Becoming customer-centric? Duh, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
As a business owner, you focus on providing a fantastic customer experience that translates to more conversions and brings in more customers.
But, you’d be surprised at the number of people who aren’t taking steps for that or genuinely understanding what ‘customer-centric’ means.
Yes, prioritizing the customers is one way to look at it. However, that’s not all. There are some many other factors in a customer-centric strategy that defines the way a business looks in the eyes of the customers.
This blog will explore what a customer-centric business is all about and how you can create an online marketing strategy for it.
4 Ways of Creating a Customer-Centric Online Marketing Marketing Strategy
Being customer-centric can be subjective when you look from the side of a business owner. You’re indeed trying everything you can to make things the best for your customers. But there have been instances where you wouldn’t realize what is missing.
As a digital marketing agency in Houston, we’ve come across such SMBs. We’ve helped these Houston businesses to identify the gaps and provide an implement with a wholesome marketing strategy with our online marketing services. Let’s look at some of the common approaches that’ll work the best.
1. Create a Customer-Centric Working Culture
Did you know that only 14% of marketers say that customer-centricity is a hallmark of their companies? And what’s even more shocking is that only 11% believe their customers would agree with that characterization!
This was the results of research by CMO Council among more than 300 senior marketing executives and 20 leading marketers from leading brands.
Why do such brands struggle to establish customer-centricity? According to HBR, “the greatest, barrier to customer-centricity is the lack of a customer-centric organizational culture”.
When we take an in-depth look at every single department in the organization, we’ll come to notice the difference in the importance of customer-centricity between the departments that deal with the customer directly (marketing, sales, etc.) and the departments that focus on the product (product development, logistics, etc.)
When we cultivate a culture where every single employee has the best interest of the customers in their minds, then we can achieve customer-centric experience.
2. Personalize at Points of Customer Engagement
You would’ve heard a lot about personalization if you ever interacted with a marketing agency from Houston or any other place, for that matter.
This is because personalization is one of the most valuable assets for a business if done right. And the term ‘personalization’ has now trickled down from the side of the business to the other side — the customers.
According to the ‘State of the Connected Customer’ report by Salesforce, 72% of the buyers expect the vendors to personalize the engagement to their needs.
It’s one thing to personalize the experience when your customers aren’t asking for it. And it’s a totally other situation when you customers demand personalization and the business fails to make it happen.
So, how can you achieve personalization in customer interactions?
- Personalize the marketing messages you send out to the customers.
- Create follow-up social media messages and emails based on the user’s history.
- Retarget the customers with promotions based on the previously bought items.
- Track the success of your personalized promotions, identify the areas that are lagging and improve them.
- Map out the different stages of the customer journey and try to provide personalization at every stage.
Wish to get some assistance for personalized marketing? Reach out to our digital marketing experts at our Houston marketing agency at 361-844-8550 to get a free quote.
3. Focus on Building Long-Term Relationships
Making your customers happy is the end-goal for many companies. But what if there’s more to it? What if you make it a part of your strategy?
When your customers are happy, they would probably talk about it with their friends and family. And the next time they need something you’re selling or a friend is asking for a recommendation, then they would immediately think of you!
This is why you need to focus on creating long-term relationships with your customers. It’s easier to convert happy customers and bring in a steady stream of revenue and with the word-of-the-mouth marketing from the customers, you’ll also get new customers!
4. Plan, Implement, Analyze & Modify
We cannot stress enough about the importance of tracking your marketing efforts, measuring it and analyzing it.
The only way you can clearly know the success of your marketing strategy is through analytics. It’s important to focus on specific metrics that directly impact your customer-centric marketing.
In this report by the Digital Marketing Community, here are the top metrics used by marketers.
We advise you to go for a combination of the top 5 metrics instead of focussing on one or two.
- The conversion rate is, of course, the direct link between the number of leads you have and the leads who have become customers.
- MQLs and SQLs are marketing and sales qualified leads, respectively. MQL represents a most-likely customer to convert and SQL denotes the customers that the sales team have marked as potential customers. Identifying these leads and the volume of these leads is also an indicator of the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
- ROI & cost per lead metrics help to measure if the efforts of the marketing strategy are worth the revenue brought in.
- Website traffic is the direct indicator of the number of people landing on your website due to the strategy.
When you combine these metrics and analyze the marketing results over time, you can discover many new insights that you’ve never thought of.
Final Thoughts
The most effective and successful marketing strategies are often driven by customer-centricity at its core. When you align your working culture and marketing efforts to focus on making the customers happy and building long-term relationships and learn from your marketing campaigns, then you can truly become a customer-oriented business.
