Who is the Composer of Digital Experience? Hint: it's not a DXP.
Marketers compose, not their platform
Many marketers seeking solutions to their digital experience challenges turn to Martech vendors for their answers. But there's an issue here. It isn't as simple as purchasing the right tech products to deliver the digital experiences you want.
This approach is like hiring musicians for different sections of an orchestra - strings, woodwinds, brasses, and percussions - and then expecting them to produce harmonious music on stage without any composition or conductor guiding them.
Surely, you wouldn’t expect a symphony from such chaos. Similarly, in marketing technology (Martech), acquiring tools doesn't equate to creating engaging customer journeys or compelling digital interactions.
Composing your own 'symphony' within your business requires more than relying on vendor-provided solutions and plug & play integrations. Strategic orchestration of digital touchpoints and interactions is integral to shaping memorable digital experiences that support your brand.
First things, First: What are your Business Objectives
Beginning your journey with the question "Why?" is essential for any successful digital experience strategy, as famously articulated by Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek nailed it when he said to start with the why. This idea isn't just some trendy business buzzword; it's the foundation of any successful digital experience strategy.
Your 'why' serves as a guiding star. It informs every decision and dictates which direction your strategy should take, much like how a music composer must decide what type of piece they're creating before penning down their masterpiece.
This understanding doesn’t come from thin air though. You need to dive deep into your organization’s purpose and its goals. Are you trying to expand market share? Do you want to increase customer loyalty or maybe boost brand recognition?
These aren't just high-level questions for boardroom discussions either but practical guides that help shape an effective digital journey map for customers navigating through today's composable Martech landscape.
The Score: Digital Experience Strategy
Imagine being a composer, and your task is to craft the perfect symphony. You don't start by selecting instruments at random. No, you begin with understanding what you want the music to communicate—the emotions it should evoke.
In marketing terms, this is your digital experience strategy—an overarching theme that guides how customers interact with your brand online. Creating a cohesive experience for your audience requires not only selecting the appropriate instruments but also skillfully blending them together.
This involves asking critical questions like:
Weaving these answers into a cohesive narrative—your "score"—is essential for delivering experiences that stick.
Gartner's report shows 69% of businesses agree on its importance.
Movements: The Customer Journey
Picture this: You've got a list of songs for an album, but does that make it music? Nope. Just like a song list isn't the whole composition, customer journeys aren't the full picture of Digital Experience (DX) composition either.
We often mistake customer journey maps as end products when they're just blueprints. They tell us what we should expect - much like how a tracklist informs us of the album's content - but it doesn’t deliver the experience.
This misunderstanding can lead to missed opportunities to create meaningful micro-interactions along these journeys. Remember, customers don’t simply move from point A to B; they dance through different experiences and emotions throughout their journey with your brand.
The key here is understanding that every step within a customer’s interaction has the potential to become memorable moments that form lasting relationships between them and your business.?
Composition Defined
A song's structure in music is built from carefully arranged elements - intros, verses, pre-choruses, choruses, bridges, and outros. This arrangement creates a melody that flows through time and space. In digital experience design - or could be called 'Composable Martech' - it works similarly.
The customer journey becomes our musical score. But instead of notes and rhythms forming melodies, we use interactions with different parts of your business through technology to create an engaging user experience.
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This means each interaction should be well-defined and deliberate, just like how every note matters in a piece of music. We aren't randomly strumming strings here. Instead, data informs us on which 'notes' (or technologies) will resonate best with our audience at specific moments along their journey.
So remember:
You are the Composer, not the Technology Vendors
As a marketing leader, it's critical to recognize that you are not just an operator of technology but its architect. You're its composer. Much like how an orchestra relies on its conductor for guidance and coordination, your business depends on you to harmonize all digital interactions.
It might be tempting to rely heavily on martech vendors and expect them to deliver ready-to-use solutions. But this is like expecting an orchestra's string section or brass ensemble alone to create symphony-worthy music without any composition or direction from the conductor.
Your role as a marketing executive involves understanding your objectives first and then using technology tools effectively in line with these goals. Simon Sinek's golden circle theory emphasizes starting with 'Why' before proceeding towards 'How' and 'What.' This principle applies perfectly here: define what you want your customer journey experience to look like first (the Why), and identify which technologies can help achieve this (the How) before deciding what specific tools will be needed (the What).
In conclusion, think of yourself less as a passive consumer of martech solutions but more as an active orchestrator who brings together different elements into one well-orchestrated performance.
Composing Interaction through Integration & Automation
As a marketing leader, you are the composer bringinging different sections of an orchestra together; you need to map your defined interactions within your martech stack.
But how does this happen? Through integration and automation. Think about it: if every interaction had to be manually handled, we'd get nowhere fast. It's like expecting each musician in an orchestra to play without a conductor.
Integration enables the different elements of your tech set-up to cooperate with each other effectively. The better they 'talk', the more harmonious the digital experience for customers.
The next step after integration is automation. It's the details of automation (not the integration itself) that move the customer relationship forward, and the integration enables that across the martech stack, not just within one siloed martech product.
The Piece is Never Finished: Continuous Improvement is Digital Transformation
Just as a musical masterpiece never truly ends, the digital transformation process also follows suit. It's a cycle of composing new interactions and refining existing ones based on data insights.
In this dance of digital maturing, each step you take should align with your business objectives and be rooted in understanding your customer’s journey. But remember, it's not about creating perfect steps from the start; rather, it's about constant refinement.
This iterative approach can be likened to how composers tweak their symphonies. They write music notes, listen to how they sound together and then adjust for harmony or add more instruments for depth—each revision bringing them closer to that sublime auditory experience.
Your task as marketing leaders mirrors this creative process - mapping out detailed digital interactions through integration and automation while constantly improving upon them. The melody might change over time but keep playing because even Mozart didn’t compose his greatest symphony overnight.
Final Thoughts
Just like a music composer crafts beautiful symphonies, marketing leaders can create effective digital experiences by leveraging composable martech. It's not about letting technology vendors dictate your tune but rather, taking charge of the composition yourself.
Your understanding of business objectives and customer journey shapes how you use tech to meet goals. But remember that crafting this masterpiece is an ongoing process - continuous improvement leads to true digital transformation.
So let's not forget: The role of Martech isn't just enabling interactions; it’s also about orchestrating them in harmony with each other. When done right, each interaction becomes part of a bigger picture - a seamless user experience akin to listening to a well-composed piece of music.
This approach doesn’t make things simpler or easier immediately – but it does give more control over your orchestra (your technologies) and ultimately leads towards creating better customer journeys which are key for any successful business today.
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Pantheon Platform
1 年"You are the Composer, not the Technology Vendors" <-- Yes! When marketing leaders can really own it, they can take accountability and drive the results. When they're stuck working through someone else — a vendor, IT, or maybe both — they lose authority over the customer experience, and everything start to unravel.