Why Customer Centricity Should Be at the Heart of Your Marketing Strategy
The Gist
- Revenue first. Prioritize existing customers to boost sales and loyalty.
- Customer voice matters. CMOs must advocate for customers in C-suite decisions.
- Insight over assumption. Utilize customer feedback for genuine engagement.
Recently on CMSWire, the editorial calendar slotted writers to write about customer-centric organizations. As a contributing community member and new CMSWire Advisory Board member, my task is to explore “CMO-ey things.”
So, what does customer-centric mean for CMOs and marketing leaders in general?
Being Customer-Centric: ART for Customers
If you’ve read my stuff before, you may have come across my view that the goal of B2B marketing is to create ART: Awareness, Revenue and Trust. A great relationship between marketing and the customers, and being customer-centric can positively impact all of these.
Awareness and Trust
Whether you frame the challenge of getting time with a buyer as a deterioration of attention spans, that there are just so many other things that are competing for their attention, or that the buyer is just awash with vendor content, today, we clearly have a challenge in cutting through.
The reward for marketing to work in a customer-centric business or for driving this approach is that customer sourced content, like case studies and reviews, is worth its weight in gold in attracting that valuable, sparse buyer attention.
Why? Because this content builds trust. Your buyer sees people like them risking their own professional reputation by going public on their love for your product, the ultimate in social proof.
In their 2024 Software Buying Behavior Survey, Gartner found that 98% of software buyers say that “product recognition based on ratings or user reviews influence their purchase decision” — and it’s clear that the voice of your customer builds a huge amount of trust.
Getting case studies and testimonials takes a lot of effort and is almost impossible if you (in marketing) are the first person to say hello to them since they bought the software. This needs to be a motion set in place in sales and service, an element of being customer-centric as a business.
Whether it’s public testimonials, case studies, user-generated content, conference speakers, or more private conversations like win/loss analysis and product and messaging feedback, customers are a key marketing resource. They provide not just top-quality marketing material but also insight that helps us create and optimize the next campaign.
Related Article: How Customer Reviews Can Make or Break Your Business
Unlocking Customer Insights: The Role of Product Marketing in B2B
Aside from building awareness, generating revenue, and fostering trust with buyers, a crucial role of marketing should be to provide customer insights. This responsibility often falls to product marketing in B2B environments, involving understanding customer personas and needs to inform product teams as well as sales and marketing strategies.
Marketing, particularly the CMO, has the opportunity to play a deeper role as well. They can serve as the customer’s voice and advocate at the C-suite table, shaping business strategy. This is an essential senior role when businesses get serious about being customer-centric.
Of course, discussing customer insights and their guidance requires a note of caution. When adopting this approach, you may hear senior colleagues refer to Henry Ford’s claim that customers would have asked for a “faster horse” instead of a car.
There’s a strong argument that innovation doesn’t solely rely on the customer’s current perspective and context. Therefore, being customer-centric doesn’t mean being strictly “customer-led.” Much like being “data-led,” it’s crucial to use customer insights as a foundation, but also to leave space for creativity, innovation and experimentation. This approach builds on the insights customers provide, allowing for forward-thinking development.
Harnessing Customer Insights for Continued Revenue Generation
Those are the marketing benefits, but my colleagues in sales would like my ART acronym to start with the “R” for “Revenue.”
A lot of focus, effort and investment in B2B marketing is placed on new business, broadcasting the brand to a new audience and creating new relationships. But, of course, it’s way easier and cheaper to have an existing customer buy more from you than to find a new customer.
To get this return, marketing needs to invest in being customer-centric, maybe leading the company in that respect and considering how to support the existing audience with useful content, helping them get the most of the product and supporting them with the thought leadership that helps them with their job to be done. Effort that will deepen the trust and the relationship, supporting the sales and account management function.
Plus, referring back to the marketing’s role in customer insight and advocacy, helping shape what additional products and services a customer might need.
Therefore, the customer needs to be an established persona and segment, with a marketing strategy of its own, owned by a campaign manager or team, and assigned a budget.
As I shared in the last section, good customer relationships also impact revenue in terms of building trust, but specifically, case studies and references influence deals.
The cruel irony here is that the major deals we all aim to secure often require case studies and references. Yet, once these big clients are on board, they find it challenging to provide these due to big corporate blah, blah blah. However, on a personal level, strong customer relationships can yield one-on-one advocacy and stories that sales teams can share privately, though not in public forums.
Related Article: How to Leverage Customer Insights to Shape Product Strategy and Growth
Being the Customer Marketing Officer
But how can you do that without meeting the customer?
There is only so much insight that can be gleaned from marketing data or the third-hand comments relayed by customer-facing colleagues in sales and customer service. These sources alone are not enough to fully understand the customer and build the credible advocacy and relationships necessary for effective marketing.
Sometimes the folks who are responsible for the customer relationship will be the gatekeepers to getting close to the customers. So it’s essential to demonstrate the value of marketing to their relationships.
Driving toward being customer-centric as a business offers significant commercial benefits, including enhancing awareness, revenue and trust. There is a substantial opportunity for the CMO and the marketing team to lead this shift.
This positions the CMO to truly act as the Customer Marketing Officer.
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