Earning Loyal Customers in the Experience Economy

In today’s digital, connected world, audiences can find virtually anything they want whenever they want it. They have little patience for sifting through irrelevant content to find what they’re looking for.

Brands know that to grab the attention of their audiences, they must meet them where they’re at. This means creating personalized, cross-channel experiences that make it easy to find and engage with your brand.

Grabbing the attention of your audience is only one part of the equation, however. How do you hold that attention once you have it? Here are three ways to be sure you capture and hold attention.

ADDRESS THE DISTRACTION FACTOR.

It’s easier than ever for brands to connect with their customers wherever and whenever, but it also means audiences are more easily distracted. With so many choices at their fingertips, who could blame them? Ninety percent of the world’s data was produced in the last two years alone. That’s more content and data than any of us could ever possibly consume.

It’s no longer enough for brands to generate content, pump it out via all their channels, and hope it makes an impression. What if — instead of vying for that fleeting moment of attention — your brand could hold your audience’s attention, leave a lasting memory, and never have to worry whether they know who you are again?

This is a whole new level of customer experience that marketers today are struggling to figure out. Those that are, though, are cutting through the noise and winning loyal customers.

Brands that want to not only stand out from this distraction environment — or distraction economy — but also stand above it, have to balance it with an experience economy.

“The distraction economy has to be counterbalanced with an experience economy.” – Nate Skinner, Vice President of Product Marketing, Salesforce Pardot

CONNECT CONTENT TO EXPERIENCE.

We all know that effective customer experiences begin with meaningful connections. They must be timely, cross-channel, and so relevant to your customer that they feel enticed to engage with your brand, instead of someone else’s.

The ability to foster lasting connections relies on having a meaningful brand as a foundation. This means making sure of two things:

• That the different areas of your business are aligned around a shared voice and set of values, so that the brand you present is seamless, consistent, and recognizable — just like the customer experiences you want to create.
• That the personalized content and experiences you create always connect back to your brand and that each individual interaction feels like part of a larger experience.

A simple way of thinking about this is to imagine your brand as a map where each part of the business and the brand is connected to each other — and by navigating the map, audiences can visit different components without ever leaving the brand as a whole. For example, each year, the Dreamforce campus is laid out in a way that guides people to the areas and events that make most sense for them, but always within a larger experience of Dreamforce as a whole.

Nate Skinner, Vice President of Product Marketing at Pardot, applies this same approach to content. When marketers create personalized journeys, they should create them within the larger context of fostering a relationship between customers and the brand as a whole.

MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES EARN CUSTOMER LOYALTY.

Why go through all this careful planning to make sure customer experiences and brand are always connected? From the moment a prospect hits your website to the minute they make a purchase, everything they engage with should be connected, because, according to Nate Skinner, “That ultimately creates an experience which is more memorable, and memories are what create loyalty now.”

If you create experiences your customers will remember, your brand will be better positioned to succeed in today’s experience economy. 

Ask yourself, is the content I offer my customers connected to an experience that leaves a memory?