[Video]: Influencing the Customer Journey

In this episode of Fast-Forward the Conversation, Director of Digital Investment Chris Hunt explores how we move from theory to application in leveraging paid media to influence the customer journey for our clients.

We believe the daily pressure on CMOs to move their business forward is real, intense and not going away. Join our media practitioners, as we discuss the HOW behind making meaningful progress, on well-defined targets.

Catch the Highlights

• The customer journey is at the forefront of conversations with every single client we work with, especially given the unique time we’re in. In theory, the journey is laid out in a clear linear fashion, but in reality, it’s much more complicated.
• Times have changed. Just a few short years ago we used data like Experian Mosaic® segments to help bucket audience attributes and transported them to various digital platforms and identified traditional parallels as well.
• We now know the journey is more like a zig-zagging path of multiple touchpoints, moving through all sorts of media depending on where consumers are, what they’re doing and what device(s) they have in front of them.
• The consumer journey is dynamic. It’s constantly changing. People change. Brands must dynamically be part of that journey. As players in the media game, we’re finding ways to intercept shoppers in the middle of their journey to influence their purchasing decisions.

 The Customer Journey for a Non-Profit Client

• We partnered with a global non-profit operating in parts of the world struggling with poverty and injustice. They were striving to have a positive impact on children’s lives and in doing so were also influencing the entire community.
• Non-profits pose a special challenge given that marketing budgets come almost exclusively from donations made by the very people they’re marketing to. This creates a chicken and egg scenario. We need to show the target audience the difference the organization is making in the world, but a budget is required to do so.
• Creative assets play a significant role in influencing decisions, but the trick is reaching potential donors in the “moment to buy.” In donating, that cycle is much more involved.
• Real-time data captured by Facebook and Google as consumers moved through the buying journey was used to identify parallels between the current marketing segment of Christian mothers and others. These inputs helped us expand the target audience and shape the points of the customer journey.
• Insight from the client is invaluable. Through the course of conversation, the client mentioned a desire to target high-wealth individuals at the end of the year, as a tax break incentive. We created a path and inserted the creative at the proper point in the journey to encourage donations from this audience segment.

The Customer Journey for a Mortgage Lender Client

• The mortgage business is one of the most competitive industries in the country and quite expensive in terms of the competition for lead volume. Our client was successfully reaching their audience through TV and radio, but they were capping out and looking for a way to scale further.
• We crafted a digital strategy to reach a younger demographic, primarily online to drive incremental lift.
• The effort paid off. Results coming from that audience were approximately 25 percent greater in terms of house-closing value. Credit scores of borrowers showed that qualitatively, it was a more profitable audience, albeit smaller scale, but incremental to leads delivered via their other tactics.

The Impact of COVID on the Customer Journey

• Although unfortunate because of the huge, tragic ramifications of the pandemic, it has created an incredible opportunity to analyze data and act on it dynamically and in real-time.
• The landscape has changed drastically. Consumer behavior is now more addressable than it has ever been. Brands can now engage with consumers that may not have even considered them before.

See the next episode, QSR in a Dynamic Marketplace.