'Customer Experience is the Brand Battlefield'

This headline comes from the “Fourth Annual State of Marketing Report,” published by Salesforce Research.

The report summarizes leading marketing insights and trends among B2B, B2C and B2B2C marketing leaders worldwide. The major findings of the report continue to be delivering on the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, and the growing need for marketers to provide a more robust customer experience across multiple marketing communications channels (digital, social, paid, print, etc.).

Sixty-eight percent of marketing leaders say their company is competing more and more on the customer experience

Why do marketing leaders and companies find it important to deliver a consistent, personalized customer experience? Because 52% of consumers say they are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize its communications and treat each customer as an individual consumer.

Today’s consumers want personalized communication throughout their customer journey. Companies fall short in personalizing their communications throughout all of their marketing channels. The findings show that more than half of today’s marketers use the “spray and pray” mentality from years ago – repeating the same static message across multiple channels. Today’s marketers need to take a consistent message and give it a different twist on every communication channel used to reach their customers.

Email continues to be ranked among the top two communication channels used by marketers. A good marketing plan will use email and combine it with other marketing tools to improve customer awareness, engagement and overall customer acquisition efforts.

Read more of the Research findings to learn how:

• Marketers are doubling down on mobile and advertising on new platforms.
• The use of video advertising has tripled in the last couple of years.
• The top performing marketing channels used by B2B and B2C marketers.
• Marketers need to create customer personas.