The Buying Window
Our previous post stressed the importance of engaging customers in their buying window – at the time when they are still researching your product or service (and those of your competitors) – before important buying decisions are made – and generally before they first reach out to you.
This involves finding them and knowing how to reach them through the channel(s) of their choice. It also requires knowing as much as you can about them, so when you do encounter them, you will know where they are in the buying cycle and be able to deliver targeted, relevant messaging to capture the sale.
This is hard to do, but technology now provides useful tools and techniques. Last time we presented a few important examples. Here are few more:
- Customer Journey Maps: These maps help to identify the ‘journey’ that a customer travels while purchasing a company’s products or services, to help predict buying behavior. A company observes which channel(s) a customer visits, what content a customer views, how long they spend and whether they make a purchase. This helps secure contextual relevance by providing insight into appropriate content and messaging.
- Digital Retargeting: Companies can immediately respond to a customer’s digital inquiry by retargeting that customer with messaging such as digital ads elsewhere in the customer’s preferred channel(s). For example, a company observes a customer’s click behavior, search behavior, or abandoned shopping cart behavior and quickly reaches out with a unique offer to help ‘close the deal’.
- People Marketing: In its simplest form, a company bids on popular search terms to place ads in front of buyers keen to purchase their product or service. New offerings from Google (Customer Match), Facebook (Custom Audience) and LiveRamp (IdentityLink) have taken people marketing to an entirely new level. Companies are now able to target specific audiences with highly-contextual, relevant content.
Once you can offer ‘contextually relevant’ information to customers through the right channels at the right point in their buying window, you are well on your way to delightingthem with your timing and attentiveness and making them loyal customers and advocates for your brand. Let ISM create a custom-tailored strategy to help your company meet its customers in their buying window and maximize customer acquisition, retention and growth.
Video: Contextual Relevance
To secure the sale, you need to serve up ‘contextually relevant’ information to the right person at the right time – their way, not yours – during their buying window. “Find me, know me, delight me,” is the key to enhancing customer engagement and increasing customer satisfaction. Barton Goldenberg explains in his Keynote at CRM Evolution 2017.
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