Harness the power of a Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
There are (of course) always going to be fads and trends that influence marketing and sales strategies, but more important are the long-term shifts. With this in mind, personalizing interactions via a digital experience platform (DXP) is going to dominate over the next 18 months.
While we’ll talk more about this throughout the rest of the article, this means the customer will engage with businesses and other brands across social media and beyond. The scope is enormous and much more immersive than current technology allows for.
This piece will further look into the concept of a DXP and talk about how you can begin to harness it for your own benefits. Let’s take a look!
The current state of online marketing
Before we delve into where the whole customer experience is going, let’s take a look at what they have to deal with right now. In a very broad sense, you’ll have several entry points of your sales funnel. Common examples of these include sponsored ads, social media posts or your website itself.
Of course, each of these is designed to appeal to a large target user base, with the understanding that many will simply spill out of the funnel. The constant churn of marketing is based in part on recapturing these lost prospects.
For example, you’ll possibly implement a retargeting or remarketing campaign to try and reignite the interest of lost customers. In essence, your marketing is powered by new customers discovering you, as well as previous customers rediscovering your services.
As you can guess, this approach is quite wasteful and inefficient, hence the need for the entire marketing machine. However, the DXP is a new approach on the horizon that looks to promise less waste, more conversions and, more importantly, no escape from your marketing.
Where customer experience is headed
In the last section, we didn’t talk about the rise of mobile browsing — more specifically non-desktop internet usage. The numbers show that mobile surfing has a larger traffic share than desktop browsing. This is interesting because the question becomes: are the traditional methods of marketing outdated, or at least unoptimized?
The concept of a DXP could provide the answer. This is a way of immersing the potential customer in your branding and marketing, with the hope that they convert. This sounds similar to current strategies, but a DXP has a few key differences:
- A DXP is almost platform and device agnostic.
- Marketing is highly-tailored to individual targets.
- It’s arguably more immersive than traditional marketing methods.
Let’s touch on these a little more. A DXP is designed to essentially follow the user around. In other words, the experience is meant to be similar, regardless of the user’s device.
What’s more, in the current climate ads have a more general focus. This isn’t to say they aren’t targeted, but there’s an inherent weakness in that they have to appeal to a large user base.
However, a DXP enables you to tailor ads to individual users, per each specific device. This opens up a world of highly-targeted, laser-focused ads that will be more immersive and provide a greater conversion rate over time.
It’s fair to say this could be drastic compared to currently accepted standards.
In fact, this concept is so new that it may actually end up being a transition to the true answer in the long-term future. However, at this point, the focus is on defining and developing the DXP as the endpoint, so to speak.
How to begin adapting your marketing strategy
It’s very tough to begin suggesting a plan of attack when a concept is so new. However, there are things you can do today to help the transition to a DXP in the future. Firstly, make sure the base elements are in place. Some examples of these include:
- Social media accounts, on platforms relevant to your target audience.
- A website that acts as a proactive lead generator, rather than a passive “virtual business card.”
- An ad strategy you’re willing to evolve and adapt, that has a measure of success.
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The last item in this list is arguably the least necessary on paper, although we see plenty of benefits. For example, if you can use your current success as a marker, this can help you analyze your DXP’s growth accordingly. What’s more, if there are specific user types you’re associating with good numbers, they will be a good target for your DXP.
Of course, you could be hesitant to tweak an already-successful marketing strategy. In these situations, it may be more beneficial to target a different set of users.
For instance, you could continue with an ad campaign as you usually would, but siphon off a segment of unconverted prospects to see how your DXP performs. This lets you reap the benefits of your current campaign while taking fewer risks when testing your DXP.
Closing thoughts on the DXP
With the web ultimately being a tech-based field, you’ll often find rapid innovation is at the forefront. When it comes to marketing, the DXP is one such innovation that looks like it might just be the future.
We’ll soon be able to engage and target potential customers regardless of the device they’re using, on a cross-platform basis. What’s more, ads can be tailored almost on a macro level, meaning the only barrier to conversions is the strength of your marketing materials.