Customers expect seamless and personalized experiences across all digital touchpoints – whether they’re browsing a brand's website, interacting with them on social media or shopping in-store. They can search for the best price, the best shopping experience or the best ratio of the two. According to Forrester, B2B buyers look for relevant and responsive interactions with sellers to support them throughout increasingly complex buying scenarios. For brands and manufacturers, this translates into the need to differentiate themselves through more than just products and prices.
This is where Product Experience Management (PXM) comes in as the element that allows brands to promote trust and brand loyalty, create stronger relationships with consumers, increase conversions and overall efficiency.
This article will focus on the benefits of PXM and how it can help improve your marketing strategies. You will discover best practices to gain your brand the consumer trust it deserves and generate engaging product experiences in omnichannel ecosystems.
Why does Product Experience Management (PXM) matters now more than ever?
Shoppers have more options now than at any time in history. In fact, the sheer quantity of products available for purchase online is overwhelming and reading through every review of a popular item could take days. But consumers don’t really want to spend an eternity browsing every option. They want to find accurate information quickly so they can make their decision and move on. Otherwise, more than half of consumers will shop elsewhere after encountering bad product information.
That’s why product content has become the winning horse for any business that wants to ensure a great experience for its buyers and boost sales, because with better information comes more purchases, fewer returns and more average value. A PXM solution enables retailers and brand manufacturers to centralize and manage all their product information in one place. This includes product descriptions, images, videos and more. By centralizing all this information, organizations can ensure that their customers receive the same high-quality experience, regardless of the channel or touchpoint.
How can brands and manufacturers benefit from PXM?
Companies that implement PXM achieve better results, including higher customer satisfaction, reduced product returns, fewer abandoned carts, and respond better to buyer expectations, with 49% of buyers making a purchase after receiving personalized product experience. Discover how a PXM approach can benefit your business:
Improving customer experience and better performance
One of the key benefits of a PXM solution is the ability to provide a consistent and personalized customer experience across all digital touchpoints. For example, by using customer data, retailers and brand manufacturers can tailor their messaging and product offerings to each consumer's preferences and needs. This enhances the customer experience and increases customers’ likelihood of making a purchase.
A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies that use customer data to inform their product and marketing strategies outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin. Besides, companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts. Providing consistent and high-quality product descriptions across all channels has become the norm. To make your brand and product stand out from the crowd, you need to make it more relevant to customers by offering contextualized information depending on the target group the customer belongs to.
Streamlining processes and reducing of costs and errors
Another benefit of a PXM solution is the ability to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Having all product information in one place allows retailers and brand manufacturers to update and manage their products quickly and easily, reducing the time and resources required. With 95% of B2B buyers viewing content as a trustworthy marker when purchasing, businesses must eliminate any inconsistencies and errors that can negatively impact the customer experience.
Creating comprehensive product information is impossible without managing product data processes — who is involved, who can verify assets, who can decide if the information is complete, etc. You can implement a data governance strategy to gain a holistic view of your data’s quality at all stages of the product experience management process. A well-planned data governance framework covers strategic, tactical and operational roles, clearly defining responsibilities relating to particular assets and ensuring that responsibility and accountability are agreed upon across the organization. Moreover, it allows businesses to configure their desired product hierarchies and encourages compliance with data quality requirements.
Enhancing product identity and brand reputation
Reputation starts from the inside — is your catalog really meeting the requirements to represent your brand and attract consumers demanding complete and consistent product information? As Gartner observes, organizations that focus on helping their customers with personalized messaging can expect a 16% more impact on commercial outcomes than those that don’t.
Product experience management empowers brands to offer consumers a more complex view of their product. Traditional, branded content may only take you so far as delivering branded messages. By involving user-generated content and syndication, companies can showcase how their products adapt to different lifestyles, what differentiates them and what fundamental values they represent. This enables marketers to say more about a product than through brand-owned channels and visual assets.
Finally, a PXM solution can also help retailers and brand manufacturers to stay ahead of the competition. By delivering a consistent and tailored customer experience across all digital touchpoints, they can differentiate themselves from their competitors and establish a strong brand reputation.
