to change that target based on certain data that you receive through the course of the campaign. A sure shot ‘tell’ of a digital marketer who still needs to learn the game, is not updating their accounts.

    5. Taking ‘expert advice’ at face value

    Whether you are a novice or a seasoned player in the field of digital marketing, if your validation and acceptance for a new (or old) marketing technique starts with, “…because John Smith said so”, it is a big ‘tell’. Always understand the practical application of the advice to really upgrade your knowledge base.

    Up your own game and back up your talk with some substance by understanding and working on your own ‘tells’!

  • The Role of Customer Call Data in Bridging the Existing Data Gap in Remarketing

    The Role of Customer Call Data in Bridging the Existing Data Gap in Remarketing

    Remarketing has significantly evolved over a period of years. However, with individual browsers blocking cookies, significant traffic coming in from mobiles, and new regulations, remarketing can become intrusive for your customers. The key is to do it the right way. Relying on cookies alone for remarketing does not give the best results. Did you know your customer call data can be a gold mine in bridging the data gap?

    Let’s take a look at how marketers can enhance the remarketing journey by tracking data from customer calls.

    Why Call Tracking Data plays a Crucial Role in Remarketing?

    Businesses that generate valuable sales inquiries via inbound phone calls can use this data to enhance the remarketing experience.

    To give an example, let’s say a potential customer visits your website, clicks on a product page, and leaves without completing the purchase. The customer then completes the sale by calling your customer care team. Retargeting this customer for a product they have already purchased not only reduces the efficiency of remarketing but also is a waste of marketing budget.

    As you can see, marketers are left with a massive data gap – if they rely on data only from cookies. According to market studies, over 56% of marketers do not have any idea of customer conversions that happen via inbound customer calls.

    According to Dan Miller, the founder and lead analyst at Opus Research, insights gathered via customer conversations very often do not reach the marketing team. As a result, a large number of companies are missing out on critical opportunities to create a more relevant and consistent customer experience across various digital and human touchpoints.

    Call-Tracking and Conversational Analytics Platform bridges the Data Gap for Remarketing

    When existing and potential customers call the customer service team, they are providing your business with a veritable mine of first-party data. You can use this data to classify customers into meaningful datasets. A call tracking and conversational analytics program is fully-automated software that helps marketers gather crucial information from customer calls.

    It helps businesses:

    • Classify customer calls into intelligent subsets like service calls, sales calls, feedback calls, complaint calls, etc.
    • Automatically determine the outcome of inbound customer phone calls
    • Collect data about the customer’s digital journey like keywords, UTM parameters like utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, etc. GCLID parameters and more
    • Transfer data gathered from calls to your remarketing campaign database in real-time

    A call-tracking platform helps in enhancing the efficiency of a remarketing campaign without spending endless hours tracking data manually. The data collected by the platform can be fed automatically to the ad network in real-time, to make ads more relevant.

    Additionally, it helps in predicting the nature of a customer call accurately. Using this information, marketers can decide on the best course of action – whether retargeting ads to customers who didn’t complete the purchase or upselling to customers who have already converted. Marketers can also use call data to feed Google’s automated bidding algorithms to adjust PPC ad bids according to the customer journey, tracked via phone calls.

    So, what’s the Key Takeaway for Marketers?

    By investing in a call tracking and conversational analytics platform, marketers can take away the guesswork from remarketing. Using customer call data, remarketing can be made more relevant, more targeted, and more efficient.

  • B2B Marketers Focusing More on the Customer Experience using Data

    B2B Marketers Focusing More on the Customer Experience using Data

    Once overlooked, today, customer experience (CX) has become a central point of focus for B2B marketers.

    Key Takeaways of the 2020 Data-driven Marketing & Advertising Outlook

    The 5th edition of the Dun & Bradstreet report published by Adweek Branded for Dun & Bradstreet reveals crucial insights into building better CX for B2B businesses. Here are a few key points from the report:

    • Nearly 90% of B2B leaders admit that they have to step up their customer experience game to match that of B2C marketers.
    • 38% of B2B marketers believe that they deliver better customer experiences compared to their competitors.
    • 1 in 4 B2B marketers agreed that they lag when it comes to offering seamless CX.
    • 84% surveyed marketers reported that their teams would be focusing more on data in the coming year.
    • B2B marketers use ABM (Account-based Marketing) techniques to gain a competitive advantage over their peers.
    • 70% of respondents stated that analytics and measurement is their top priority in creating a winning customer experience.

    255 B2B marketers who hold a job title of manager or above took part in the survey.

    Challenges faced by B2B Marketers in Delivering a Top-notch Customer Experience

    According to the survey mentioned above, 1 in 3 B2B marketers stated that their biggest CX challenge is making use of the tools and data they already have, to gather customer intelligence. Other difficulties faced included a lack of insight into the B2B customer journey, as well as identifying relevant customer touchpoints.

    Why does this matter to B2B Marketers?

    The key takeaway from this report is that while B2B marketers increasingly agree that CX is a crucial strategy, a vast majority have difficulties in pulling it off. All B2B marketers who are committed to delivering superior customer experiences have to start by establishing a sound data governance strategy for their business.

    Some of the data analysis challenges for B2B marketers include dealing with incomplete data, siloed data, data incompatibility and more. According to the study mentioned above, both B2B and B2C marketers will make use of emerging technologies like DMPs (Data Management Platforms) and CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) in the upcoming year, to deal with the challenges of data handling.

    Summing up the key takeaway of the study, “B2B marketers do not have to focus on generating more data. Rather, they have to focus on the right technologies to make better sense of the data; they have in hand.”

    The Core of B2B Customer Experience

    Delivering excellent customer experiences in B2B involves building a personalized, omnichannel customer experience while focusing on lasting relationships with clients. It’s also about providing customers with convenient, digital solutions.

    For B2B marketers to offer excellent customer experiences, they have to focus on training employees. Engaged employees are likely to provide customers with a superior experience. Studies reveal that B2B companies that invest in training employees and the overall employee experience are 4.2x times more profitable than others.

    B2B marketers need to focus on centralizing the various aspects of customer data so that they can take a holistic approach to handle customers. They have to gather data at both the individual level and account level to deliver a personalized and superior customer experience to each client.

    Simply put, by focusing on delivering personalized, omnichannel CX, B2B brands can enjoy an increase in sales, stronger customer loyalty, and build long-term relationships with customers.

  • 5 Marketing Channels that Benefit from Data Collected via Paid Search

    5 Marketing Channels that Benefit from Data Collected via Paid Search

    Marketing has come a long way since the mass targeting of a few decades ago. Today, marketing is driven by customer information captured at every stage of the buying process and extensive data-backed analytics.

    Marketers no longer have to shoot in the dark – they can build accurate and customized strategies to reach their target audience precisely.

    Businesses that employ data-driven marketing strategies see a whopping 5-8X return on marketing spend. Marketers who use data-backed personalization techniques exceed their revenue goals 83% of the time.

    While most top marketers agree that data is the future of marketing, the majority fall short when it comes to leveraging the data available at hand. One area where marketers fail to make the best use of is – using data gathered from paid search for optimizing other marketing strategies.

    Paid Search – A Treasure Trove of Reliable Data

    While marketers have plenty of channels to gather customer data, search engine marketing is the most effective (and sadly, the most overlooked). Using the data from paid search, marketers can learn:

    • Searching habits of customers
    • Their buying journey
    • Their pain points
    • Demographics
    • And plenty more

    Here are a few ways in which marketers can integrate insights collected from paid search with other marketing strategies like:

    1. Retargeting

    Retargeting is the practice of reaching out to people who have already purchased from a brand or exhibited an interest in specific products or services.

    How to use data from Paid Search? Retargeting works better when you have clear insights into what a customer is looking for, the previous products purchased from you, why the customer didn’t complete the sale (their pain points/expectations), etc.

    With the data collected from paid search, you can efficiently retarget the right customer with the right offer. It helps you provide the customer with an elevated personalized shopping experience, thereby boosting conversion rates.

    2. Social

    Social media marketing is an excellent way for marketers to increase brand/product/service awareness, boost website traffic, and ultimately increase sales.

    How to use data from Paid Search? Look for keywords and ad copies that generated the maximum clicks and conversions on paid search. By adding this to social messages, marketers can replicate the success of paid search on their social marketing channels.

    3. Email

    Email thrives on personalization. Email marketing has to resonate with the recipient to engage and move them to the desired CTA.

    How to use data from Paid Search? The demographic data collected from paid search can be used in creating highly tailored emails that address the requirements/pain-points of the target audience. Additionally, the data collected can be used to create email campaigns that automatically respond based on customer action and guide them throughout the sales funnel.

    4. Amazon Shopping

    The biggest marketplace on the planet. According to a survey by Jumpshot, 54% of consumers today skip Google and other search engines and go directly to Amazon when searching for a specific product. Marketers need to amp up their Amazon marketing techniques as much as they focus on Google.

    How to use data from Paid Search? While Google and Amazon are miles apart, they share similarities. Marketers can translate what they have learned from data insights on paid search and apply it on Amazon to boost conversions.

    5. SEO

    Despite several new channels, organic search results still play a critical role in determining the online visibility of a business.

    How to use data from Paid Search? By analyzing the search volumes for specific phrases or keywords, marketers can include the phrases/keywords that work well in their SEO strategies. Additionally, paid search insights can help marketers identify which content works better with which customer segment, thereby fine-tuning their SEO approach.

    Use Cross Channel Data to Amplify Marketing Techniques

    Ultimately, irrespective of the channel marketers’ use – customers want content that delivers value to them. Instead of focusing on data derived only from a particular channel, marketers have to widen their data-handling approach.

    By using data from paid search in other marketing channels, and vice versa, marketers will be able to create consistent, relevant, and accurate messaging across channels. This, in turn, increases brand trust and value, thereby boosting conversions and winning customer loyalty.

  • Striking the right balance between Technology & Creativity to make your marketing more effective.

    Striking the right balance between Technology & Creativity to make your marketing more effective.

    The modern marketers have a wide range of automation, data analytics, CMS, and other sophisticated technologies at their disposal. Thanks to these advanced tools, marketers can easily find out when and where their customers read their messages, how long they spend on a particular channel, what actions they take, the types of content they prefer, and more.

    Does that mean creativity and innovation take a backseat to technology in crafting successful digital journeys? A big NO!

    Creativity Is Still (And Will Always Be) King Of Marketing 

    Ultimately, it all boils down to one fact – marketers need to establish an emotional connect with their audiences and encourage them to subscribe to their services or buy their products.

    Market research reveals that only 20% of a brand’s marketing success comes from technology; the rest 80% from creative messaging.

    The Problems With Relying Only On Technology-Driven Marketing

    Very often, marketers make the mistake of over-relying on modern marketing tools, that innovation and creativity take a backseat. There are two significant problems with this approach: one, relying solely on data-driven marketing, makes it challenging to pair the right creative content with the data.

    Two, most marketers fail to understand the difference between creativity and innovation in marketing. In other words, creativity is about unique ideas, while innovation is about unique ways to implement those ideas. Both creativity and innovation are essential for a successful marketing strategy.

    When it comes to the development of a marketing strategy, the ideal approach is to define the goals first, use data (technology) to derive insights and then apply creativity and innovation to achieve the goals. Sadly, too many marketers rush towards the goals that they miss out on innovation and creativity.

    What Are the Roles Of Creativity, Innovation, And Technology In Marketing? 

    • Innovation in marketing is taking an existing product/service/idea and enhancing it by applying creative solutions.
    • Creativity is what transforms unique ideas into achievable improvements in a product/service.
    • Technology is making use of available tools and scientific techniques to achieve a specific goal in marketing, say market reach, brand awareness, etc.

    TECHNOLOGY & CREATIVITY GO HAND-IN-HAND IN MARKETING 

    Most of us would have heard of the “left-brain vs right-brain theory.” The right side of our brain is supposed to be creative, while the left side deals with reason and logic. While both these sides of the brain oversee different areas, they need to function in sync for all tasks.

    Marketing can also be divided based on this theory: one side, there is data, analytics, and technology, and on the other hand, there are creativity and innovation.

    Successful marketing campaigns need both parts to reach their goals. Marketers must employ the right mix of creativity and innovation, aided by technology to achieve ROI and their engagement goals.

    The Key Takeaway 

    Marketing success doesn’t happen by accident. Rather than considering creativity as an afterthought, it must be included in the marketing process right from the beginning. Focus on a solid-design phase, and then transform ideas into implementable solutions fuelled by creative content.

    Technology should aid creative content and not the other way around. Make use of data insights to fuel innovation, and then focus on developing the right creative content to build winning marketing strategies.

  • Will Okay Google and Visual Search replace the Search Text Box?

    Will Okay Google and Visual Search replace the Search Text Box?

    The search behaviour of internet users have come a long way from the advent of Google search in the late 90s. Today, the devices used, the queries asked, and the sites accessed are all changing the search landscape in new ways.

    The increase in the adoption of smart speakers and the use of images instead of search queries are making brands rethink their SEO strategies to keep up with the future of search. Here, in this guide, we look at the two big trends of search right now – voice and visual  and its implications.

    Voice Search Rapidly Gaining Search Share

    You may have come across the notoriously famous stat, “50% of all searches in 2020 would be made without a keyboard.” While econsultancy has investigated that this statistic is more of wishful predictions than reality, voice searches are not far behind.

    In 2016, Google revealed that 20% of all searches carried out in the Google app are via voice. While voice may not have reached 1 in 2 searches yet, it’s getting there.

    Visual Search Not Getting Left Behind

    Compared with voice search, the visual search doesn’t get much media spotlight. But, that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Just like voice, users are using images instead of typing text for search queries. Google Lens is now available on both Android and iOS and comes with an array of features. It can scan barcodes, translate text from one language to another, search for objects scanned in the real world, and find it online, and much more.

    Not just Google, Bing the other big search engine has also made significant improvements to its visual search capabilities. Bing offers third-party app developers to create feature-rich apps using visual search.

    The third major development in the field of visual search is Pinterest. Pinterest allows users to use specific items in pins and search for them online. Alternatively, the app also allows users to search for objects in real life and find it online, thereby driving eCommerce sales, all from the Pinterest app.

    Visual search also helps in boosting local search capabilities. An example of this is “search by photos,” introduced by Google. The search by photos option appears for specific verticals and is placed along with regular search results.

    For instance, if a user searches for “tacos near me,” the search results include photos of tacos from local restaurants. The user can click on these photos to find a taco restaurant.

    Another example of the increasing relevance of visual search is the addition of AR into Google Maps. Several recent studies reveal that visual search is increasingly preferred by millennials, who prefer images instead of typing text queries.

    What does this mean for Marketers and SEO strategists?

    Marketers have to move beyond keyword optimization of content and rethink their content strategy to be suited for voice and visuals. The fundamental strategy for PPC marketers, SEO specialists and content creators is to start preparing for these new technologies. Stay ahead of these changes, as consumers migrate to voice and visual searches, giving up text-based queries.

  • Top 8 Customer Experience Trends that will Shape the Face of Marketing in 2020 and Beyond

    Top 8 Customer Experience Trends that will Shape the Face of Marketing in 2020 and Beyond

    Companies are making CX (Customer Experience) a priority for achieving their business goals. Brands that don’t meet customer expectations are likely to lose out in the big race. So, if you are a business owner, what customer experience trends should you focus on to win your target audience? What are the big trends that will rule in the coming years?

    Here’s our take on top customer experience predictions for 2020 and beyond:

    1. Offering Personalisation with the Help of AI

    By 2020, 76% of customers will expect customer service agents to know who they are without an introduction.

    Several leading brands have already jumped on the AI-bandwagon with AI-enabled chatbots. These intelligent bots can provide each customer with a tailored CX based on their preferences, purchase history and other data. Not just AI-enabled chatbots, but businesses will embrace AI and machine learning tools across all communication channels.

    2. Proactive Customer Service Will Help Brands Stand Out

    Earlier, it was common for brands to receive feedback from customers and use it to improve future customer interactions. However, this trend is so outdated in 2019. 89% of customers feel frustrated when they have to explain their problems to several customer service agents.

    In 2020, brands will make use of big data analytics to provide customers with proactive solutions before they ask for help.

    3. Local Customer Service Agents anywhere in the World

    The world is truly a digital village today. Even small mom-and-pop stores and startups can sell their products and services to customers anywhere in the world, thanks to the rapid rise of e-commerce. This means a brand has to handle queries from customers across the globe.

    To meet this challenge, companies will invest in virtual call centre. These call centre that provide customers with an enhanced customer experience by engaging a local workforce who interacts with customers in their local dialect, understands the local culture and more.

    4. Digital Transformation will become a Must for all Businesses

    Businesses will realise that offering a seamless customer experience will be possible only with the help of digital transformation. It’s expected that more companies will take a conscious effort to become fully digitally transformed by 2020.

    5. Moving Away from Agent Support to Self-Support

    It’s predicted that by 2020, 85% of all customer interactions with a brand will happen without a human customer service agent. This is so true with younger consumers – millennials and Gen Z  who prefer solving a problem without talking with a customer service agent.

    Brands will offer AI-chatbots, voice-enabled tech, virtual assistants and other features to help customers find the solutions they require without human intervention.

    6. Multi-channel Experiences will give way to Omni-channel

    For customers, this translates into a seamless, cohesive and rich shopping experience. Brands will be better able to understand consumer needs across channels and provide them with a niche experience that will increase customer loyalty.

    7. VR and AR to enhance CX

    The best example of this is Ikea. The furniture giant retailer offers an AR-enabled app that allows customers to see how a particular product will fit in their home before they make a purchase. This reduces the likelihood of returns and refunds, as customers understand what they are getting exactly.

    Marketers can expect AR and VR technologies to enhance customer service not just in B2C but in B2B as well.

    8. Transparency at every step of the Customer Experience

    Brands are well aware that today’s customers are highly savvy, and providing them with misleading information could potentially backfire. Companies will make all their policies transparent to build customer trust and loyalty.

    What do these trends mean for marketers?

    In the highly cluttered and hyper-competitive market space of today, customer experience plays a huge role in retaining and building customer loyalty. Marketers and brands that keep themselves aware of these trends and integrate them into their customer channels will not just stay afloat but thrive while meeting increasing customer demands efficiently.

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