WHY IS THE CRAWL, WALK, RUN APPROACH CRUCIAL FOR AN EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGY?

I decided to learn how to play classical guitar almost 12 years ago. It had been my dream for many years, but somehow got delayed until I was 42 years old. So, as most of us would do, I asked my personal network to help me find a good teacher and decided to start working with one of the highly recommended professionals.

Naturally, we started with some basics such as my sitting position and correct form in holding a guitar, how to use the left and right hands properly, how to produce a clean sound, etc. However, once my teacher realized that I have some background on musical notation (and probably assuming I don’t have too much time left, taking into account my age) he proposed to fast forward and start working on actual composed music pieces.

Of course, this was quite tempting for me. At the end of the day, who wouldn’t want to be able to start playing some very well-known pieces to impress friends, family andother people, right? So, we started to practice with this approach and in a short while, I was able to perform some pieces that I enjoyed. This was quite satisfying, so I kept moving forward with this strategy until I realized that something was wrong.

An epiphany struck me while I was listening to what I had been playing. I realized that yes, I was in fact able to play the notes on the sheet in a certain sequence to produce a certain melody, but the outcome was not the smooth and nicely flowing music I used to listen to, performed by other people. On top of that, every time I tried to speed up, my left and right hand coordination was getting out of sync. With some research and thinking, it suddenly became crystal clear for me that this was quite normal since I had skipped all the basic yet foundational techniques, like how to improve the flexibility of your fingers, how to pull the strings with your nails, etc., to build a solid foundation.

So, I just had to go all the way back to start all over again and do it right this time. By sticking to a practice schedule, putting in sufficient effort and not skipping any steps along the way, I improved my guitar playing skills and achieved my desired result.

Looking back, I can now see clearly what I had done wrong initially. Excited to play, I just wanted to start running before learning how to crawl and walk in the first place!
In fact, I often see similar cases in my professional life. When we ask our customers what their objectives and targets are when it comes to the CX ecosystem they would like to build, it’s not rare for us to hear about fancy trends like using AI algorithms to segment the audiences they would like to target, incorporating machine learning into their processes or using chatbots to answer customer service calls.

This is quite understandable from our perspective as well. We all would like to benefit from new trends, technologies and such as soon as they become available. However, when we start questioning the very basic foundations that need to be in place before we can leverage these advanced features, we often see significant gaps between what fundamentals are required and what is presently at hand.

Once, I recall, we had an online meeting with a C-level executive from a leading retail brand where we presented the features of our proposed technology components which we think would be a good fit for that brand along with the overall architecture. Early in the presentation, we encountered comments such as, “We are already familiar with these technologies and features, we are actually using them”, or “does this product have AI capabilities to predict my target audience?” However, after asking a few key questions, it became clear that the brand faced challenges with fragmented customer data. They had multiple data sources in siloes, which hindered their ability to create even simple customer segments and manage communication channels effectively. Their email, SMS, push notifications, and other channels were managed on separate, unintegrated platforms, leading to a lack of cohesive orchestration across their communications.
Admittedly, I am still not quite sure whether they understood the significance of this critical lack of infrastructure after our meeting. But to us, it was very clear that they were trying to start running, when they had yet to start crawling towards their goal.

Having seen this scenario multiple times during our engagements with potential customers, we always propose a very well known, but often ignored approach to them

CRAWL, WALK, AND RUN APPROACH

We all know that human beings first have to learn how to crawl to get from point A to B. In time, once they are strong enough to rise and stay on their feet, they start by taking little steps towards their destination. Eventually, once they feel confident with this new way of movement and are able to stay balanced and upright, they start to run and reach their target even faster.

I believe since this is the normal course of life, we are not paying enough attention to this phenomenon and forget to apply the same principles to all journeys we take throughout our lives, like I myself had experienced while I was trying to learn how to play guitar.

We need to keep this approach in mind while we are designing business processes; and experiences that brands would like to offer their customers are no exception to this rule.
As an example, let’s take a fairly straightforward process of communicating a message to a specific segment of customers over multiple channels.

Our crawl stage consists of bringing all customer related data into one place and unifying them. This will enable brands to understand their customers’ behaviors, needs and expectations in detail and allow us to create specific segments to target during marketing campaigns. These customers will start to receive communications addressing them directly over multiple channels such as email, SMS, app and web push notifications, etc.

Once we have perfected crawling, brands can start to walk— Utilizing a cross-channel orchestration platform to optimize communication across these channels. Adjustments like not sending an SMS to a customer who has already received and opened an email regarding the same marketing campaign will now be possible. This, of course, will result in a better customer experience since customers won’t be bothered by seeing the same message multiple times over different channels. On top of this, their engagement data can also be used to further enrich customer data.

Finally, we are ready to “run”, applying more advanced technologies like AI algorithms to drive channel optimization, send time optimization, etc. Since the necessary data and communication structures are already in place, brands can now get the maximum benefit from their investments.

At the end of the day, this ‘crawl, walk, and run approach’ will provide a consistent path for brands when shooting for the ideal marketing strategy
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