Customer Experience Strategy Begins With Search Marketing

September 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Dwight Hill, managing director, The Retail Advisory

Customer touch points don’t simply begin with a customer landing on your home page; they begin with search marketing.

Most retailers have worked hard to engineer some form of omni-channel experience for their customers. Savvy retailers map out all customer touch points and strive to measure and improve conversion across their e-commerce and brickand- mortar channels. These customer touch points, however, don’t simply begin with a customer landing on your home page; they begin with search marketing — engineering just where you rank in search engine results. Think about your last Google search; when typing in running shoes, did Nike, Adidas, or Zappos come up within the top ten listings? While it’s certainly a complex effort to maintain rankings and keep up with the evolving search technology, approaching the challenge from the customer’s point of view will help ensure you are making it easy for your customer to find you.

1. Understand Your Customer’s Social Media Behavior

Macy’s has had great success personalizing its merchandising and in-store experience to its target customer. However, to be successful, retailers must also understand their customers’ online and social media behavior. Two trends to be aware of: Pinterest and Google + Your World. Pinterest is one of the emerging communities that has come into prominence — it drove more users to its site recently than YouTube, Google +, and LinkedIn combined. It is certainly one of the newest drivers of traffic to retailers’ sites as users can “pin” items they like for other users and friends to “like” or “repin.” Another important medium is Google + Your World, which influences search results based on Google + users’ circles of friends, providing more personalized search results. The point: Marketers must not only understand their customers’ social media behavior, but also be current on the latest social media and search engine trends to maximize traffic.