Provocateur:

In an orchestra, each musician plays a key role in making a beautiful harmony. Although individual instruments are important on their own, it’s the combination of all the instruments and how they relate to one another that makes the music powerful and creates the sound that resonates with audiences.

Like orchestras, all of the various components of a marketing program—from TV ads, emails, and display ads, to mobile apps, landing pages, and paid search—play a crucial role in delivering a delightful consumer experience. If they aren’t working harmoniously, it impacts how likely new and existing customers are to shop, buy, or even recommend a brand to others.

Yes, most marketers still think about the consumer experience in terms of individual channels and separate interactions instead of considering the end-to-end experience. This creates discordance for customers.

Delivering relevant, harmonious experiences across channels and devices isn’t easy. But it’s mission-critical if marketers are to win consumers’ business and loyalty.

So, how can marketers orchestrate optimal consumer experiences that attract new customers and keep existing customers coming back for more? Here are four key strategies:

End inefficiency, duplication, and waste

Many marketing organizations operate in product, brand, and channel silos. These teams work independently, often with their own outside agencies, and using their own set of metrics to measure engagement, conversions, revenue, and return. These siloed structures and competing agendas not only lead to inefficiency, duplication, and waste, but also create a disjointed experience for consumers.

Connect those silos using cross-functional teams. Develop, test, measure, and optimize strategies and tactics across online, mobile, and offline environments to drive a common set of success metrics. Work closely with departments such as product development, sales, customer care, and IT, to ensure synchronization across every possible interaction.

Widen your aperture

Everyone leaves behind digital footprints that paint a picture of who they are, what they like, and how they behave. Much of this data is stored in disparate systems, making it difficult for marketers to view consumers holistically, or discover the channels, devices, and tactics that are most effective for reaching, engaging, and converting them. By consolidating all this data into a centralized repository, marketers can develop a more complete, people-based view of their customers and prospects. This helps optimize segmentation, allowing for more relevant, timely, and effective messages and experiences that address each consumer’s unique needs and preferences.

Ditch last click
Last-click attribution, which some marketers still cling to, is simple but unreliable. It leads marketers to double count success metrics because multiple channels take credit for the same lead, sale, or other KPI. It also doesn’t account for the influence of prior touchpoints along the consumer journey that contributed to a desired outcome.

Orchestrating the optimal consumer experience means using a multi-touch attribution approach that accounts for today’s cross-channel, cross-device consumer journey. Multi-touch attribution eliminates duplication, assigning fractional credit to all the channels and tactics that influenced a desired action or business outcome. With a clear understanding of the touchpoints that drive performance, marketers can make smarter investment decisions that also enhance the consumer journey.

Invest in smart technology

A new generation of intelligent technology has emerged that unifies consumer attributes with multi-touch attribution, so marketers can understand performance in the context of key audiences. By breaking down functional and data silos, these platforms provide a holistic view of the consumer journey across all channels and devices, as well as a granular understanding of how different marketing and media tactics are driving desired behaviors and outcomes, whether online, offline, or both.

With such clarity, marketers can orchestrate harmonious customer experiences, optimize their budgets, and amplify business results.

It’s time for marketers to take a page from the orchestra: Focus on how all elements of the consumer experience work together to influence behavior and drive results. Like making beautiful music, only then can marketers orchestrate experiences that truly resonate with their ideal audiences.

About the Author

Manu Mathew is cofounder and CEO of Visual IQ. He is responsible for directing the company’s growth and expanding the capabilities of the company’s IQ Intelligence Suite.​

Prior to Visual IQ, Manu served as managing director of Carat Fusion’s Boston office, where he helped triple its revenue and profitability. Before that, he served as COO at Vizium.​

Manu has written articles for publications such as Forbes, DMN, and iMedia Connection, and has spoken at industry events for organizations such as the iMedia Summits, OMMA and ad:tech. He sits on the Public Policy Council of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).