As a proud Generation Xer born and raised in the 1970s and 1980s, whose first experience with technology involved an Atari 2600 hooked up to a 12‐inch tube television, and who started programming in BASIC on a Commodore PET with an 8‐bit processor, 4k of available RAM, and a cassette recorder for program storage, it's entertaining to take this walk down memory lane and reflect on the many shifts that we've seen in brand interaction and engagement paradigms. Even with those humble technological beginnings, I've remained current with all the changes and have fully embraced them. As Phil Dunphy proudly declares in the Modern Family Season One pilot, “I'm a cool dad. That's my thang. I'm hip. I surf the web, I text. LOL, Laugh Out Loud, OMG, Oh My God, WTF, Why The Face.”¹

The reality is that I, and many of my Generation X peers, pride ourselves on being technologically fluent and fully up‐to‐speed on modern interaction technology, but we have the luxury of memory of life before the web, before the smartphone, and before streaming content that tempers our expectations with brands. The Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation before them have even lower digital expectations, and in fact there are those who continue to hold onto the old ways of working and interacting. They still go into the bank branch. They still pay with cash, or, potentially, with a credit card, and they prefer to go to the mall to complete their Christmas shopping. They call the restaurant to make dinner reservations, and walk up to the airline counter to print their paper tickets. Not all of them, mind you, but many of the members of this generation prefer to operate as they have for decades. Smart brands recognize their value and continue to provide the quality of service, and quality of experience, that this generation expects.

MILLENNIAL EXPECTATIONS

The groups that matter, and the groups with the most potential to spend and to engage, do not share the perspective of Generation X. The most talked about generation in, well, generations, is Generation Y, more commonly known as the Millennials. The Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, which, as of this writing, ranges them in age from 26 to 41. This is the prime buying age, and this is the group that brands are actively and continuously looking to attract and engage with, as they were estimated to have $170 million in purchasing power in 2021.

Millennials are often split into two cohorts: Old Millennials, who were born from 1981 to 1988, and Young Millennials, who were born from 1989 to 1996. This makes sense, as the expectations of these cohorts do vary widely given the pace of change that they've experienced. However, most notable is that, by the time Old Millennials reached adult age, the Internet was a ubiquitous concept. By the time the youngest of Young Millennials reached the same age of 21, they were in a world with touch‐based smartphones, 4G cellular connectivity, and facial‐recognition‐based logins. These are truly the digital natives, and these generations have very different expectations of brands and experiences and widely different methods of engaging, decision‐making, and committing than the previous generations.

As with many generations before them, there's a need to establish and maintain an identity that's independent of the previous generation. No one wants to be old and tired, and no one wants to engage with a brand perceived to be old and tired. While the young generation in the 1920s had flappers, in the 1950s had greasers, the 1960s had hippies, and the 1980s had punk rockers, the generation of the new millennium has digital natives. These digital natives are socially savvy, and they've developed communities online that have replaced neighborhood networks and other constructs. Savvy brands need to remain current in their communication and presentation to capture the attention of Millennials, while recognizing their other priorities.

Beyond digital connectivity, this is a generation whose view of the world has been defined by significant world events. This generation saw the direct impact of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and the continued rise of terrorism worldwide. They have lived during a time of bubble economics, with irrational speculations driving wild fluctuations in the stock market, housing market, and other investment areas. The Millennial Generation is the first that has prioritized experiences over asset acquisition, embracing the idea that quality of life is defined through experiences and relationships more than through the accumulation of wealth. That said, this is also the generation of financial risk takers who are willing to speculate in emerging concepts such as cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, two investment constructs based entirely on technology and not an underlying physical or operational asset.

Perhaps most fascinating are some of the statistics that Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and other books and currently an active keynote and motivational speaker, has cited over the years. Many of these citations reference other sources, but he's an excellent aggregator of these statistics. If you haven't read any of his books, I would highly recommend that you seek them out when you're finished with this one.

One statistic Erik Qualman often references is that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements.² This isn't a reflection of advertising as a craft, but instead a realization that Millennials respond to how others perceive their experience with the brand, not how the brand articulates their experience strategy. Effectively, it's a “show me” mentality, forcing brands to overcome a natural skepticism that defines this generation. This has been driven by the proliferation of search and social media, which have led younger generations to access, rely on, and ultimately trust anonymous reviews as fact. Millennial consumers, and more recently, Millennial business buyers, will engage in dialogues on social networks that drive their decision‐making and, over time, express their perception, and brands need to participate in this discussion, proactively, to control or at least guide the narrative. As Erik Qualman references in his 2013 Socialnomics video, when a minor earthquake traveled up the East Coast the year prior, New Yorkers received tweets about it 30 seconds before they felt it.³ If news of an earthquake can travel faster than the tremor itself, it's staggering to imagine how quickly brand sentiment can shift within these social communities.

Millennials, as a generational construct, have several other consistent priorities, which include the desire to align with the cultural values of the brand – they want to know what the brand stands for and will engage with brands that reflect their personal values – and the desire to engage with personalized communications that respond to their situation in real time. They are interested in personalized products as well, and opportunities to customize an offering to their unique ask tends to separate a brand. This is the generation that engaged with the Coca‐Cola Freestyle machine, which allowed young drinkers to mix any combination of flavors in their perfect soda drink. They're impatient, too, and expect that the brand will operate at their pace, skipping over any repetitive steps that should have been anticipated in advance given the individual's previous interactions with the brand. This is the data generation, having grown up in a world where brands have seemingly limitless information about their desires, needs, habits, and behaviors. In essence, they expect that companies will recognize who they are and anticipate what they want, but at the same time, they demand privacy and anonymity when it is comfortable for them, which is a fascinating dichotomy.

With each passing year, the Millennial Generation ages, of course, but this remains the most powerful group and will be so for the next 20 years. This group is at an age where they are getting married, having children, and settling into a true adult lifestyle. They are buying homes at a record pace, investing in markets, and progressing in careers, often into senior positions of considerable influence. As they mature, their behaviors may change slightly, but the fundamental habits of this group appear to be stable and will likely guide and shape brand experience strategies for years to come.

GENERATION Z EXPECTATIONS

The other generation of note is the emerging Generation Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012. This remains a relatively young cohort, but they are starting to emerge as a spending force in their own right, particularly on the older side of this spectrum. This generation is demonstrating interesting behaviors that will force brands to adjust their market behaviors even further, as their priorities diverge, at times, significantly from the generation of Millennials that came before them. This is the generation that was born with iPads in their hands, and as a result, they don't know a world without real‐time access to content on demand. This generation saw YouTube emerge as the second largest search engine behind Google (both of which are owned by Alphabet) and they consume content through video and motion imagery. They're not inclined to read anything at length, and they fuse together the real and virtual worlds continuously in their lives.

Perhaps more interestingly, this generation, far more than any other, consumes content and experiences on demand. While every connected individual worldwide has become conditioned to accessing information – news, entertainment, answers to inquiries, etc. – in real‐time on their phones, tablets, laptops, and smart televisions, Generation Z has taken this to a new level in terms of expectation. This group, without question, will be the catalyst for the end of recorded programming and printed content. They'll also be the accelerant for multichannel, metaverse‐enabled interactivity.

As Millennials age and start to settle into a more traditional lifestyle, Generation Z is picking up the mantle of experience pursuits, investing in multicultural and multichannel activities, ranging from travel and the outdoors to restaurants to physical activity. So while this generation is more digitally engaged than any before them, they aren't foregoing physical experiences – they are fusing them together in ways never before seen, which is opening up opportunities for brands to create awareness, engagement, and loyalty as this group's spending power, and market relevance, continued to increase.

THE CUSTOMER FUNNEL

All the generational cohorts are relevant to brands, regardless of positioning or market focus. It's critical that brands develop strategies for capturing the attention of each generation, inspiring the individual to engage and explore the offering and the value proposition. This is a continuous need, regardless of whether your brand sells directly to the consumer (B2C), to other businesses (B2B), or through other businesses to the consumer (B2B2C). It's crucial regardless of your distribution model, be it via a physical channel (such as retail or a restaurant), a direct digital experience (such as a captive commerce experience), or a marketplace (such as provided by Amazon, Alibaba, and a range of others). The opportunity to engage the modern consumer, including Generation X, the Millennial Generation, and Generation Z, requires focus and creativity at every stage of the customer funnel, recognizing that the modern consumer – both B2C and B2B – will expect unique and distinguishing experiences at every stage.

While there are variations in the labels applied to the customer funnel, most experts agree on the fundamental structure. For the purposes of the book, I'm using the popular structure of awareness, evaluation, transaction, engagement, and loyalty. In this structure, consumers start with awareness of the brand, where the fundamental value proposition is defined and the positioning statement is articulated. Quickly, consumers move to the evaluation and comparative stage of the funnel, investigating the specifics of the offering and validating the initial brand proposition. Once they've determined that the brand and offering align with their need, they then transact – committing to the specific offer. This can take many forms, of course, ranging from buying a product to signing up for an appointment with a healthcare service provider. Once committed, the consumer then engages with the brand and offering, further developing their perception and value proposition analysis post‐transaction. Finally, assuming the brand is successful in the first four stages of the journey, the consumer converts to being loyal to the brand, committing to repeat engagement, providing a greater share of wallet by purchasing a larger array of products or services, and/or begins to actively advocate for the brand with others.

Again, this is a simplified funnel, and the intricacies of any company's individual customer journey will change depending on industry, offering, pricing structure, engagement structure, distribution model, and, of course, sales structure. The decision process to purchase a pack of gum while in line at the local grocer is very different from the decision process to procure a dozen laptops on behalf of a company. Both are different than the decision to set an appointment with a cardiologist to address a heart arrythmia, and each of those are different than the decision of where to eat dinner. However, in each of these cases, the consumer still starts with brand awareness, moves to an evaluation stage, eventually decides to transact, ultimately engages with the product or service that has been transacted, and then determines whether to be loyal to the brand.

AWARENESS

The first step in the customer journey is building brand awareness. This has historically been the domain of traditional advertising, with brands spending significant money to target large designated market areas (DMAs). This remains an effective method for building awareness and recognition, particularly for known brands and commoditized products. The reality is that, within a given market – Kansas City, Missouri; Birmingham, England; São Paolo, Brazil, and others across the world – there are significant populations of people with common needs. While the DMA is heterogeneous by design, the brand finds the common trigger that inspires the individual to explore the brand further (moving further into the customer journey). For example, automotive brands continue to leverage mass marketing to retain mindshare with populations during the time that the individual elects to purchase a car. It's difficult to predict, and therefore target, when an individual will be prepared to purchase a new car, so maintaining mindshare becomes critical. Not everyone will respond to every message, even in a relatively homogeneous market, but there are enough people focused on fuel economy, enough people focused on performance, enough people focused on quality, and enough people focused on distinctive features and capabilities, that each message has an intended result. It's a valuable strategy, and remains in place for automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), insurance, retail, and restaurant brands, where timing of decision‐making is variable and brand awareness will significantly influence the next stage in the journey.

The limiting factor in mass marketing today is the fact that the masses are no longer collected in consistent message broadcast channels. Broadcast television, for example, is in rapid decline, particularly with the highly valued Millennial and Generation Z cohorts. While the older Generation X and Baby Boomer generations do continue to tune into their local news broadcasts and watch scheduled programming via local market and cable broadcast channels, younger people often don't even have access to these networks, instead exclusively subscribing to on‐demand services tailored to their individual interests. They capture their news online, their sports via streaming services, and their entertainment on demand. Print and radio, while again still relevant in certain markets, are also in decline, and based on statistical and empirical surveys, the rate of decline is due to accelerate in the coming years. The days of mass market brand amplification are far from dead – it's still extremely important and relevant that brands reinforce their broad message across DMAs – but the strategies have evolved, the investment in niche market amplification has increased, and the consumer's response to the messages themselves has evolved as the generational mix has aged.

So what is the distinction between mass marketing and niche marketing? At the highest level, mass marketing broadcasts the general brand value proposition to the entire market within a geography or demography, anticipating that a certain percentage of the population will respond and react to the message. When Ford broadcasts an ad highlighting the new F‐150 model, they emphasize a range of brand value propositions, from ruggedness to utility to fuel economy to next‐generation feature functionality. This allows the message to target the broadest audience set possible, with the hope that it will generate an emotional response that in turn drives an action. With niche marketing, messages are broadcast to narrower, more homogenous communities, such as specific social media communities, specific streaming services, or specific content. As these platforms and services collect user data and viewing data, advertisers can define the specific subcohorts that they are looking to target. While more effective and efficient, it requires precision to maintain a return on investment (ROI) and attract a volume of customers to help grow the brand.

This opens up the value proposition of market analytics, a concept that is as old as brand marketing itself but which has evolved and improved in the last two decades as the amount of data available to the brand marketer has increased exponentially. Brands can rapidly survey different demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic groups to understand their wants, needs, and triggers. Brands can track purchase activity, both in store and online, and attribute that to broad demographic and geographic groups or, quite often, directly to the buyer. Between online profile attribution, loyalty program proliferation, B2B customer relationship management (CRM) and order‐to‐cash automation, and credit card data reconciliation, there's quite a bit of buying data available to the marketer to help identify their buying community and buying trends. Equally, data is available to track the effectiveness of higher stages in the buying journey, all the way through to the effectiveness of web and mobile display advertisements, social media insertions, and streaming advertisements, which can be correlated with IP addresses to the buying device, assuming that the broadcasting device and the buying device are on the same network. It's a rich time for marketers for certain. As this data is collected and evaluated, marketing teams can determine where to place their buys for maximum marketing return on investment (MROI), which can be further refined through real‐time multivariate testing.

EVALUATION

Once the consumer moves from awareness to evaluation, the impact of 25 years of digital transformation becomes clear. It is at this stage that consumers have more control over the process with each new innovation in technology and content. As the brilliant Kaleeta McDade, Global Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Experience, often says, “Advertising targets audiences. Experiences target customers.” This has never been more true.

So what experiences have the greatest impact in the evaluation stage? First and foremost, there is search. Quite often worldwide consumers start the decision‐making by opening a browser, either on their laptop, tablet, or smartphone, and interrogating Google, Amazon, YouTube, and other sources. The search may begin with a branded term (e.g., if I'm looking for a new winter coat, I might type in “North Face” or “Patagonia”), but more often it begins with what's known as a long‐tail search, which is a highly variable, broad search phrase, such as “Best winter coats for Chicago weather in 2021.” That may lead to a set of branded responses, including North Face and Patagonia, to appear on the first page of results, but it will also open up product reviews, influencer content, media articles, and a range of other results. Brands get in front of this by buying both short‐tail (e.g., “winter coats”) and long‐tail terms, managing the search buy for maximum MROI. Given that, even today, 90% of searchers click on a link presented on the first page of search results, it's critical to optimize these bids. However, even with that statistic, search engine marketing in isolation is increasingly a diminishing return, as consumers look for new content paths before making the ultimate decision.

There are significant exceptions to the behavior just described, specifically in restrictive countries such as China and Russia. China has a unique and exclusive digital technology environment that operates behind the Chinese Great Firewall, and the Chinese consumer oftentimes starts their search on Baidu, an equivalent to Google with over 75% market share within the country (and a small amount of traffic from outside the country), and Chinese consumers access popular online marketplaces like Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com for product searches. Russian searchers do access Google, but unlike the vast majority of countries, Russian searchers equally use the local Yandex platform instead of Google. These are significant exceptions due to the population and economic strength of the individual countries, which matters greatly for global brands looking to penetrate the Chinese and Russian markets, but aren't relevant when looking at the rest of the world.

Historically, the science of search engine marketing (the bidding and buying of search terms online) has been somewhat straightforward. As of 2019, Google enjoyed over 92% market share,⁴ so most investments in search engine terms were made on the Google infrastructure, and Google generously provided analytics that helped shaped the bidding decisions. However, over time, the amount of insight has reduced, and the search behavior has changed. While Google still dominates general search traffic, without any close second, more product searches actually begin on Amazon than on Google. A 2021 report published by Jungle Scout concluded that 74% of United States consumers start their product search on Amazon,⁵ but an InRiver study maintains, in their November 2021 study, that the percentage of searches that start on marketplaces overall, including but not limited to Amazon and eBay, is only 44%.⁶ More than likely, the difference is a function of geography – Amazon is still more dominant in the United States than anywhere else – and also due to methodologies designed to amplify different approaches, but the fact remains that more and more people start proactive evaluations via search.

The impact of search goes far beyond retail product purchasing, and it's important not to fall into the Amazon trap when considering digital strategies. The Amazon trap is the mentality that only consumer product brands need to focus on digital engagement as a critical component in the buying journey. Today, starting with search is the norm across virtually every industry, whether it be locating a medical specialist (“Hey Google, how do I find the best cardiologist in Dallas, Texas?”), determining which mortgage broker to use for my refinance (“What are today's jumbo mortgage rates?”), or which cars to explore (“What are the most reliable SUVs in 2021?”). Search can help to inspire (“What's the hottest restaurant in my area?”), it can confirm plans (“What time does the Avengers movie start?”), or it can lead to a comparison of products (“What's the best hiking shoe for muddy trails?”). Search possibilities are endless, as proven by the fact that, in 2021, 15% of searches in Google, which comprises over 500 million searches per day, had never been seen by Google before. The scale of traffic in today's market is staggering.

As you can see, the early steps of the evaluation stage focus on search, but they don't exclusively belong to the search engines and marketplaces. Other tools help with the evaluation stage, many of which are search‐oriented in their own right. Examples of these include Healthgrades, which allows patients to search for doctors, evaluating both doctor credentials and patient reviews, and Yelp, which allows patrons to search for restaurants and, again, read customer reviews. Social media influencers provide product recommendations that lead to an evaluation, and in‐home devices like the Amazon Echo will help guide consumers in specific directions. This early stage search evaluation is oftentimes an analytical exercise, so if your head isn't spinning from all the percentages and comparatives, a career in search engine optimization may be right for you.

Once the searcher is guided to an individual brand, the experience takes over. Tools that allow for rapid comparison, simple and transparent evaluation, inspirational guidance, novel guidance, and a compelling value proposition will keep the consumer engaged. Chapters 4 through 9 will provide ideas and examples for how to establish and distinguish the brand during this critical stage in the customer journey.

TRANSACTIONS

The next stage in the customer journey is the transaction. It is at this point that the customer decides to commit to the brand, which of course can manifest in a range of ways depending on the industry, business model, distribution construct, and other factors. Some transactional processes are quite simple – buying a snack at the convenience store or selecting the one‐click purchase on Amazon – whereas some transactions are quite complex, such as purchasing a home or procuring high‐cost items in a B2B construct. The critical trend here is the shift to online transactions and more specifically, to mobile transactions, with greater levels of automation, intelligence, and prediction penetrating every purchasing process.

For transactions, speed is a must. Digital experts prefer the fancier term of frictionless, but it really is about speed. In this post‐digital transformation environment, there's no customer tolerance for complexity, there's no tolerance for errors, and there's no patience for multiform processes. Amazon pioneered this with the one‐click transaction, and others rapidly followed suit. The information necessary to complete the purchase has to be minimized and should be captured so that repeat transactions are even simpler. That's the most significant evolution of commerce expectations, and it's table stakes.

Beyond simplicity and speed, there are opportunities to create distinction in the transaction process. Transparency, including real‐time visibility, is one. Whether it be inventory levels, total anticipated costs, ancillary elements of the transaction, or wait times for services, the probability of generating a commitment increases significantly with trust, and trust is generated through transparency. Integration to modern payment methods is another, as younger generations have not adopted traditional financial instruments, such as Visa or American Express, at the same scale as previous generations. They are adopting digital wallets, digital transaction platforms, and alternative bartering solutions. Trials and phase‐in models are actively reshaping product merchandising and pricing models, as consumers, both B2C and B2B, continue to be exposed to consumption‐based models and try‐before‐you‐buy commitment structures. As brands deepen their understanding of customer expectations and needs, the opportunity to drive distinctive differentiation and impact will become clearer, and it's critical that the transaction experience is updated based on that understanding.

ENGAGEMENT

Once the customer has committed to the transaction, whether that is a purchase, a sign‐up, an appointment, or a reservation, the experience from that point forward solidifies their perception of the brand and its value proposition. It's stating the obvious, but it is important to reinforce over and over again that no written or verbal commitment from a brand will overcome the actual experience of interacting with the product or service itself and with the company that sold the product or service. The engagement stage of the funnel is what enforces the brand perception, and this stage will determine whether the customer is on a path to loyalty or a path to one‐and‐done defection.

This isn't a new concept, of course – it defined the iconic brands of the past including Ford, Pan Am airlines, Howard Johnson's, and Disney – but the rules have changed in the post‐digital transformation era. Now the brand can't fully anticipate when, how, and why the customer is going to engage, and the customer will select a range of different channels within which to interact. If they have a servicing issue, or a product question, or a challenge with the current arrangement, they may reach out via social media, they may call, they may fill out a form on the web page, or they may download the mobile application. Regardless of the path that they follow to connect with your company, they'll expect that you have access to all of their history, relationship details, and relevant context around the inquiry. Further, the modern customer will expect immediate responsiveness regardless of channel, time of day, or geography, and they'll expect that they can complete most if not all tasks without the assistance of a live agent. The lines have blurred between realistic and unrealistic expectations, and the cost of not meeting these expectations is now greater than simple defection. The cost is defection and amplification, as the frustrated customer will now freely broadcast their frustration via the same public channels that drive the evaluation process, including social media channels, blog posts, and other media, which ultimately are picked up by the search engines. Continuous focus is a must.

LOYALTY

The good news is that it's not all bad news. As Newton's third law of motion states, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” While I'm confident that Newton wasn't thinking of the post‐digital transformation era at the time that he defined his third law, it applies equally today. Yes, a poor response during the transaction or engagement phases of the customer journey will lead to defection with amplification, but, equally, a positive and proactive response will lead to unfettered loyalty and equal amplification. For all of the concern and negativity expressed about the younger buying generations – the Millennials and Generation Z – they have proven to be strongly loyal to brands that provide a positive experience at every touchpoint. That loyalty is strengthened with programs that expand their relationship potential, which we'll touch on further later in this book, but fundamentally they will continue to patronize brands that prove their commitment to the customer. Further, just as they will be instantaneous in their negative communications when responding to a poor experience, they are equally quick in expressing positive sentiments. Loyal customers can become your greatest influencers, expressing your brand proposition to their individual networks and helping your brand to go viral in a positive direction. Take advantage of this, encouraging this behavior, and you'll realize the results quickly.

Once a customer becomes loyal to your brand, the potential grows significantly. You'll have permission to build the relationship with them, encouraging greater engagement, greater expansion, and, ultimately, greater value between the brand and the customer. Clever marketing teams are continuously focusing on, and measuring, the progression of their customer base across each stage of the journey. Continuous testing and learning is key to success, which requires a restructuring of many traditional organizations to push empowerment and decision making down to the teams driving the day‐to‐day engagement. Equally important is measurement and analysis, with real‐time dashboarding and dynamic listening tools tracking the sentiment in the market and the response that the brand is generating within key markets. These capabilities, which at one time were viewed as forward thinking and innovative, are now table stakes for brands. They won't differentiate your company alone, but they will provide the foundational capability that is necessary to drive the actions outlined in the remainder of this book. So, with that understanding in mind, let's dive into six opportunities presented in Chapters 4 through 9 for you to propel and differentiate your brand in this post‐digital transformation economy.