How social networks put consumers in charge of the way brands use data

You need to know how your marketing across your channels of SEO, email and social media influences customer behavior and results in conversions. The growth of social media usage–and the advent of Dark Funnel and Dark Social– has made it more difficult for brands to get a clear cross-channel view of the customer.

This post will:

1. Highlight ways to get a better cross-channel view of your customers
2. Assess the effect on the Dark Funnel and Dark Social
3. Describe ways to reach your true target audience and start collecting the data you need to help them along their customer journey

Define your target audience

First, you’ll need to define what your target audience is. Your target audience can be defined in many different ways, but typically it’s an audience that represents a larger share of the market than you currently serve, or one that has the potential to grow into a more significant market share.

For example, if you have an e-commerce website and want to delve deeper into your customers by understanding cross-channel marketing, think about who your current customers are and how they behave on different channels. If you find out that your average customer spends most of their time on social media, then focus more on social media in order to engage with them.

Formal and informal tracking methods

This bears repeating: One of the most important aspects of cross-channel marketing is to understand how your marketing activities across channels influence customer behavior.

To gain this insight, you’ll need to take into account both formal and informal methods for tracking your customers.

Formal methods include things like using analytics software like Google Analytics to measure conversions across channels. Informal methods, on the other hand, include things like listening to what your customers are saying about you online or getting feedback from regular conversations with them.

When it comes down to it, effective cross-channel marketing is all about reliable data that helps you make better decisions. With this in mind, you must find a way to track your customers across their various channels and use that information to inform your strategy moving forward.

Privacy concerns and the end of cookies

One of the most serious issues that marketers face is the rise in privacy concerns. People are becoming more aware of what their data means for brands, and they’re demanding more control over their data.  This means that it’s becoming more difficult for brands to collect data and use it in new ways.

Also, privacy concerns and regulatory laws will force marketers to lose the tracking services of third-party cookies, which track customer browsing habits without their knowledge. Moreover, the loss of third-party cookies will do away with ad targeting, cross-site tracking, and social media buttons.

Know the impact of Dark Funnel and Dark Social

One of the biggest challenges of cross-channel marketing is understanding what influence Dark Funnel and Dark Social channels have on customer behavior.

The Dark Funnel is the part of the marketing funnel that is unknown and unaccounted for. It includes all the unknown actions consumers take (both online and off) to find, research, and purchase your product or service.

Specifically, Dark Funnel refers to when people go down a path toward purchasing a product or service but never actually commit to a purchase. It’s created as consumers explore more products and take more actions, but ultimately, they decide not to make that purchase because they find something else more appealing or there was some sort of obstacle preventing them from doing so.

Dark Funnel can occur as buyers receive information about products and services through email, advertisements, or even friends talking about something new or interesting.

With Dark Social, you can’t track touchpoints from social media. For example, Dark Social has an impact on purchaser intent for purchases made on Amazon.  Also, consumers can discover products, research them, and purchase them through both online and offline conversations. Dark Social includes those conversations, but you can’t determine whether—or to what extent–those conversations resulted in conversions.

Measure and review your efforts

An important step in cross-channel marketing is measuring the impact of your current efforts and reviewing your performance. This means you need to know how your marketing efforts are converting customers into leads – what channels are effective for acquiring new customers and which ones are not.

The best way to do this is by using marketing automation software like Lytics.  This platform allows you to manage all of your marketing efforts, including data collection, analytics, and reporting.

The next step is to identify where the opportunities for improvement exist. For example, if you discover that PPC advertising has high conversion rates but low lead acquisition rates, you might want to explore additional strategies for increasing leads through social media ad campaigns or influencer marketing.

For an insightful analysis of both Dark Funnel and Dark Social and a 6-step strategy of leveraging the unknown, “below-the-iceberg” touchpoints, see Declan Mulkeen’s article “Feel the Force of the Dark Funnel.”

Conclusion

A cross-channel view of your customers can be powerful for your marketing. But how do you get it? Start by understanding your customer’s journey. You’ll need to define your target audience, use digital data to inform your offline tactics, and measure and review your efforts.

You also need to be aware that Dark Funnel and Dark Social consumers have put consumers in charge of how their behavior is tracked and what data flows to marketers.