“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”
Seth Godin, motivational speaker, author and former VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo
In the digital sphere we are bombarded with countless messages begging for our attention and calling us to action. Whether buying a product, interacting on social media, contributing to numerous myriad online communities, reading blog articles, maybe sharing them and increasing their influence, and encouraging further engagement, consumers are constantly being deluged with branded messaging.
How, then, does a marketer cut through all the digital ‘noise’?
Cognitive commerce relates to systems within a particular API on a website or other digital channel that learns what customers want, on an individual and aggregate level.
These systems collect massive amounts of data that are stored on cloud-based systems, and using certain predictive models, can then evaluate whether you are more likely to pick the red shirt in the fall collection, or if you prefer multi-player experiences like World of Warcraft versus playing Sudoku on your own.
We absolutely must stop measuring B2B marketing success in terms of campaign clicks, quarterly reports, and lead volumes alone. The B2B brands who will win are the ones we’ll remember.
At the root of it, cognitive commerce is about assisting people in making better decisions.
From a marketer’s perspective, cognitive commerce is about operating in true omnichannel fashion. What does this mean? It means using data gathered across all of your touchpoints, providing the infrastructure to enable a customized and streamlined customer experience, personalizing the customer journey, and improving the overall customer experience with brands.
The benefit of implementing cognitive commerce is that your customer will feel supported throughout their entire journey, and with an improved experience, comes improved retention and engagement. The more visits a customer or potential customer makes to your site, the more information gathered, which will usefully predict their future behavior and inform future business practices.
Traditionally a consumer would go to a store (let’s say a shoe store for example), pick a pair of shoes, ask the attendant to get you the right size, and if they liked them, buy them, and then head off. The problem with this model is that the customer experience is very much dependent on the one-and-done interactions that happen in-store.
Instead of this aging model, cognitive commerce allows the consumer to buy the shoes online or in-person, but with the ability to sign up to the shoe store community, where they could have access to discounts, and the latest styles of shoes before anyone else. (Bonus points for adding the store’s social media channels.)
This allows the brand to take control of the customer journey, and using measurable data, implement predictive models on the individual and aggregate level as to what product is popular, what would make the customer experience even more enjoyable, potentially driving up revenues as a result.
Traditional marketing methods have their place. But as consumers demand ever-increasing attention to their particular needs, the way that brands manage, evaluate, and act on the data they gather from customer visits is a far more useful indicator of continuing success.
Cloud-based systems allow you to gather customer insights, tailoring customer experiences each time they visit your site, online or in the real world, which is critical in the B2C market. For B2B users the flexibility of the cloud, where repeat purchases can be saved, using an account-management based system for buyers, creates an omnichannel experience that rivals the best consumer sites.
Increasingly, brands are leveraging huge quantities of customer data to evaluate and refine touchpoints throughout the customer journey. Whether your business operates in a B2B or B2C setting, you cannot afford to ignore the increasing importance and influence of cognitive commerce in the digital marketing sphere, and how that translates to real-world results.
