Page 30 - AeM_July_2020

BEST
PRACTICES
& HubSpot has been publishing data and trends for core thing, easily replicable products, and eroding trust in
STRATEGIES
business metrics since early April, with the data businesses mean that a delighted customer base is far
showing varying levels of consumer activity in Asia- more influential in driving growth than any marketer or
Pacific. In Singapore, web traffic rushed up to 31% salesperson.
higher than normal at the end of March but has since
dipped to just 10% above benchmark in mid-May. Today’s consumers are vocal -- half of buyers have
Marketers adjusted their outreach accordingly, with the shared an experience they’ve had with a company on
number of marketing email sends going from 66 social media. Buyers are equally likely to share a good
percent above benchmark at the end of April, to seven experience or a bad one, and with 81% of consumers
percent below average in the next week. reporting that they trust their family and friends’ word
over a business’ marketing, can you really afford a
Aside from reading the weather, we juggle the latest breakdown in customer experience?
algorithm changes on an ever-growing number of
platforms and distribution channels. We must learn and But as marketers, we can’t build an amazing customer
adopt new technologies to stay ahead of the experience unless our tools and systems allow us to be
competition and match rapidly evolving customer nimble. According to research from HubSpot, 82% of
expectations. We face swiftly increasing customer consumers expect an “immediate” response when
acquisition costs. All the while, we write remarkable looking for marketing or sales help -- that number rises
content to publish on our blogs, enable our sales to 90% when the question is related to customer
teams, nurture leads into opportunities... all at service. What does “immediate” mean? 10 minutes.
breakneck speed! Add to that, one-third of buyers expect to be able to self
-serve in the purchase process. As your business
And that’s all before marketers even get to their grows, your team won’t be able to get back to all
websites. We need to support more integrations, more prospects within 10 minutes. It’s just not possible for
personalization, and at the most basic level, we need any company with aspirations to grow.
the ability to spin up new site pages, add new content,
change layouts, and make copy edits to our websites Simply put, your website needs to be there when you
on the fly. Websites are the cornerstone of your can’t be. But marketers are handicapped by the tools
company’s digital experience, and right now, your they use to improve their website. Most marketers
website is also your storefront. They should evolve as choose CMSes that are easy to set up, but once it’s
quickly as your business does. time to make changes, they have to roll up their
sleeves and learn how to code and become amateur
The necessity of nimbleness developers as they try to get plugins to work. To keep
pace in a post-COVID age, marketers need a CMS
It’s not what you sell, it’s how you sell. Ten years ago, that’s usable and flexible enough to make changes to
businesses outran their competition by selling a product our websites in real-time, and powerful enough to
that was 10 times better. Today, companies win and support the wide array of functions our websites need
lose because of their customer experience. to create an excellent customer experience.
Increasingly vocal buyers, online reviews for every-

July 2020: Virtual-, Augmented & Mixed Reality: revolutionizing the customer experience 30