How Simple Helps Marketers Create Seamless Customer Experiences

By Jodie Byass

Now more than ever, marketers are being asked to manage the customer experience. In recent research we conducted, a majority of marketers are now in charge of CX as well as marketing. But this takes them well out of the marketing, communications and reputation management comfort zone that was their traditional sphere of influence.

Far from simply tracking and reporting Net Promoter Scores, these days, marketers are being asked to compile Voice of the Customer reports for boards, and investing in more complex CX measurement tools.

Increasingly, marketers find themselves working with UX experts and human-centred design specialists to ensure online experiences meet expectations, and customers can actually understand the forms they’re being asked to fill out. Sometimes they’re asked to contribute to training programs to help retail staff and call-centre staff be the ‘face’ of the brand.

The customer experience created by the sum of all the touch points of a brand is already a multi-faceted beast — and it’s becoming increasingly complex and unwieldy to manage. Two-thirds of marketers report they have a hard time just meeting basic brand consistency expectations without that added complexity to consider.

In 2019, a majority of marketers reported they would experiment with new channels including AI, voice search and the Internet of Things — on top of all the other customer touch points they need to manage. While in 2021, even more trends and changes to the marketing sphere emerged, all of which marketers must keep top of mind when managing customer experience.

Against this backdrop, brand governance is not just about getting your logo right or avoiding an embarrassing regulatory breach — it’s also the backbone of a seamless customer experience, a cornerstone of authenticity and trust, and a critical tool for maintaining your brand’s distinctive voice in a sea of sameness.

Read on for 9 ways you can use Marketing Operations platforms to create, manage and deliver seamless customer experiences.

iStock-1238921960

1. Provide visibility over all marketing activity

Simple provides a central platform for managing the brand experience that includes a centralised marketing calendar for planning all your marketing activity.

This provides complete visibility over your marketing activity so marketing leaders, teams and other stakeholders can see all the marketing work you have coming up, across all customer touch points.

2. Communicate and align the organisation around your vision, objectives and brand values

Templated briefs communicate and create alignment with your overarching objectives and goals to all marketing stakeholders up front, and ensure all your marketing activity is on brand and contributes to your brand values and the customer experience you want to create.

3. Make all your brand reference materials easily accessible

Simple provides a central repository for brand guidelines, templated sales and product documents and updated regulatory requirements, as well as approved creative assets, so they are always accessible — not only to your existing team, but to new team members.

Don’t waste time searching old hard drives or your crowded inbox trying to remember where your most recent brand guidelines are — make brand compliance as quick and easy as possible so even distributed and geographically dispersed teams are always speaking with one brand voice.

4. Work proactively with marketing risk and compliance to meet regulatory requirements

Automated compliance processes ensure all the necessary marketing work is put in front of your risk, compliance and legal, as well as brand teams, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Build trust with internal stakeholders, regulators and consumers with your proactive approach to brand governance and compliance.

Download now: 10 Steps to Mastering Marketing Compliance Checklist

5. Take the pain out of brand governance and creative approvals

Ever thought of legal as the department where marketing work goes to die? Put an end to compliance bottlenecks with pre-agreed workflows that allow your team to move quickly while ticking all the regulatory boxes and getting the input and sign-off you need.

Don’t waste time chasing approvers — bring the approvers to the work with Simple’s centralised annotation and mark-up function, so you can police your brand guidelines and protect your authentic brand voice but still be nimble and responsive in the marketplace.

6. Pass your in-house audits without the last-minute scramble

Show your in-house audit teams you’re serious about compliance by building it into your day-to-day processes. Avoid the last-minute scramble through email inboxes to collate the required approvals.

Simple’s automatic audit feature logs all asset versions and feedback and tracks approvals, as well as storing all approved work on one central platform.

7. Work compliantly with your agencies and partners

Simple’s centralised briefing, review and approvals workflows allow marketing teams to work compliantly with external agencies and partners, as well as internal teams to ensure everyone is contributing to the same seamless customer experience.

Our asset library ensures you have all the files you need to use and re-use your approved assets, tagged to ensure you’re following copyright provisions.

8. View the brand experience

Our searchable asset repository provides a global view of all approved creative assets that enables marketing to quickly assess brand consistency and track the impression your brand is making in the market.

This helps teams assess and deliver a seamless customer experience across all the touch points that go through marketing.

9. Double down on what’s resonating

Track key results in Simple’s marketing performance analytics and link those results back to the marketing plan so you can identify the marketing work that’s resonating most with customers and move quickly to replicate or improve it.

Marketers need their brand to stand out from the crowd and delivering a seamlessly consistent customer experience across all touch points will give your brand its best chance of achieving that distinction. It’s not an easy process. Simple’s compliance automation and advanced collaboration features, will unite your teams behind one vision with one brand ecosystem — all managed via our intelligent marketing platform.

Simple Marketing Operations Cloud helps marketing teams reduce complexity and work at speed while creating seamless customer experiences. For more information, contact our team to speak to one of our consultants.