Owning the Customer's Consideration Phase

Marketing executives today are faced with more challenges than their earlier counterparts from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. If you were a CMO in that era and you were launching a product with an ample budget, you’d spend the money on print, radio, television, direct and maybe outdoor, and that was it.

Today, you have those media and thousands of different things to do online. Understanding Google algorithm changes, or the throttle rate of Facebook ads, how your customers move through the customer journey, and what part of the journey are they using which social media channels is a lot to digest and requires constant self education.

To achieve success as a CMO or Director of Marketing today, everyone needs to be clear of your organizational goals. Do you need to build a brand? Or do you need to drive conversion? These two goals are completely different. Building a brand you’ll probably be thinking of your mass media options. If its conversion, is it conversion of leads, customers buying a product through e-commerce, or are they buying product through your retailers? You must get very specific and decide which levers to pull to determine those outcomes. It’s also important that vendors, partners, and agencies understand the outcome. 

Google Analytics reports play an important role in assessing the impact of your efforts, but don’t get caught in the trap of build more leads or impressions. Dig deeper. What about your marketing analytics or your strategic metrics? Strategic metrics move your business forward. They consist of things like attributions, which show you the path customers take to complete a conversion, or funnels, which show you how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions. 

So, how do you own the consideration phase? More often than not, customers are caught in making a choice. They can’t decide what to do. So, they just continue to do what they’ve been doing and move on. But you’ve worked hard to get noticed with meaningful and informative messaging and the hope they’ll take action. How do you get them to commit?

Google refers to this as the “Zero Moment of Truth.” Dig deeper once again and you’ll find that 60 percent of consumers search for the most relevant information, without regard to who’s providing it - so much for brand loyalty. If you can own that moment, that split second of consideration, with the kind of content that gets customers to convert and commit, you’ve just made a sale.

(This article is an excerpt from “Marketing Profs,” http://bit.ly/2dYO0uA)