How to Create an Effective Digital Customer Experience Strategy
- Dean Ara
- December 15, 2022
B2B lead generation can be a rough gig. You’re continually bombarded with marketing tools, products, and strategies. Digital media platforms are all working hard to convince you they can boost your B2B lead generation game, but it’s hard to know which ones are right for you. Each option has pros and cons. The winning digital customer experience strategy combines the benefits of each tool to provide value to your audience. But what does that look like?
There isn’t a quick fix or easy answer here. Building a digital CX that helps your organization achieve its goals will require you to dig deep before you can get started:
- Who are you targeting?
- Where are they on their journey toward a purchase?
- What do you have that can help move them along?
Download the full version of the digital marketing map
Our digital marketing map can help inform and guide the development of your digital CX strategy. Use it to follow along as we work through the steps required, or click on any box in the digital marketing roadmap below to jump to that section.
The Journey From Stranger to Promoter
The first step in creating a digital marketing journey map for your digital customer experience strategy is understanding the stages your audience will go through.
Strangers
You don’t know your audience, and they don’t know you. Developing buyer personas is vital at this stage, as is creating content optimized for each of your services or solutions. This may include grouping audiences based on behaviours, needs, or roles and using this information to attract the right leads.
ATTRACT
Visitors
Visitors have found you somewhere (your site, landing page, social media page, etc.) and are showing interest in solving a specific problem, although they may or may not know what solution they need. Your content should speak directly to buyer personas here. Will you solve their problem? Is your solution right for them? How can they learn more? Be sure to provide conversion opportunities here that point visitors to the next step.
CONVERT
Leads
Once you’ve put a name (and email address) to your visitors, they are leads, and you can begin nurturing them. Their first few conversions may not make them a customer — be patient! Keep providing value and reiterating what your brand can offer them.
CLOSE
Customers
This is the penultimate stage in the customer journey — and possibly the most important. This individual or organization has put their faith in you to solve their problem with your product or service. Make sure to get this new stage of your relationship off to a smooth start with prompt onboarding and ongoing support to help establish a long-term relationship.
DELIGHT
Promoters
If your services or solutions are exceptional, you’ll reach the coveted fifth stage of the buyer journey and convert your customers into promoters. Digital word-of-mouth marketing is often free — as your clients recommend you to others and highlight their trust in you and the value you’ve provided.
Attracting Your Audience
Getting the attention of your target audience is a critical first step in B2B lead generation. You’ll need to make yourself visible with consistent, valuable content across all channels.
Website SEO
All the valuable content you have to offer will go to waste if your website isn’t easy to find and navigate. Build your digital customer experience strategy with a focus on visitors seeking solutions to their problems or challenges.
An effective website should:
- Be visually appealing to visitors
- Offer meaningful content that keeps readers engaged
-
Be accessible to both visitors and indexing robots
– Link depth should not exceed three clicks
– URL structure should be clear and easy to use - Load quickly (slow sites discourage visitors and decrease conversions)
Paid Advertising
Search engine marketing (SEM) or PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns can help boost site traffic. There are several common forms of paid campaign you can use to support your digital customer experience strategy.
Google Search
- Ads appear alongside search results, which tends to generate warmer leads than other paid campaigns
- Success depends on identifying the best keywords to attract readers, as well as the structure and design of your campaign and landing page
Google Display
- More valuable for brand awareness and demand generation as it tends to yield colder leads; any sales boost will likely be short-lived
- Dependent on offering content that is educational or otherwise valuable to prospects
LinkedIn/Social Media Ads
- Can generate warm leads based on highly defined audience targeting (job title, industry, company size, interests, demographics)
- Often leads to higher conversion rates because of the increased control over who sees ads
Other Content Distribution Strategies
Share content that’s relevant to your target audience on other platforms to establish yourself as a thought leader and trusted source of information. You can combine organic, paid, and guest promotions to ensure prospects see your valuable content:
- Social media posts
- Press releases
- Guest blogs on relevant sites
- Paid third-party promotion
Converting Visitors to Leads
Once your audience has found you, your digital customer experience strategy should maintain alignment between organic and paid content to provide relevant information that keeps them engaged.
Website Content
Your website should offer a wide range of content that makes it easy for visitors to understand what you offer and locate the information they’re looking for. Different types of content will fit in different places on your digital marketing journey map.
Top of Funnel (TOFU)
- Blog posts
- Use cases
- Thought leadership articles
Built by TPM: Turnium Blog Post
Middle of Funnel (MOFU)
- Webinars
- Blog posts
- “How to” ebooks
Built by TPM: Adobe Commerce eBook
Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
- Case studies
- ROI calculators
- Solution guides
Built by TPM: Video Case Study
Keyword-Optimized Landing Pages
Your home page isn’t actually what most prospects are looking for. Make sure that social media posts and paid ads direct your visitors to campaign-specific landing pages that deliver exactly what readers expect.
Native Lead Gen Forms
One of the main goals of your digital customer experience strategy is to get closer to potential customers. Forms that visitors complete to download gated content, register for upcoming events, or subscribe to email lists should autofill with their profile information whenever possible. This reduces friction for site visitors and increases your chances of getting more data about them.
Hubspot Marketing Automation and Nurturing
Automate time-consuming processes like scoring leads to maintain a consistent digital CX across channels.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
Leads who’ve engaged with your company and have the potential to become customers if correctly nurtured.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
Prospective customers ready to talk to a member of your sales team will have expressed an obvious interest in your product or service and been vetted by your marketing department.
Download the full version of the digital marketing map
Our digital marketing map can help inform and guide the development of your digital CX strategy. Use it to follow along as we work through the steps required, or click on any box in the digital marketing roadmap below to jump to that section.
Closing Deals with Prospects
Your digital CX strategy is paying off – you’ve attracted the attention of the people or companies you want to do business with, and they’re engaging with your organization.
Leads showing interest but not ready to buy must be nurtured with emails or targeted ads to keep them moving through the funnel. SQLs, on the other hand, often go directly to sales. Make sure your marketing team:
- Provides sales with details on SQLs’ activity so they can provide a consistent experience
- Ensures sales-ready leads are a good fit for your organization
- Supports sales with sale enablement content that matches leads’ needs
Remarketing Ads
Once prospects have visited your site or consumed some of your content, you can continue to stay top of mind and provide valuable information to help nurture them toward a sale.
- Pixel-based remarketing uses a discreet bit of code to ensure people who’ve visited your website, or landing pages see your paid ads as they visit other sites across the web
- List-based remarketing uses the contact information visitors have already provided to identify prospects and show them your ads
- Social media based remarketing (on FB/IG/LI) allow you to remarket to users who have visited your social pages or viewed your videos to re-engage users who have seen your brand on social before
Email Nurturing
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools a B2B marketer can use. Site visitors who have provided you with their email address have effectively given you an invitation to keep feeding them valuable content. Make sure to segment your lists so prospects only receive messages directly relevant to their persona and their stage of the buyer journey.
Sales Enablement
Sometimes your marketing team’s digital customer experience strategy extends beyond marketing into sales enablement. Because more and more customers are doing their own online research before they’re ready to talk to sales, organizations must be prepared to adapt to this new buyer journey and find new ways to engage prospects, address their concerns and objections, and ultimately, close.
Having a successful sales enablement strategy is singlehandedly one of the most important documents for your organization. Luckily, we have the only guide you’ll ever need for B2B sales enablement.
Delighting Your Customers
Service and retention teams should continue to use buyer information to dictate communication channels and preferences and build on the effective digital CX you’ve established.
Don’t neglect customers once they close — this is a great chance to develop a long-term relationship. New clients are often the loudest and most enthusiastic promoters of your business.
Use TPM’s Marketing Map to Optimize Digital CX
Creating a detailed marketing journey map as you develop your digital customer experience strategy can help you identify assets – and gaps where you need to create new content – to deliver a consistent experience across all channels that supports your marketing goals.
Let the Total Product Marketing map serve as your guideline when planning campaigns to convert strangers to customers (or even promoters) by nurturing them through their journey. Our experts have years of experience in B2B lead generation, and we’re always here to help you. Contact us today to discuss your projects.
