Digital marketing has become more complex than ever, with more techniques like customer journey mapping for different personas to define the most relevant communications and experiences for different touchpoints in the customer journey.  To do this, it’s essential to think from the customer’s viewpoint on the communication opportunities available through the customer lifecycle for different businesses and sectors.

Integration of Personalisation into the Customer Experience

This will increase the relevance and response of communications as website personalisation is more widely used in transactional ecommerce sectors such as retail, travel and financial services.  Many solutions now offer low-cost options, and web personalisation varies from being integrated into content or commerce management systems, integrated into analytics solutions or using standalone Software as a Service (SaaS) personalisation methods that integrate with CMS and analytics.

Integration of Machine Learning into Marketing Automation

Recent research reveals that many companies still don’t implement a complete lifecycle contact system despite the widespread use of email and marketing automation systems like Hubspot.  Half of all businesses don’t use any targeting, while 29% use basic segmentation and 15% use segmentation and personalisation rules to target specific audiences within their database.  This means that most companies miss out on opportunities for automated emails with dynamic content.  Using Machine Learning enables email personalisation if fundamental triggered automation features are deployed.

Integrating Social Messaging Apps into Communications

Messaging apps have increased sharply over the past couple of years. According to Ofcom research, more than 61% of the total mobile audience uses Facebook Messenger, 50% use WhatsApp, and 28% use the Snapchat mobile app. Early adopters of marketing applications of messaging apps have been successful, with Pizza Express using a chatbot to enable bookings and IKEA using a chatbot named ORC to conduct customer feedback surveys.

Integrating Video into the Customer Journey

A breakdown of Google’s popularity clearly shows that YouTube dominates. It’s even more popular than Google Search, which means that we’d be mad men not to take the opportunity presented by video marketing. Video engagement means using video marketing throughout the customer lifecycle, from the pre-roll ads on YouTube to explainer ads on site and retargeting via video.

Integrating Content Marketing into the Customer Journey with a Customer Engagement Strategy

Businesses are now treating content as a strategic resource. This means developing a customer engagement strategy using different media types and creating content for different audiences via techniques such as Personas and Content Mapping. These customer-centric analysis methods are becoming increasingly crucial for businesses in every sector.

Integrating Search Marketing into Content Marketing Activities

Search marketing is still dominant, with social media marketing at a close second in most sectors.  While social media is an effective tool for brands to engage audiences and increase awareness, it doesn’t drive lead volume or sales, so integrating it with other channels, such as search, web, and email marketing, is an essential part of the modern digital marketing strategy.  However, a new trend within organic search is the importance of techniques like Knowledge Panels (for brands and businesses); Related Questions; rich snippets; reviews and quick answers.   Within AdWords, Google’s new features are based on reporting with innovative new options like Enhanced CPC (ECPC) bidding and Smart Display campaigns.

Integrating Marketing Technology

With so many marketing tools available, integrating marketing technology poses challenges for marketers.  However, the expected increase in the adoption of marketing clouds has yet to happen.

Integrating Different Data Sources

While plenty of tools are available to integrate insights from different paid media ad serving tools, these are often expensive, significantly when they do not directly increase leads or sales.

Integrating Digital Marketing Insight Sources

Plenty of free or premium sources of insight on digital marketing are available to help you stay current and keep your audience current. Aggregating primary marketing news sources via RSS can be helpful, as can the new Google Chrome extension Zest, which was specifically designed for marketers to curate content.

This information can seem highly complex unless you’re a digital marketing professional.  If you’re wondering what to make of it all and where to start, why not get in touch now and let one of our friendly, expert team members put you and your business on the path to success in 2018?