The sales content management in the omnichannel customer journey: the Bioline Jatò case

Bioline Jatò produces and sells beauty products to professional salons with a high-end or luxury positioning. Creams, serums, and masks for skin treatments for face and body are applied using massage or customized application techniques that were specially developed by the company. More recently, Bioline Jatò has begun to sell its products directly to consumers for in-home use as well.

Bioline Jatò’s business is intrinsically based on physical experiences, which means physical channels and touchpoints are particularly critical (linking the company and its professionals, and then these professionals and end their consumers). In light of this, some years ago the company embarked on a digital transformation process for consumer relations by adding an e-commerce channel to connect directly with final consumers, for example, and by starting to offer training for skin care professionals via webinars (in addition to traditional in-person sessions).

In recent years, the touchpoints were already multiplying that the company could access for B2B and B2C interaction, so when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the effect was simply to accelerate a strategic change that was already underway. But now Bioline Jatò needs to gain a deeper understanding what the traditional customer journey typically consists of, both for B2B clients (in other words, the owners of beauty centers and their employees) and for end consumers.

To manage the omnichannel customer experience effectively, it is especially vital to map the customer journey of the end user, who is the ultimate target for the company’s products and treatments. This makes it possible to optimize corporate strategies, including sales content management, and to support business development for B2B clients (aestheticians). The focus here is on exploiting opportunities to grow product sales for in-home use and to carve out a bigger market share.

With in-house trainers, the company offers periodic virtual workshops to distributors and to their trainers in turn. Today this training is supported by communication on social media, as well as with brochures, product catalogues, and manuals on application techniques. Although point-of-sale materials, such as posters and layouts, are still mainly paper-based, other content such as training videos and posts on social media, are already digital.

The marketing, communication and sales content developed by Bioline Jatò can be grouped into three categories:

• Product-focused: This content, presenting the new, innovative lines and detailing the benefits of these products, is released for every new product launch or product promotion, and implemented in every phase of the sales process.
• Training-focused: Trainers mainly use this content to explain the product features and functions (especially to distributors and their trainers), how to use products properly and how to give customers beauty treatments by following Bioline Jatò principals; this content comes into play primarily in the pre-sales phase.
• Company-focused: Developed in collaboration by sales and marketing teams, this content centers on company values, skills and expertise; it is particularly useful in pre- and post-sales phases, to establish or reinforce the relationship with the company.

To continue on the path to digital transformation, the aim for Bioline Jatò is to hit the reset button on strategic management of sales content as the intense digitalization process unfolds.

The case offers a problematization of the choices that had to be made at Bioline Jatò to better manage omnichannel customer relations (for different targets in various phases of the sales process). More specifically, the following are essential steps:

• mapping the customer journey across the various touchpoints and reflecting on the company’s aims for the different segments and phases of that journey; matching the most appropriate sales content with each phase, objective and target;
• reviewing current sales content to see what’s missing and where improvements are needed;
• strategically managing sales content by following a step-by-step roadmap to create, store, deliver, share and analyze relevant content across various touchpoints to effectively manage the omnichannel customer journey;
• clarifying the role of digitally-enabled CRM systems.

The Bioline Jatò case gives us food for thought on what adopting an omnichannel strategy must necessarily entail: collecting customer data, taking better decisions to make the overall customer experience more satisfying, and managing sales content appropriately to achieve corporate goals.