Why Customer Data Platform is Essential for Your Omnichannel Strategy & SEO

⏱ Reading Time: 6 minutes

CDP (Customer Data Platforms) is among the essential software that is used for CX improvements.

The main focus of today’s business representatives is to reduce churn and improve customer experience to get better ROI. According to SuperOffice research, this is the top priority for modern entrepreneurs when pricing and product customization remain lower. It is predicted that businesses will strive to make more of an effort to focus their marketing campaigns on customer experience (49.5% of respondents).

🚀 Read Customer Experience Guide: How to Put your Customers First? 🚀

An improved CX is always about better customer satisfaction rates and loyalty to the company or brand. That is why customer-driven strategies to bolster long-standing relationships with clients and increase revenues are among the most hot-topic trends in the 21st century. Omnichannel marketing has transformed to provide present-day users a unified customer experience! 

Picture 1. Set your priorities

The main idea of such systems is to arrange a 100% personalized customer experience with the help of data collection, management, and centralization. Customer data platform closes the circuit of data sharing, orchestration, and integration. This way, customer data platforms improve any omnichannel strategy while providing better UX, attribution data, cohesive brand identity, and strategy.

With improved data accuracy, personalization, and optimization properties, CDPs are also beneficial for SEO. For example, cross-channel customer experience can improve the way users interact with the website. As a result, this can boost your main SEO efforts.

Reasons Customer Data Platform is a Basic Need for Omnichannel Marketing

The omnichannel marketing strategy focuses on end-to-end customer experience across different channels (devices, messengers, email, other approaches). CDPs help to realize this for companies, as well as increase their retention rates. Additionally, with the help of customer data platforms, you will customize your brand identity campaigns. A relevant and customer-driven (read “personalized”) content creates a seamless customer experience and increases loyalty.

Read Also Customer Experience Guide: How to Put your Customers First?

While using and circulating customer data properly through the customer data platform, timing and targeting marketing messages will not be challenging. You will be able to manage your brand guidelines for each channel. The omnichannel strategy needs CDPs for many reasons. Let’s take a look at the basic reasons for CDPs that will promote your increased revenue, better brand recognition, better customer retention, and armed SEO performance.

Picture 2. How does Customer Data Platform works?

1. Marketing Automation

One of the benefits of the customer data platforms is their comprehensive functionality for marketing automation. Customer decisions are understood better because the CDPs pool data on customer behavior which tracks a customer’s journey across any platform. Deep analytical research is undertaken to monitor different interactions on the website, marketplace, clients’ purchase history, etc.

With the help of accurate analysis results, it is possible to create a personalized, results-driven omnichannel marketing strategy through the CDP software. 360-degree customer profile estimation takes place for hyper-personalized CX. Customer data platform-based marketing automation, together with a well-thought SEO strategy, will boost any digital marketing efforts.

Besides the main automation options required for marketing, like sending emails, there is a range of helpful options for your SEO. They include publishing articles, social media posts, and answering some comments on social media automatically.

For instance, you can schedule blog content for publishing easier and faster with marketing automation. Additionally, CDPs offer to react to the customer behavior changes quickly in the context of the content. Marketing automation for better SEO performance is about:

• Automated keyword discovery about users’ search queries.
• Creating pieces of content that are optimized for search.
• Monitoring website keywords and adding new ones that are often searched in the search engines.
• Tailoring on-page content according to different factors (like demographics, users’ location).

Picture 3. Marketing Automation is designed to allow organizations to market more effectively across multiple channels

Most Common Marketing and SEO Issues

For example, the marketer determined that customers were leaving the targeted website page before taking action. This can mean that your web page is not relevant for SEO keywords with which you optimize your website. To overcome the challenge of the customers’ churn, it is recommended to check keyword queries that website visitors used to get to the page of interest. Use SEO tools like SE Ranking and Ubersuggest to determine what keywords your web pages rank for and analyze whether those search queries are relevant to your business. This will help you create a plan of how to improve your web page’s focus and which keywords to use, which will be more relevant to your target audience.

In summary, marketing automation provided by the customer data platforms allows marketers to save time on additional research and analysis have done manually. SEO performance is also improved due to the thorough keyword research and suggestions. All the saved time can be spent on tuning your omnichannel strategy and concentrating on new business purposes.

2. Customer Data Platform Control

To provide a seamless customer experience, it is necessary to collect, organize, and share customer data across different systems. CDPs cope with this task brilliantly. With the help of improved data control, customer data platforms help omnichannel marketing campaigns to excel at their performance. CDPs provide the complete cycle of the data circulation and guarantee enhanced control over all the data entries.

Customer data platform Data and Semantic SEO for Better Website User-Friendliness Exemplified

An attractive website is user-friendly and meets user intent. For this purpose, an omnichannel marketing strategy is used. First, the customer data platform is obtained through multiple channels. Then, semantic SEO research takes place. For example, marketers got information about mail requests for wooden furniture. Right after the latest CDP data is received, it is recommended to initiate semantic SEO research to determine the most popular search queries relevant to the users’ demands.

Semantic search engine optimization should not leave any possible query without attention. It will be the best base to add new keywords to the new page or the standing one with the wooden furniture you will offer to potential purchasers:

• Navigational queries (“furniture made of wood,” “wooden furniture,” “wooden stools”);
• Informational queries (“how to choose wooden furniture,” “tips on how to buy the best furniture made of wood”);
• Transactional queries (“buy wooden tables,” “wooden furniture costs”);
• Local questions (“wooden furniture in Los-Angeles,” “wooden chairs in London”);
• Intent queries (a happy blend of the most hot-topic questions related to the brand, type of goods, your business).

Picture 4. Customer data control

Use Data-Driven Approach

With a data-driven approach, you can reach your target audience faster and with fewer investments. Using customer data platform offers marketers actual demographic information, insights on searchers’ tastes, preferences, habits, etc. As to data-driven marketing that requires high-level data control, the user experience (UX) is improved the following way:

1. Customer data from multiple channels is unified.
2. Unbiased assessment of the marketing (including tactics, strategies, approaches) performance takes place.
3. Attribution data becomes better (enhanced tracking of engagements).
4. Media optimization also takes place.
5. New customer-driven insights for SEO are obtained through multiple channels.

It is worth noting that CX is impossible without meeting user intent. That is why SEO performance depends directly on the data control quality. All the information about searchers’ queries should be actual and accurate. This way, semantic search engine optimization is improved significantly. With the help of the customer data platforms and automated keyword research, it is possible to enhance all types of semantic queries (navigational, informational, transactional, local, and intent ones). 

The conception of the omnichannel marketing strategy based on  CDP data that is well-controlled is always a round-trip process. When semantic SEO research is done, new insights are received by marketers through estimation metrics presented in each channel.

3. Customer Retention

The customer data platforms are used to identify high-value, repeat (read “standing”) customers. And this process is made easier if the omnichannel marketing campaign is based on efficient customer-retention tactics. CDPs can come in handy for the application of these approaches:

• Onboarding programs – customer data platforms can provide insight on which products or services are the most challenging for consumers to use. The business representative can launch the onboarding program. It will attract new users and retain the standing audience.
• Customer loyalty program – the CDPs are also used to analyze the client base in the risk of churn. For inactive buyers or consumers of services, it is possible to offer an attractive promotion. The personalized loyalty program will come in handy for the retention of “too-cold” customers.
• Customer advisory board – this is the retention-driven strategy that is focused on loyal customers. Using the customer data platform, you will be able to improve their CX with the help of extra care and attention. The customer advisory board is a solution when you want to realize the retention strategy for standing clients. CDPs will come in handy for creating a panel of these customers. Offer this category of your clients to leave a review and post it on social media. Do not forget to treat the most active ones to promotions!

Bonus Points

• Corporate social responsibility program – the customer data platform will be helpful for improving the customer experience when it comes to enhanced communication. Collect the information about your loyal clients. Arrange the corporate social responsibility program to interact with your client base. This way, you will become closer to even the challenging consumers with complaints. The opportunity to be heard is always about better CX.
• Beta testing group – improve the customer experience with the help of the feedback loop you arrange for your clients. This way, you will kill two birds with one stone. First, your customers will highly appreciate the capability to become true beta testers.  Second, you will know first-hand about the quality of your goods and services. The feedback directly from the exclusive group of willing customers is a real treasure.

4. Improved Targeting

CDPs are used for the customization of advertising campaigns, especially PPC campaigns. Customer data platforms combine all the generated data to create unique customer profiles. Those provide a 360˚ view of each user from the client base. This rich customer data can be used to develop data-informed hypotheses about what customers want based on prior behavior.

Improved Targeting with the Help Customer Data Platform Exemplified

The improved CX will make it easier to create high-targeting advertising campaigns and improve SEO. CDPs provide a wide range of opportunities for improved targeting the following way:

• On-page SEO with the help of Google site links instead of traditional and staleCTA (research is undertaken with the help of customer data platforms).
• Running automated advertising campaigns with  CDP-based timers (promotions, discounts, and other special offers with limited time).
• Running Twitter targeting campaigns with the help of the customer data received from the CDP platforms.
• Location bidding targeting in Google ads to hit the top search results and advertise your goods and services the best way.

Read Customer Relations: What Is the Road to Loyal Customers?

Picture 5. CDP can help you improve your targeting!

5. Content Personalization

Customer data platform ensures that every interaction with a brand is tailored to each customer. That is why customer data platforms are about personalization. CDPs also play an important role in customization when it comes to content. With the help of customer data-driven marketing campaigns, it is possible to react timely to customers’ queries and create content that meets their needs. Also, and satisfies their intentions while helping them convert.

The most current trend is a combination of keyword-based and CX-driven marketing. Customer data platform establishes mixed strategies for omnichannel marketing purposes:

• With the help of  constant data monitoring on the social media networks (likes, shares, interests);
• Search queries (what content is searched by the user, category of users);
• Analysis of the competitors combined with monitoring the latest trends in design, imagery, video, etc.

Adding relevant key phrases also applies to content personalization. The keyword research helps to hit the top in the SERPs, and at the same time, improves the customer experience.

Conclusion

Customer data platforms are a new normal in present-day digital marketing. With the help of CDPs, it is possible to improve customer experience significantly. With CX improvements, marketers can count on other beneficial changes, like better SEO performance and online visibility.

A happy blend of all these features guarantees increased conversions and revenues and enhanced customer retention and satisfaction. It is recommended to run the omnichannel marketing campaign with well-thought advertising strategies and automated analytical research regularly through CDPs.

Vanessa Friedman is a content marketing professional, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Vanessa worked as a marketing manager for a tech software startup. She graduated with honors from Columbia University with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing. Feel free to reach out to her on GuestPostingNinja@gmail.com.