In this article, Robert Caruso talks about the two meanings of marketing experiences. There are some eye catching statistics from research by Accenture. It’s very good news for startups. This one will get you thinking, as it did us! It’s another in our “Great Articles You may have missed” series.

The Disruptive Influence of Marketing Experiences

Whether it be digital marketing, tangible products and online services, experiences are continually occurring around your business. Customers experience your actual products, yet they also experience your continued messaging. Most important of all is how you handle them with customer service after the sale.

But is that where customer experiences begin and end? Better think again.

Well ahead of customer purchase journeys and life cycles, your prospects are experiencing your brand through the various elements of your digital marketing efforts. What’s more, they are also being bombarded with experiences from others within your market that are startups or old players making a new move within your space. This competition threatens to disrupt your current or future revenue, market share, and even your overall market perception.

If you are a new brand entering a market and attempting to take on big enterprise brands with new innovations that disrupt the marketplace, you too need to take a long hard look at the experiences your prospects and customers will have. From today and into the future.

Experiences Can Create Market Disruption

According to recent research by Accenture, 34% of CMO ‘s and CEO ‘s who were surveyed said that their customers were more open to engaging in offerings from new entrant competitors. What’s even more astounding is that 29% said that new entrants into their space were using customer experience as a key differentiator against them. 30% of those same executives said that these new entrant competitors are better at providing a positive customer experience than traditional players long within the market.

I am not sure that all of you got what was just outlined here. Beyond the features, benefits and value brands are offering through their actual products and services, nearly one-third of executives believe that new entrants and startups are using or can use an improved customer experience as a main differentiator to create disruption the market!

Startups Should Be Differentiating Through Experiences

If you are a startup attempting to break into an established market with new and innovative products, services or technologies, this should really be getting your attention. Your biggest brand competitors are struggling to remain relevant.  It is not so easy for them to provide required and expected experiences across the customer life cycle. And they know it!

In another report, about 75% of global business leaders said that they are concerned that startups could pose a threat to their businesses. They also feel that startups have a “tech advantage”.

Trust me when I tell you this. As a startup, you are much more capable of creating improved experiences for your target market than the larger players. You are nimble, agile and have far less bureaucracy in place than they do. Not to mention your innovation mindset is likely well ahead of theirs as well. You should place as much focus on using improved, advanced and innovative experiences for your customers and prospects as you do on your product development.

Opportunities For Disrupting Experiences

97% of CEO and CMO respondents in the Accenture research said that they are placing an emphasis on protecting their businesses from new competitors that have not traditionally been a part of their industry. 97%! That goes for startups as well as existing brands making a new play into their space. In fact, 43% of CMO’s said that safeguarding against competition is a large priority. 54% said this was only so to some extent.

This shows that the opportunities within market disruption are real and go both ways. Both for startups and potential for existing businesses that recognize the potential disruptions and take clear, innovative steps to guard against disruption by new entrants.

So if new and improved experiences are seen as such a threat to existing market leaders and customers are apparently pretty open to better experiences, where are the opportunities?

Marketing Experiences

This phrase “Marketing Experiences” can mean two distinctly different things and I meant it to. You can and should be marketing the kind of experiences your new and existing customers want and expect. That is abundantly clear. But the other meaning is less obvious.

Marketing experiences are an actual thing in and of themselves. Marketing experiences are consciously designed and created content, funnels and messaging that result in an intended feeling or experience. In the marketing sense, experiences are a journey you fashion. It starts with the content you create to take your customer from an initial discovery of your brand or product. And it goes all the way through the multiple types of carefully created content. Each component of the experience is designed to touch on emotional connections. These address the needs, wants and challenges that your customer has.

Are you just marketing experiences as a differentiation to your prospective customers? Or are you also creating marketing experiences through high-end content marketing that evoke emotions and drive desired actions?

Do you have any thoughts around the growing importance of customer experiences? We’d love to hear about them below!

 

Originally titled “Marketing Experiences As Disruption” and published on fondalo.com.  Republished here with permission.