Charming the digital consumer: Priorities for today’s marketers

Index

Executive summary 5

Survey findings: Getting to know the digital consumer 6

- Role of influencers—advocators or antagonists? 8

- Smartphones—driving consumer acquisition 11

- Company websites—not interactive enough for consumers 12

- E-retailers—rising role of “match makers” 14

Accelerating the journey toward digital optimization 16

Conclusion 23

2

3

4

Our consumer and marketer survey help understand the digital consumers’ behavior and their relationship with a brand across its entire life cycle. It highlights the significant potential of digital channels in building loyalty while maximizing ROI. The report covers four key findings:

• Role of influencers—advocators or antagonists?

• Smartphones—driving consumer acquisition• Company websites—not interactive

enough for consumers• E-retailers—rising role of “match makers”

The report also captures Accenture’s framework—Develop, Connect and Optimize—to help organizations accelerate their journey toward digital optimization and get consumers to say “I do.”

Executive summary: Getting consumers to say “I do”

Getting digital consumers to commit to a long-term relationship is not an easy feat to accomplish. Digital media is transforming consumer’s relationship with a brand through the stages of brand awareness, consideration, evaluation, purchase and use.

The highly engaged digital consumers “check out” myriad brands using channels beyond an organization’s control or knowledge. According to the 2012 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research Study, consumers across industries, on an average, use up to six different channels for prospecting, with a majority relying on both digital and traditional channels.1 Digital consumers want to know a brand better and spend more time to research about it before “courting” or purchasing it. Accenture research shows that the length of time that visitors spend on a brand’s website is the key determinant of their likelihood to purchase the product in the store.2 It also revealed that visitors to consumer packaged goods brand websites spend 37 percent more on the brand than nonvisitors in the retail stores.

Even post purchase, questions about loyalty still remain unanswered. Are these consumers for life? Or, does continuous information bombardment, vide digital media, create a fertile ground for switching? According to

1 http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Global-Consumer-Pulse-Research-Study-2012.pdf

2 http://www.brandchannel.com/images/papers/534_CPG%20White%20Paper.pdf

Accenture research, 88 percent of consumers in India switch provider, in any industry, due to poor customer service.1 If left unaddressed, this could spell disaster for companies—with more and more consumers switching providers.

On the other hand, if consumers are satisfied with a brand, they commit to it and advocate it by participating in social media communities and talking about their experience online to influence the buying decision of others.

So, why is it difficult for marketers to sweep these consumers off their feet? Digital channel fragmentation and proliferation make it hard for organizations to reach the right consumer with the right message at the right time. Marketers face a plethora of choices in selecting the right mix of consumer touchpoints that provide the highest return on investment (ROI). Many questions need to be addressed: Should we focus more on social media? Should we follow one campaign across traditional as well as digital channels? Will banner ads based on television and/or print work better? Are we better off in focusing our energy on “managing the complaint box,” which hosts opinions posted about their brand by users and opinion makers, and, sometimes, nonusers too? How much of our marketing spend should we divert from traditional media to this new age phenomenon?

Despite spending more than 13 percent of their media budget on digital channels (according to our survey), organizations have not been able to reach the required level of dialogue, interaction and engagement with their consumers. They are still in the “trial and learn” stage, deciding the optimum budget, using digital channels sporadically, experimenting with different platforms and tools, and figuring out the correct metrics to measure their effectiveness. Moreover, their acquisition and retention strategies fail to keep pace with the digital consumer, and fall short of providing an integrated, 360-degree view of the consumer across channels.

For organizations to get consumers to commit, they need to deliver a differentiated, yet relevant, customer experience that will set the high-performance businesses apart from the laggards. Mastering the ability to provide such an experience will drive customer loyalty.

Accenture recently surveyed

600 consumers in India to

understand their behavior

and relationship with a brand

across awareness, acquisition

and service delivery, and

also interviewed marketing

managers to understand

the role of digital in

their organizations.

5

66

7

Role of influencers— advocators or antagonists?

Social media and the Internet have connected consumers, enabling an unprecedented flow of information among themselves. Our survey shows that consumers spend an hour a day online. It also highlights that people spend more time online to seek information on brands (45 percent) than socializing or networking (38 percent).

Facebook is “liked” the most and 90 percent of the consumers surveyed have a personal profile on social networking sites. The average number of contacts for an individual on Facebook is 190.3 This might seem surprisingly low, but it is not if we consider the multiplier effect. The person with 190 contacts can actually view comments of his/her entire network and their network of 190 friends. This potential to connect with an extended network of contacts—with just one post—makes this channel so powerful. These immediate and extended contacts make up the trusted network of a person, who despite not being famous or a celebrity, exerts some degree of influence over them through posts, shares, likes and dislikes about products and brands. That he or she is just like the rest of us or people like us (PLU) is what makes him or her trustworthy and lends the whole experience credibility. A survey by The Nielsen Company shows that 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know while purchasing a new product.4 In this way, ordinary people become powerful influencers for a large audience.

What role do influencers play in consumer’s commitment journey? Today, when a buyer contemplates a major purchase, such as an LED television, a mobile phone or a car, he or she does not look for a salesperson but checks product information on the Internet and other sources outside an organization’s circle of influence, such as posts by their friends on Facebook or comments on review sites. This calls for organizations to position their social media efforts to replicate this community-oriented buying experience. They should use collaborative marketing and engagement strategies to turn consumers into brand advocators who are willing to contribute discretionary time and effort to ensure the success of their “adopted” brands. Accordingly, organizations need to increasingly find and cultivate influencers.

3 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

4 http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/consumer-trust-in-online-social-and-mobile-advertising-grows.html

8

Time spent on social media per day

Digital media consumption

< 15 minutes

15-30 minutes

31-60 minutes

61-90 minutes

> 90 minutes

93%

73%

40%

22%15%

6% 6%

Facebook Google+ YouTube Twitter LinkedIn Flickr Others

5%

27%

30%

19%

19%

Visit FB pages? Key reasons for visiting FB pages

64% Yes

36% No

When I am looking for some information related to the product/brand/company

51%

When I want to check if there are any updates on the page

45%

When updates/pictures related to a page are posted on my FB wall

36%

When I want to check if there are any offers/discounts on the page

31%

Sources of information Activities—Time spent online

Company website 18%

Social media sources 22%

Google Search 59%

Expert reviews/blogs 1%

Information/ KnowledgeSocializing/ Networking

Entertainment

Product reviews/information

Data sharing

Job search

News

Purchasing

Gaming

45%

38%

5%

4%

3%

2%

2%

1%

1%

9

10

Smartphones— driving consumer acquisition

India has the second-largest mobile subscriber base and one of the fastest growing mobile Internet usage across the world. More than 50 percent of the Internet traffic originates from smartphones—with SMS and apps dominating usage.5 Our survey indicates that 38 percent of consumers use smartphones “on the go” to communicate and access the Internet. It also shows that 41 percent of consumers subscribe to SMS from a brand/company.

Apps offer value-added functionalities, and consumers are getting “hooked” to the convenience it provides. For example, with a single click, consumers can use location-based services to find restaurants of their choice, read reviews, make reservations, get “turn-by-turn” navigation to the destination, and view deals and discounts. Apps are also changing the way consumers shop today. By scanning QR codes of products using their smartphones, consumers can shop and arrange for delivery from anywhere, anytime.

To capture this rapidly exploding consumer base, marketers need to create specialized tools and consumer-centric apps, and invest in providing a world-class mobile platform. A few organizations are already heading in this direction. Some of the interesting examples include: Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce company, has launched a tool that allows mobile users to scan a product’s barcode and check its availability—a feature also available on Amazon India. It is also working on a tool that will use a customer’s location to provide customized deals. Indiatimes Shopping, an e-commerce division of The Times Group, India’s largest media conglomerate, is set to launch special promotions for mobile-based customers. Snapdeal is attempting to personalize its mobile app according to customers’ usage. It is also developing an in-site search engine for mobile and is revamping its mobile backend.6

• India is expected to

become the third-largest

smartphone market

by 2017.7

• Customers shopping

through mobile devices

make up for up to a

third of sales at online

retail sites.6

• Mobile-only shoppers are

as valuable as desktop

users, with average spends

only marginally lower.6

Subscribe to SMS from brand/company

41% Yes

59% No

Device used most of the times

2% Tablet

38% Smartphone

Download Apps

78% No

22% Yes

25% Laptop

35%

Desktop

5 http://www.telecomcircle.com/2013/11/ mobileinternet-india/

6 http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-23/news/46514105_1_indiatimes-shopping-amazon-india-mobile-users

7 http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/h5BwcFMNP7yxOT5wrzF5lK/India-to-become-thirdlargest-smartphone-market-by-2017-IDC.html

SMS

11

Company websites— not interactive enough for consumers

Online channels offer instant access to product and pricing information. Our survey indicates that 45 percent of time spent online is used for gathering information on brands, with Google Search being the most popular, followed by social media and company websites. Approximately 67 percent of consumers visit five or more Facebook pages per week to gather information related to a product, brand or company.

Our survey findings reveal that company websites are preferred for seeking information about a brand over Facebook pages—64 percent consumers visit company websites as compared to only 33 percent who like or subscribe to Facebook pages. This could be attributed to the fact that consumers are not ready to “commit” to a brand easily or hesitate to pledge their loyalty easily. The three main reasons cited by consumers for visiting the websites are: gather information about products (61 percent), compare products (49 percent), and look for offers, schemes and discounts (49 percent).

According to Accenture research, a strong correlation exists between the length of time visitors spend on a brand’s website and the likelihood to purchase that brand in the store.8 Further, the research highlights the following website attributes that are closely correlated with a higher brand purchase index (greater brand spending in store for website visitors than nonvisitors):

Message: A compelling brand value message that provides a persuasive reason, other than a coupon, for a website visitor to buy the brand.

Content: The content needs to be updated at least every week to encourage visitors to engage, participate and return frequently. It should create an engaging online experience, such as a pulse survey on the home page, an opportunity to rate a new product or product attribute, or user-generated content such as recipes or weight-loss planning. Content with a philanthropic appeal such as sustainability or participation in a food bank also was shown to create greater engagement.

Website: Well-designed site navigation that is intuitive, uses simple menus and has clear site maps.

Despite the significant potential of company websites to drive engagement, most companies fail to use this channel effectively. Our survey shows that consumers are not satisfied with their experience with a company website. They are not satisfied with most of the attributes of a company’s website. Many consumers feel that company websites are also not effective in listening to them. Eighty-six percent consumers surveyed were not satisfied with the avenues for posting queries or providing feedback on company websites.

12

8 http://www.brandchannel.com/images/papers/534_CPG%20White%20Paper.pdf

reasons for visiting company websites3

35%OFF

Discount Code

XYZ123

Online channels offer unlimited source of product and pricing information instantly

But, consumers are

not satisfied:

search

Google Searchis most popular for gathering brand information, followed by social media and then company websites

users spend time online gathering information on products and services

45%

consumers visit five or more company Facebook pages per week to look for brand information

67%

not satisfied with websites for posting queries or providing feedback

86%

not satisfied with the look and feel of the company website

62%

find it difficult to navigate the websites to find the information they need

57%

to gather product information61%

to compare products49%

to look for offers, schemes and discounts

49%

13

14

E-retailers— rising role of “match makers”

The number of online buyers is growing. According to a report by CRISIL, the Indian online retail industry is expected to grow from INR32 billion in 2012 to INR100 billion in 2015.9 Today, for instance, consumers shop online for apparel, which is delivered at their place—with an option to return if they are not satisfied with the product. Savvy consumers check product ratings and reviews or feedback on e-retailers to confirm if both products and vendors provide the best value and service, respectively. Our survey shows that 72 percent consumers prefer e-retailers for online purchases, with only 28 percent preferring company websites.

The survey highlights that 67 percent of consumers buy fashion and apparel category, which is considerably higher than 43 percent of consumers who buy personal care products. Overall, 47 percent consumers have made online purchases, spending 24 percent of their total budget online.10 Our analysis also shows that online retailers offer better deals and multibrand options, thus providing greater choice to consumers. They also offer product comparison. Consequently, 45 percent consumers said that availability of discounts or offers were more important to them than the brand offered, while less than one-third consumers opted for brands. Twenty-four percent were indifferent to either discounts or brand. Will this signal the often talked about—“withering away of the brand”? Only time will tell. But, the value-conscious Indian consumers seem, at this point in time, to favor exclusive discounts or offers—the key reason for buying from e-retailers.

Online retailers or company website?

Product categories bought online

72% online retailers

28% company website

www

Discount or brands?

45% Offers/discounts

most important

31% Brand most

important

24% None of

the above

%

Reasons for buying through online retailer

Exclusive discounts/offers

55%

Lots of product/services options

54%

Easy navigation through the website

51%

Payment mode options

50%

Used to shopping through online retailer

42%

Safe online transaction

18%

Redeemable loyalty/bonus points

7%

• India’s e-commerce market

grew at 88 percent from

US$8.5 billion in 2012 to

US$16 billion in 2013.11

• According to our survey,

84 percent of consumers

surveyed found

advertisements on social

media useful and 45 percent

bought products based on it.

9 http://www.indianonlineseller.in/tag/ebay/page/2/

10 This includes discretionary spend—over and above household spend; also the survey was restricted to a metro-centric audience.

11 http://ventureburn.com/2014/01/india-spent-us16-billion-online-in-2013-up-88-from-2012/

67%Fashion and apparel

25%Automotive

43%Education and Information

23%Household care

43%Personal care

19%Food and beverage

32%Household items

17%Services

13% Others

1515

What should today’s marketers do?

Based on our survey findings and insights, Accenture believes that organizations increasingly need to:

• Bring a brand’s promise to life through a differentiated digital experience, and not merely use digital channels as information bulletins.

• Increase by capability to extract actionable insights.

• Manage a consistent digital presence and positioning across search optimization tools, social media and company websites.

• Use company websites to drive purchase, and not just awareness.

• Partner with e-retailers to offer attractive online promotions.

• Leverage apps as a means to reach an increasingly mobile audience and provide an enhanced brand experience.

Accelerating the journey toward digital optimization

Accenture has developed a framework—Develop, Connect and Optimize—to help organizations accelerate their journey toward digital optimization and get consumers to commit to a long-term relationship. Mastering the ability to fully tap digital channels to provide a differentiated experience will drive customer loyalty.

DevelopDigitalStrategy and Operating Model

ConnectUnified Consumer Experience

1

2

Optimize Digital Capabilities, Analytics and Technology

3

16

Do you have a digital strategy in place?

Digital vision and strategic objective

• What is your vision for digital marketing?

• What is the strategic objective of your digital strategy, and how will it help achieve your business goals?

• Is your digital strategy aligned with your overall brand strategy?

Target consumer segments

• Which consumer segments do you want to target?

• What channel mix should you use to connect with your audience?

• How do you plan to position your brand digitally?

Assortment and pricing strategy

• What is your online assortment strategy?

• How do you plan to balance the online and offline channel strategy?

Capability gap assessment

• Do you have resources to execute your strategy such as the right technology, people, process and infrastructure?

Listed below are questions to help you assess if your digital strategy is holistic:

17

Develop

12 http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Winning-and-Retaining-the-Digital-Consumer.pdf

13 http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture_Outlook_Are_you_ready_for_digital_revolution_Marketing.pdf

For Procter & Gamble (P&G), winning digital consumers is an enterprise-wide responsibility, requiring contributions from functions and areas across the company. Far from being the “role” of sales, brand or marketing teams, the company combines talent, assets and insights to operate in a fundamentally different way. It uses new organizational structures and operating models geared toward making the most of investments in serving digital consumers.12

Organizations’ attempt at digital is often limited to a few tweets, e-mail marketing blasts or a one-off campaign on Facebook. Despite spending 13 percent of their media budget in 2014 on digital (according to our survey), organizations are not able to reach the required level of dialogue, interaction and engagement. This percentage is likely to increase to 20 percent over the next four to five years, according to Accenture analysis. Considering this growth, organizations need to build a digital ecosystem comprising analytics, technical maintenance, content sourcing and management, customer relationship management and media management to help become truly digital. For instance, organizations require content that is updated at least weekly to encourage visitors to engage, participate and return frequently. Further, the content should be monitored frequently—on real-time basis.

Organizations need an impactful social media strategy delivered via the right organizational model. Successful strategies are based on a number of factors. These include: identifying the business objective upfront, which span across functions within the organization; creating a clear digital vision; ensuring alignment with the overall brand strategy; developing a pricing strategy; identifying the consumer segment; and developing requisite capabilities to execute the strategy.

Organizations can choose from a range of models, but they first need to answer a few basic questions: Do we need to centralize and to what extent? What is the level of maturity in digital operations? What role does digital play in future business plans? Some of the predominant models include:

Centralized versus decentralized

Take, for example, consumer goods companies facing the challenge of managing multiple brands. Typically, they deal with this by compartmentalizing operations through brand, product group or other divisions. As a result, it is not unusual for a company to have multiple business units—each with their own individual relationships with advertising agencies as well as investments in disparate development tools and platforms. While this compartmentalized business model provides individual business groups/brands much-needed agility, it comes at the cost of achieving economies of scale. It also leads to inconsistent communications with the end customer.

In-house versus outsourced business processes

One leading consumer goods company is moving toward an “open marketing” model by shrinking its core marketing team, whose members then lead a network of specialized external partners. This way, the company always has immediate access to the latest thinking and newest approaches to real-time digital marketing.13

Digital spend as a percentage of total marketing spend

Entity driving digital media activity

13%

Digital

10% Direct to consumer

7% Flyers

43% Audio visual

5% Radio

9% Outdoor media

13% Print media

46% Marketing division

18% Digital media division

18% Digital agency

18% Other external agencies

18

Connect

For Starbucks Corporation, customer experience involves connecting the dots among in-store, online, mobile and social media environments with a common language, look and feel, philosophy, and commitment to personalization and intent-based options.14

With multiple channels at play, consumers want a cohesive experience at every stage of their brand relationship. Knitting together such an experience requires integration across touchpoints, where relevance, consistency and customization flow seamlessly between channels.

A single channel, even if executed well, has limited impact and provides just a slice of insight into consumer behavior, and it can potentially be misleading given that consumers use a variety of channels. What results is a discordant experience for consumers. It could be in the form of a landing page that does not support a search query, a store clerk unaware of an online offer or discrepancy in price across different channels. This can result in consumers clicking away or walking away.

The bottom line is that companies need to revisit how they use digital platforms, refocusing investments to generate consumer insights, decrease customer service costs or increase customer reach. A true multichannel strategy integrates, leverages, measures and optimizes the unique properties and advantages of each channel. Consumer behaviors on websites, social networks, mobile apps, e-mails and in stores should be considered in prioritizing multichannel investments. The best marketing strategy is one that promotes an ongoing, synchronized dialogue with consumers. It demands companies to develop the ability to listen to it, analyze it and identify consumers’ expectations, preferences and opinions, and the shifts in all three.

The selection of digital media initiatives must be based on three business objectives—customer acquisition, experience and service, and insight and innovation.

Customer acquisition

With smartphones becoming pervasive, even people with basic digital skills use their smartphones “on the go” to communicate and access the Internet (38 percent). Further, apps are changing the way consumers shop today. By scanning QR codes of products with their smartphones, consumers can shop and arrange for delivery from anywhere, anytime.

Take the case of Ford Motor Company. To promote Figo in India, the auto giant ran advertisements in leading newspapers with the QR code. Readers were invited to download an app that would read the code by sending a text message. The result: they could play a video of the Figo on the move.15

The expanding number

of touchpoints makes

it more difficult to

find the right mix and

tools to serve

customers consistently.

Role of digital

Customer AcquisitionIncrease revenue and market share

Customer Experience and ServiceImprove customer loyalty and reduce or avoid costs

Customer Insight and InnovationCreate, improve and differentiate products and services

Brand building/Awareness/PR

UGC reviews/ratings/testimonies

Word of mouth/Viral marketing

Direct (mainly charities)

Search engine optimization

Rich/Targeted advertising

Self-service resources

Buzz monitoring

Crowdsourcing

Self-help communities

Sentiment analysis

Monitoring and engagement

Private and open communities

Market research/competitive intelligence

14 http://nstore.accenture.com/acn_com/PDF/Accenture-New-Energy-Consumer-Handbook-2013.pdf

15 http://www.indiasocial.in/qr-codes-to-be-the-digital-trend-of-the-future-in-india/

19

Customer experience and service

Our survey indicates that 45 percent of the time spent online is used to gather information on brands. A fact not missed by marketers, who are using the online medium to undertake campaigns and engage better with their consumers.

Take the case of Axe deodorant (a brand owned by Unilever).16 The company used multiple digital channels (social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; company website; mobile; banners and search engines) to reach, engage and acquire target consumers. The brand created fictitious angels and used them as an underlying theme across campaigns. The company created Axe Angel Club pages on various social media sites to connect with customers.

One of the campaigns encouraged consumers to call and connect with the angels on a specified number. Consumers were also given an option to receive free wake-up calls from the angels. The campaign was a massive hit and resulted in about four million calls to the designated number, with a whopping 40 percent repeat calls. About one million wake-up calls were made to the subscribers. During the campaign, the brand’s market share increased by 3–4 percent.

In a separate campaign, Axe launched a special edition product coinciding with the Cricket World Cup. Axe angels provided regular cricket updates to the consumers along with other relevant content. It helped Axe add more than 1.7 million fans on Facebook and achieve a feedback rate of about 15 percent.

The holistic consumer experience strategy enabled Axe to differentiate itself from competitors, making it the premier deodorant brand in India with a market share of about 14 percent. With the digital campaigns, Axe garnered more than four million Facebook likes, more than 2.1 million YouTube views and 0.17 million subscribers, more than 0.31 million Twitter followers, and more than one million mobile app downloads. The social media content achieved a feedback rate of about 15 percent.

Customer insight and innovation

The role of influencers—(PLU)—is gaining importance. Today, buyers often rely on sources outside an organization’s circle of influence, such as reading comments posted by their friends on Facebook or posted on review sites, to purchase brands.

Take the case of Maggi (a brand owned by Nestle).17 To promote its instant noodles brand Maggi as a healthy, easy-to-cook product, Nestle came up with a creative idea to use a digital platform to generate ideas for Maggi flavors by using crowdsourcing. It launched the “Maggi—Do Minute Mein Khushiyan” (happiness in two minutes) campaign to tap the emotional relationship Maggi has with its consumers.

Nestle created a Facebook app and asked consumers to share their stories with Maggi in video, photo or written formats. All the stories received were uploaded on a website, and the best stories were recognized and made into films.

The campaign received an overwhelming response from customers, with people of all ages sharing their experiences. The key success factor for the campaign was consumer involvement and the user-friendly Facebook app. The success of this campaign shows that establishing an open environment that welcomes ideas, collaboration, contribution and evaluation can help organizations reduce innovation cycles and maximize market impact.

16 http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/33528_Axe-goes-bullish-on-digital-to-introduce-stronger-fragrance

17 http://www.campaignindia.in/Article/242985,maggi-looks-to-consumers-for-new-flavours.aspx

20

Optimize

Activision Blizzard Inc., a computer games developer, partnered with an analytics firm—which captures analytics data on 250 million consumers daily—to test and improve gameplay in real time.18

Netflix’s analytics capabilities lead the film rental industry, enabling the company to cater to individual consumers’ preferences in recommending titles for rent.18

Optimize data: Digital channels ensure that data is available for analysis in real time and with increasingly more relevance. The unique datasets collected through digital interactions have two broad organizational implications:

• They allow an organization to rigorously assess the impact of digital campaigns and make real-time adjustments based on customer engagement, market events and overall campaign performance.

• They allow an organization to optimize the customer experience by personalizing content in real time and enabling other channels to act on that real-time information. With the increasing integration of data from the digital channels with other data, the opportunity grows to generate and predict new insights.

Consequently, companies need to develop a cross-functional, integrated analytics vision. They also need to invest in technology, processes and talent to identify target consumer segments as well as tailor marketing and sales strategies and offers.

Optimize returns: One of the biggest problems today is that while consumers operate in a multichannel world, the metrics of their interactions are still in a silo, making it difficult to measure the entire consumer journey in an integrated manner. Social media blurs the issue of measurement as it presents an entire ecosystem of customer touchpoints—not just between a company and its customers, but also between those customers and other customers or companies. Further complicating matters are the unstructured data and the inability of most companies to truly understand the context within which the customer or partner is engaging in social media dialogue.

A company must define the metrics that social media is intended to improve—conversion rates, service costs, brand awareness or number of new product ideas that reach the marketplace. Accenture believes that companies should develop an integrated strategic return—“customer value”—which gauges a customer’s real and potential value to the organization. Encompassing a customer’s historic lifetime value, potential lifetime value, and social reach and influence, the customer health measure helps companies predict the impact of social media investments to increase revenue, profitability and long-term customer loyalty.

18 http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/changingconsumer/Documents/pdf/Accenture-Energizing-Global-Growth.pdf

21

Do you have a robust analytics platform?

Integration across the marketing cycle

• Does your analytics platform offer an integrated view of your consumer across the buying cycle?

• Does the analytics platform help generate consumer insights across key marketing levers?

Data management and analytics

• Do you have analytics capabilities to support insight generation on website delivery?

Reporting and insights

• Are key result areas (KRAs) clearly defined for analytics?

• Do your reports capture key elements for management information system (MIS) and action planning?

• Is there a governance process to oversee timelines and action plan by brand teams, and manage ongoing reviews?

Listed below are questions to help you assess the analytics quotient of your organization:

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Conclusion: Building customer loyalty

As consumers’ expectations from a brand rise, it becomes tough to retain them. They get easily swayed by other “suitors” who woo them, understand them, listen to them, know what they want and appreciate them. Organizations need to have a game plan to build loyalty—a comprehensive digital strategy, an integrated technical infrastructure and capabilities to execute the strategy. They need to focus on turning consumers into brand advocates, who are willing to contribute time and effort to ensure the success of the adopted brand. They need to work with these advocates to cocreate offerings, which gives the latter greater involvement, ownership and identification with their brands, creating a sense of loyalty that can serve companies well in a crowded marketplace.

Focusing on data analytics, using insights to innovate, improving social listening, providing an integrated experience across channels, optimizing the use of company websites to drive e-commerce and “going” mobile can help companies differentiate their brands, stay relevant and build loyalty. This will require companies to drive radical strategic change.

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Authors

Vikas Bali Managing director Accenture Strategy, India vikas.bali@accenture.com

Rowena Gayle Manager – Products Accenture in India rowena.gayle@accenture.com

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 289,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Legal disclaimer: This Report has been published for information and illustrative purposes only and is not intended to serve as advice of any nature whatsoever. The information contained and the references made in this Report are in good faith, neither Accenture nor any its directors, agents or employees give any warranty of accuracy (whether expressed or implied), nor accepts any liability as a result of reliance upon the content. This Report also contains certain information available in public domain, created and maintained by private and public organizations. Accenture does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timelines or completeness of such information.

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