Across every industry, e-commerce remained the ultimate titan. It was the main way businesses interacted with customers and sold their products in 2020 and into 2021. At my company, we’ve been helping our clients craft e-commerce-focused messaging and marketing efforts for the last two years. And although e-commerce saw a huge jump during the pandemic, it isn’t a passing trend.
The shift to e-commerce is a structural one that will remain in the fabric of how we market and do business. It’s imperative for businesses to grasp the importance of e-commerce to succeed in the long-term.
So, how can companies double their efforts as we launch into a new year full of opportunities? Here are some tips for 2022 and beyond.
The Digitization of Business Through the Use of AI
The customer journey has become more complicated than ever before. People are inundated with messaging across a whole host of media platforms, and as a result, it’s more critical than ever to reach them at the right time with the right message. Many companies have adapted to digital tools like Slack and Zoom to communicate with their teams, but what about better communicating with your customers?
At the end of the day, every business can measure how effective their campaigns and communication are through the end goal of increased sales and strengthened revenue streams. It’s imperative to know how to accurately target and track the data surrounding these metrics. Many businesses are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand their customers’ wants and needs.
Modern AI solutions can help you declutter your data through automated processes that filter through your channels and devices and winnow down the findings into more actionable insights. These tools can aid in ridding you of “analysis paralysis” and clear up confusion, leaving you with easy-to-interpret insights.
And AI’s functionality isn’t limited to sourcing and sorting data. Some companies are creating AI-centric programs and tools to do everything from locating “lookalike” customers — finding and targeting people similar to your existing customers — to retargeting campaigns that aim to target those that filled their virtual carts but walked away before clicking that last “buy” button.
In this time of technological advancement, AI tools are the ultimate way to market smarter, not harder.
Why Better Understanding the Customer Journey Is Imperative to Success
You can talk all you want, but if you aren’t speaking to the right people at the right time, your message will fall on deaf ears. That’s why understanding the customer journey is key to a successful campaign.
Your customers have a variety of ways to interact with you, whether it’s following you on social media or subscribing to your newsletter. But each interaction has something to teach us about the customer’s wants and needs. During what times of day do they engage? Do they open emails with catchy, emoji-punctuated headlines, or do they like more informative or serious subject lines? Every fact you can collect helps you better understand how to market to them.
I believe the next step in digital marketing innovation lies with campaign attribution tools, as well as automated conversion and channel tracking. These help you determine which channels most influence your sales cycle and make more informed marketing decisions in the future. These tools show you where and when you’re reaching your customers, which, in turn, helps you create data-driven strategies to better lead your customers down desired paths to conversion.
Although it can seem like the key to success in 2022 is more tracking and more work, the power of AI declutters all of this to present you with easy-to-interpret insights. And what marketer wouldn’t want that? Better insights lead to better tracking and reporting, which ultimately leads to better success rates for your business. In 2022, it’s time to give in to the trends that are ultimately taking us in the right direction — better data, better insights and better interactions with customers.
