How do you keep your brand on message during a changing digital landscape with a company that is more than 100 years old? That’s the question faced by Toni Clayton-Hine, CMO of the Xerox Corporation, every day. One of Toni’s main tasks is managing an evolving brand narrative to a new wave of customers as her company returns to its roots.
As the world gets more digital, Xerox is going back to its core products and finding ways to transform its traditional copy machines into systems that manage the entire document experience, both digitally and physically. These days, it’s about more than just making copies, it’s about optimizing the movement of information and what and how information gets printed. Although the company is going back to its roots with a modern twist, the core brand of Xerox is still the same: to innovate how the world communicates, connects, and works.
To spread the brand message, Toni relies on a team effort at Xerox. Everyone from the product designer to the tech support representative plays a role in how each customer interacts with the product, and everyone has a role to play in the customer experience. Everything the company does is about putting the customer first. Toni’s marketing team works hard to be present where the audience is present. That means connecting with them in new ways, such as social media, and making sure the information is available any place a customer wants to consume it. In today’s sometimes complicated digital landscape, Toni uses the approach of engaging with customers wherever is most comfortable to them to get the information out clearly and quickly.
There’s also the issue of managing the message to see how well it resonates with customers. Xerox has a large focus of getting its employees out in the field to talk to people who are actually using the products, whether they are re-sellers or end customers. Combined with customer councils, feedback sessions, and surveys, it provides the company with strong feedback to make sure its messaging and methods are effective with customers and that the company isn’t over-promising but not delivering, which could be detrimental to the brand. Staying in near-constant contact with customers also allows the brand to make changes quickly as the digital landscape continues to evolve.
Even though times are changing, the overall customer experience is still the same, especially when it comes to Xerox products. The customer experience still includes every touchpoint from early research to buying the product and actually using it. Even though the methods may change, the focus is still on engaging with the customer before, during, and after a sale. There are ways to innovate the process and the products, which Xerox does through its Park division, but the idea of sticking to the core brand and constantly engaging customers stays the same.
The customer landscape is no doubt changing, especially due to technology and increased information. However, by sticking to core principles and looking for ways to reach customers where they already are, brands can join Xerox in having great brand messaging success.
Evolving technology means nearly everything about the customer experience is changing—including the role of the CMO. That’s according to Maggie Chan Jones, CMO of global software company SAP. Maggie draws on her years of industry experience to navigate the changing customer landscape. Where the buying journey used to be linear, the best marketers must now adapt to changing consumer behaviors. Marketers used to rely on the traditional marketing funnel, which moved each customer along a track until they made a purchase. However, today’s customers go in and out of different stages of the buying process, which makes understanding the customer more important than ever before. Instead of walking customers through the now-non-existent linear buying process, brands should work on engagement and building trust with the customer so that they feel comfortable making the purchase whenever they are ready.
As the customer market becomes more complex, brands are struggling to simplify and survive. Complexity can be a drain on customers and on business resources and takes more than 10% of profits from many companies. To avoid complexity, work to simplify your processes and help customers find what they need quickly. The more options a customer has, the more time and money it takes for the company to provide them with what they want, when most times it is just a simple answer to a question. Maggie recommends using innovations and technology to solve customer problems, but to never lose sight of each person you are trying to reach. Even with the newest and best technology, your goal is still the same: to create a quality, personalized experience for each customer. No matter what happens, marketing is still about connecting with people. Before adding in technology, take a step back and consider where you want your company and customer to go. With the processes and goals in place, you can then add in the right technology to reach the end point without becoming too complex. Consider the people and the journey they will have with your brand—everything should focus on the customer and breaking down complexities to make things as simple as possible.
Whereas CMOs used to focus largely on big-picture marketing campaigns, they will soon, if they haven’t already, take on more responsibility than ever to drive bottom-line growth. In many cases, this means having a strong understanding of changing technology and even taking over responsibilities that were traditionally held by the CIO. Machine learning, which Maggie believes is still in the early stages, has the power to lead to big analytics. To better understand the customer, CMOs must be able to decipher big data to find the right analytics to drive growth and connectivity for their company. Big data can provide amazing customer insights, but only when it is used correctly and understood. The use of digitization and big data helps brands stay relevant and in tune with their customers so that they can implement changes and programs while they are still relevant.
Today’s customer landscape is fast-paced and ever-changing. To lead their teams to success, CMOs need to have a strong grasp of both large-scale analytics and small-scale customer engagement.