The landscape of different user experiences and marketing content is the user journey. Successfully managing the user journey is much talked about but rarely delivered. Whereas marketing used to be about what you said, it is increasingly integrated with how you act and what you do. This makes forming an integrated user experience difficult, despite being fundamental to making the most of the digital opportunity.

user-experience-chart

There are three critical data requirements that provide the ingredients for creating integrated user journey.

Audience Mapping. Don’t rely solely on someone else’s audience. Build your own target audience that pulls together competitor, media and social media sources alongside customers audiences. So much data is now public, especially in social, that enables brands to from groups of individuals and produce dynamic databases.

Cross Channel Measurement. Using measures that allow different marketing activities to be compared is a fundamental part of integrating channels. Having a set of KPIs that are appropriate to multiple channels greatly improves the mechanisms for collaboration. Impressions (delivery), Reach (unique people) Participation (content engagement) and Subscription (conversion) can all be pulled from multiple channels.
Balanced Content Strategy. Regardless of the campaign aims all content should correctly balance communication for potential and existing consumers. Existing customers and advocates will always be the early adopters of a brand’s digital channels and they offer a powerful resource for spreading the messages.

With the fundamental building blocks in place the role of each channel is much easier to define. The ability to adjust campaigns in real-time becomes a reality and ensures that the brand and the user both get the desired result.