The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success

Chapter 6 Create a Connected Customer Experience

The customer journey is personal and in perpetual motion.

IT IS THEIR JOURNEY, NOT YOURS

We are living through the most transformative period in marketing history. Everything we know, believe, and practice is being disrupted. Upheaval stems from industry technology giants such as Adobe (@Adobe), IBM (@IBM), Google (@google), Oracle (@Oracle), and Salesforce.com (@salesforce), as well as emerging marketing software companies that are driving innovation.

But as fast as marketing technology is evolving, the consumer is the true change catalyst.

The customer journey is personal and in perpetual motion. The journey includes awareness, consideration, intent, decision, and validation stages, but it does not follow a linear path defined by marketers.

Social networks, word of mouth, media outlets, bloggers, brands, and books influence consumer decisions, which are researched and made while jumping from smartphones to computers to tablets. The journey can be impulsive, with consumers making spur-of-the-moment purchases through apps and mobile sites, and it can be drawn out, with dozens of resources being referenced before major purchases are made.

Every trackable consumer action creates a data point, and every data point tells a piece of the customer's story. To win consumers' hearts, minds, and wallets, marketers use technology to manage the data explosion, monitor and analyze behavior, build more intelligent strategies, and create ...