Facebook ads, google analytics and gamification to boost customer journey

As businesses empower their campaigns in the world of digital marketing ROI wherein focused targeted campaigns are designed with a clear idea to generate specific results; brands and organizations across the globe are equally focused to deliver the best customer journey and customer experiences.

Let us first look at the basic difference between a customer journey and a customer experience in the world of digital touch points for an end-user in the enquiry stage and or buying process.

What do we mean by a Customer journey in the digital world today?

Let’s say you visit a website for the very first time. It could be a normal website, blog, app or an ecommerce site. Here, aspects like:

• Login credentials – Can you register or subscribe on the site or login using easy authentication process like facebook or twitter or LinkedIn or google plus etc
• Are cookies enabled on the site and if so, how does it affect your browsing experience
• How fast does the site load?
• How User friendly is the website? Do you feel like you need someone to explain which feature or function is available or how to use the site navigation etc?
• How easy are the search functions on the site?
• How relevant are the search results? For eg. when you search for a specific topic, what are the options or results delivered and how close to what you were looking for are they?
• How useful is the content?
• Is there uniformity in the corporate communication style, overall theme, content and the sites core topics?
• How easily are you able to locate things on the site you are looking for?
• Can you enquire easily on the site or does it feel like a cumbersome process?
• Are contact forms, location & related email to drop in a quick query easily accessible?
• Does the site support social media feeds, updates, posts on the site and at the same time allow you to easily like the sites facebook page or follow its twitter profile or LinkedIn company page etc
• How personalized does the site’s content feel in comparison to the details it asks from you when you register or subscribe to the site?
• Does it support browsing across various devices and is mobile friendly and or responsive?
• Does it easily allow you to re-share the content across multiple social networking sites and or email etc?

These are some of the examples of what could constitute as a customer journey in the digital world.

On similar lines, what would constitute as a customer experience?

In addition to the points shared above, a customer experience could be the following:

• If it’s an ecommerce site, how easy and quick is the buying process and or checkout options
• If it’s a normal site or a blog or an app etc, how easy is it for the site visitor to login or subscribe or cancel subscription or account or recommend content to re-share etc, while enquiring live and or in real-time via a chatbox or quick contact form query and the response from the site thereto.
• When you drop in a query on the site, how quickly do you get the response from the site owners or brand executives in charge of the digital conversations?
• How professional and in tune is the sites team with their social media team and the back-end handling the site’s engagement and conversations online to the transition offline.
• How quick is the support for after sales services in terms of online help, online guides, how-to tips etc

In the video below, you can listen to the relevance of a digital strategy, digital transformation for brands and end users in the process of creating ROI with power packed customer journey and customer experiences.

BBC Digital Strategy Speaker – BBC KNOWLEDGE at National Digital Marketing Awards – ANANTH V – Best Digital Marketing Professional in India & the Most Influential Digital Marketing Leaders

So how can Facebook ads, google analytics and gamification boost customer journey and customer experiences

FACEBOOK ADS:

Objectives:

Focus on Goals

Once you are clear on your goals, use the relevant Facebook Ad objectives from the multiple options available based on what suits your requirements the most

Once you choose the objective, the next step is to design a custom audience and or create a targeted audience from the start based on their locations, affinity, age groups, etc and choose a campaign budget across a specific timeline to design and plan the same.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

At this point, make sure to use the data available across your google analytics for eg. that helps you understand the audience type, demographics, what are they searching for, what content appeals the most, which pages are visited or searched for the most, what devices or browsers they use to visit the site, how frequently do old users revisit, etc

We are living in an age of data and or information overload. So ensure to track only that data which is relevant to your digital marketing campaign objective or strategy.

Once you know your goals, your customers digital journey across your multiple platforms, it always adds value to plan and design an innovative strategy for best ROI results.

For eg. Organizations across industries and countries are offering multiple deals, discounts etc to users to give them incentive for buying their products and services. But customers are no longer merely looking for offers. They are looking for an engaging real-time experience too. This is where a digital strategy such as gamification could play a valuable role in your digital marketing customer experience process.

GAMIFICATION:

Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics, game design techniques or integrating Big Data in a way that is relevant to your digital marketing metrics, ROI and goals.

It can be used by integrating apps, website, leaderboards, badges, awards, incentives, tools or simple yet innovative processes with your social media marketing campaigns with a clear focus to deliver specific results.

These results or ROI could be in the form of increasing footfalls at your physical office location, restaurants, malls, events, or increasing repeat purchases, referrals, downloads, brand mentions, increase corporate learning for employee development programs or employee skill development programs etc.

The idea is to empower brands and their end users to encourage them to have real-time conversations & engagement with you.

Simple steps for a successful start to your gamification strategy integrated using data from google analytics, focused ads from facebook ads etc:

• Step 1:
  Start with a simple idea. Take for example: “You want your customers or end users to ‘actively use’ your company’s app from their smartphones for ‘1.2x’ more number of hours per day” OR “Increase footfalls at your Retail store or Restaurant by 35% in 3 months”.
  So the focus on your digital strategy here needs to be specific and clear. Based on this, you could create facebook ads across specific demographic of users using custom lists or custom audiences based on site visitors monitored from facebook pixel etc or using google analytics data.
• Step 2:
  Give your end users an incentive to do the same. For this you could make use of any tools or services or apps online that help you professionally to integrate gamification as part of your business models e.g. https://badgeville.com/
• Step 3:
  Ensuring your website or app which has the gamification process or tool integrated into your campaign, is tracking every “relevant information” to help you customize and improve the experience for your end users.
• Step 4:
  When you add incentives, rewards etc for your end users: Ensure:

The proper use of Gamification technique can:

• Drive higher ROI, deliver actual revenue and business results
• Give your brand a massive competitive advantage with real-time engagement
• Increase brand and customer loyalty
• Increase brand purchases, product downloads, visits to an in-store business space, and most important of all, make the customer feel sincerely valued for his or her time, money and efforts.

These well planned, executed and monitored digital strategies ensure a smooth working process for your campaigns and at the same time help you in reaching milestones, goals in the form of real ROI while creating valuable real-time content and brand engagement for end users.

What are some of the strategies that have worked for your organization using these tools, process etc?

Do you have queries on how your organization can use gamification, facebook ads and google analytics to deliver campaign results for your end users and brand? Feel free to reach us here to know more.

Be Well

Ananth V

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