7 Strategies to Drive Business Growth Through Digital Experience Innovation

Disruptive technologies are accelerating and reshaping the evolution of markets while also influencing customer behaviors and expectations. New technologies are empowering customers to research and shop differently. These same technologies are also presenting marketers with the ability to transform the role of marketing to become a growth engine for the business.

Over the last year, I interviewed leading CMOs at top brands such as Nestlé Waters, Home Away, Domino’s and Marriott International to learn how they were approaching innovation and how that might affect the role of brand and marketing. I learned that, across the board, in addition to adopting new technologies and hiring for new expertise, digital customer experience (DCX) is the leading catalyst for driving marketing innovation and business growth. As a result, DCX is not only improving customer experiences, but it’s also contributing to mutually beneficial outcomes. This connects the dots between customer satisfaction and loyalty and also with important business KPIs such as revenue, customer lifetime value (CLV) and profitability.

Here are seven ways that these progressive CMOs are linking marketing innovation, digital customer experiences and business growth.

In an era of abundant data, AI and machine learning platforms, the role of marketing can finally deliver customer experiences that meet or exceed modern customer expectations while also contributing to the bottom line. Create a cross-functional group led by marketing that maps the customer journey, assembles data across touchpoints, studies industry best practices and organizes around journey renovation and innovation.

Innovative brands invest in collecting and interpreting real-time data to better understand their customers, and they also deploy new technologies like AI and machine learning to quickly analyze and respond to it instantly and automatically.

Data and analytics become key functions as they provide real-time—and eventually predictive—service to an integrated, cross-functional marketing organization that can test, learn and grow.

Real-time data and insights can help sell purposeful digital transformation to the entire organization. The C-suite and other critical business functions, however, need to hear customer data and insights in personalized, compelling and hyper-relevant ways to create a sense of urgency. Engaging experts who can translate that data becomes increasingly paramount.