Can We Future-Proof Customer Engagement?

But marketing to an audience of one—in a sea of unique and diverse customers and prospects—has proven to be no easy feat. Furthermore, each customer has taken control of their own journey, independently mapping their own path to purchase and often turning away from the intentional campaign markers set up to speed them along the path.

The CMO Council interviewed leading marketers around the world to gather their best practices for engagement, experience and advancing the relationship with this audience of one.  Through this two-part video series, we investigated the best actions developed by these leaders, from the vision of their customer engagement strategy to their goals for advancing the experience into the future.
In today’s age of the customer, the focus has turned away from what a brand can do to induce action and toward a far more complex and strategic dialogue around how our marketing, service and commerce strategies have aligned around the customer journey. As the days of pushing a customer through an archaic funnel have long since gone away, marketers have developed more comprehensive strategies to advance engagements by combining rich content and experiences with context, relevance and personalization.

Only 24% [of business leaders] are making [customer experience] a top priority for 2015. - Ciceron

Customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20%-40% more money with those companies. - Customer Think  

64% say customer experience is more important than price when deciding who gets their business. - Customer Think

Content marketing is now ubiquitous, with 93% of all marketers saying they do content marketing (it’s not clear what the other 7% are doing). - Business2Community

While most content sharing efforts by marketers are focused on the “big four” social networks, most (72%) content sharing done by buyers is on “dark social”–primarily email and apps. - Business2Community

93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing. - Business2Community

41% of marketers say driving sales is the No. 1 goal for their content marketing strategies; 94% put sales in their top five content marketing goals. Brand awareness was the second-most-popular goal with 88% adding it to their top five, while 21% ranked lead generation as their No. 1 goal. - Business2Community

The top content marketing goals for B2C companies are customer retention/loyalty (88%), engagement (88%), brand awareness (87%) and sales (77%). - Business2Community

Companies spend, on average, 25% of total marketing budgets on content marketing. - Business2Community

78 percent of CMOs think rich content is the future. - Interfuse

Content doesn’t necessarily need to be original. About 48% of marketers curate noteworthy content from trustworthy sources and repackage it for their readers. - Interfuse 

69% of the most effective B2B Marketers have a dedicated content marketing group in their organization. - LinkedIn

54% of the most effective B2B Marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. - LinkedIn

83% of B2B marketers use content marketing for lead generation. - LinkedIn 

61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content, and are more likely to buy. - Social Media Today

62% of adults under 34 are willing to share their location for more relevant content. - IronPaper

74% of online consumers get frustrated when content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests. - IronPaper

Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. - Hubspot

The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has. - Hubspot

2015 - B2B Enterprise Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America - Marketo

September 2014 - Mastering Adaptive Customer Engagements - CMO Council

April 2015 - 5 Important Facts About Your Customers’ Journey - Ciceron

2015 - Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding The Customer - iScoop

March 2015 - Why Marketers Must Think 'Personalization'- Forbes

April 2015 - 10 facts why marketers should use content personalization- Springtab

April 2015 - Content Personalization: It’s What Consumers Want! - Social Media Today

March 2015 - The Future of Content: Predictive Personalization- ClickZ

June 2015 - The Future Of Algorithmic Personalization - Tech Crunch

April 2015 - Ways Content Marketing is Going to Change in 2015 - Forbes

October 2014 - 10 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing - Quick Sprout

July 2015 - 5 Obvious Content Marketing Strategies Most Companies Overlook - Content Marketing Institute

These 3 Top Digital Trends Will Change Your Retail Marketing Strategy - Neosperience

Why make it personal? Personalisation vs contextualization - Econsultancy

10 Tips for Getting Long-Term Traffic to Your Content - Hubspot