The fragmented consumer experience: Putting the pieces back together, from dancing ponies to the must-have console
Marketers no longer have a captive audience. Consumers have a vast array of screens vying for their attention, fragmenting their day-to-day consumption and communication habits across smartphones, tablets and laptops, to name but a few.
Three's DancePonyDance is a great example of bridging TV and social
According to a report from Ofcom, the uptake of high-end touch screen devices is happening at “ten times the rate of PC adoption in the 1980s, twice as fast as the internet boom in the 1990s and three times faster than the recent uptake of social networking.”
With consumers rapidly shifting devices and connecting across email, SMS, Instant Messenger, Twitter or Facebook, marketers are faced with what is set to become one of their main challenges for 2014: How do you maintain a personalised, consistent experience across all of these points of contact?
More screens, more opportunity
While the expanding range of screens, platforms and channels could be cause for concern, there’s a compelling proposition for marketers to capitalise upon. It presents them with more avenues to engage with consumers than ever before.
It was recently reported that 91 per cent of UK adults view TV on the main set each week, but people are also streaming videos, firing off instant messages and updating their social media status at the same time. Now marketers have the potential to build a range of simultaneous routes to engagement.
Mobile operator Three is a great example. While its #danceponydance campaign was supported by TV broadcasts of its advert this year, the real traction happened online. This was because people were viewing and sharing the ad on its YouTube channel for people to interact with via the web and their smartphone and tablets.
The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud social advertising application, Social.com, was used to run targeted promoted tweets and Facebook ads, which helped to amplify the campaign to Three’s primary audience. This approach has secured more than 7.5 million views so far this year, and clearly demonstrates that marketers can run a cohesive campaign, negating the risk of fragmentation.
The 'bridge' between screens is becoming stronger
While managing this ever-increasing number of screens can appear to be a daunting task, especially for marketers on a budget, a range of companies are increasing the levels of support they can offer to bridge the gap between these screens. This helps to support marketers in their quest for consistent, tailored communication with customers.
Nielson’s Twitter TV Ratings metric, which launched earlier this year, is designed to capture total activity and reach of TV-related conversation on Twitter. Now it’s an invaluable tool that gives brands a common benchmark to measure the engagement of their programming across devices, allowing them to increase and tweak their approach in real time.
Listen and they will follow
While Nielson’s Ratings metric is a useful tool, marketers shouldn’t forget that the consumer is in control of his or her own multiscreen and multichannel experience. It’s the marketer’s job to ensure their brand is represented where consumers spend meaningful amounts of their time. They need to be a ubiquitous force, never overlooking a platform that has the potential for strong levels of engagement.
Understanding a demographic, from what they like to what they buy and consume each day, is not a new concept, but the technology now available to marketers allows them to more effectively target individuals with relevant and personalised messaging that reaches them at the right time, on the channel they use the most.
Achieving this on a large scale can often seem daunting, but this is where investing in a listening and engagement tool that sits across all digital and social channels becomes invaluable. It allows marketers to understand each customer and develop a personalised experience through the platform.
Sony, for example, experienced great success with this strategy ahead of the launch of PlayStation 4 in Europe. The company has focused on engaging with its ever-expanding customer hub beyond traditional channels such as TV and print advertising, building a database of online insights on existing users. The data Sony collated ranged from what games customers buy, to the wider content they download and how they play their games. This information has allowed its marketing team to tailor its engagement with users, as well as wider communications such as personalised emails.
Sony experienced a 23 per cent rise in overall engagement through this approach in just one year with the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, so the value of investing in 1:1 connections with customers truly speaks for itself.
This has to be a focus for all brands in 2014 – traditional advertising will continue to support wider campaigns, but the technology available today means that marketers no longer have to follow a constant process of long-term trial and error. If they invest in the appropriate technology, they can execute personalised consumer engagement at scale and ultimately forge stronger relationships through the platforms that are a part of their customers’ everyday lives.
Paul Smith is vice president, EMEA at Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud.