Businesses thrive on capturing the moment where consumers feel compelled enough to convert or purchase something from their organization. Some of the most efficient organizations have perfected this, and your company can capture this moment too. But how do you align the sequence of events so perfectly that a customer is compelled to act?
The short answer is: the experience. First, the customer begins their time online, they discover your brand, learn how it will help them, and decide to align with you. The entire interaction leads to the purchase. And here’s the good news: as a business, you can control that interaction. It’s a simple fact, but it’s powerful for you. Now that you’re aware of it, you’ll never be able to un-see it.
This experience-driven awareness establishes a relationship with a customer at the very beginning. In the beginning, consumers may think, “What is my first impression of them?”, “Do I like this business?”, or “Do their goals align with mine?” This “conversation” often occurs subconsciously while consuming your content.
We’re going to take a deep dive into how you can understand and take advantage of this experience-driven awareness to use it for your own business needs.
Stand Out From the Competition
You don’t want to be one of those siloed, manual, or transactional businesses. That’s not compelling anyone to do anything meaningful. In today’s age, you need to do more if you want to thrive. You want to be the customer-centric and metric-informed business whose brand works across multiple channels to cultivate relationships. A customer that feels like they have a relationship with your brand will almost always be your most loyal and repeat customers. Below are a few important things to keep in mind when melding this relationship:
Create a Strong First Impression
When consumers are in the mindset to consume content, you only get three seconds. Three precious seconds to make an excellent first impression. How can you condense all the work you’ve done up to this point to three seconds? The key is understanding your audience and craft a message that connects with them in your initial introduction.
Develop the Ideal Experience for Your Consumer
Ask yourself, what problems does my ideal consumer have? What’s most important to them in their buying journey? What do I need to specifically have to meet and exceed their continuous expectations? How does my product help them?
All these questions will help you map your campaign to reach them. Without this, you’re just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Answering these questions will help you reach your audience even better.
Ensure Your Brand Displays Well Across Multiple Devices
In today’s market, saying “my site works on a phone” is not enough. A consumer should easily discover your brand on mobile or desktop and have amazing experiences on both ends. Unfortunately, this is a misstep for many businesses. Small hiccups across platforms are red flags to consumers and do not compel them to spend money with you. Slow load times are one example that are often the first thing consumers notice.
In fact, 53% of visits to mobile sites are abandoned if pages take longer than three seconds to load. This means you earned a genuine interaction but lost it in a short amount of time. And what’s worse, the average webpage takes 15.3 seconds to load, and mobile traffic converts at less than half the rate of that on a desktop. That’s a massive discrepancy right there.
What You Should Consider from the Now, New, and Next
If you want to be like the businesses that you see online who have perfected this process, you need to consider three things for your market landscape for what is now, new, and next.
The Now
From our research, at least 70% of your competition is doing this. This is the basic or expected experience that is a huge miss if not done correctly. Here are some ways to help get you started on “the now.”
- Map out your customer’s journey, identifying motivations and resistance areas
- Develop your brand across different platforms
- Leverage basic digital marketing such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid media
- Provide features and benefits to remove barriers to trial and/or first-time purchase
- Leveraging targeting layers beyond demographics
- Dedicated landing pages based on campaign channel
A whole book could be written on these topics alone. But if you find that you’re not seeing the success you want, then check to see if you’re missing any of these components.
The New
According to our research, only 20% of your competition is in this category. When you think about what is “new,” you are considering new and emerging markets and experiences that you could align with your brand to push the envelope further. Some examples include:
- Content personalization – authenticated users vs. unauthenticated users
- Personalized homepages and product features based on targeting
- Scale SEO with in-depth content and paid media with advanced analytics
- Optimized experiences based on device
The Next
We have found that only 10% of your competition is in this category. To be honest, the return on investment (ROI) is unproven in this category, but there are lots of benefits to exploring this area to be on the cusp of innovation. For example:
- Experience is personalized
- Relaying primarily on first-party data to build out marketing audiences
- Robust content-driven SEO and paid media campaigns layered with onsite testing as well as predictive modeling and attribution
- Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to facilitate content development
- Dedicated mobile experience
Now that I’ve covered what you need to compel consumers to act, keep an eye out for my next blog where I go into more detail about HOW to compel consumers to act.
Consider These Next Steps:
Perficient is uniquely positioned to serve our consumers that need assistance in these areas. Our experts will partner with you to understand what your specific business needs and goals are and develop a map to change your company’s trajectory. Our experts will be with you every step of the way.
For more questions, contact our experts today.
