Customer-centricity. It's more than just a buzzword; it's more than just a platitude.

This concept, while not new, has become one of the most popular topics among today's business leaders as companies explore ways to increase market momentum, customer share, and new product adoption. Yet, the Global Customer Service Barometer survey conducted by American Express found that "just over six in ten customers agree that companies meet their expectations."

HOW TO MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER STRATEGY MORE THAN A BUZZWORD | by Laura Patterson— Photo by visionedge marketingHOW TO MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER STRATEGY MORE THAN A BUZZWORD | by Laura Patterson— Photo by visionedge marketing
HOW TO MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER STRATEGY MORE THAN A BUZZWORD | by Laura Patterson— Photo by visionedge marketing

Why is this the case? Despite their claims that they keep the customer first, many B2B companies remain product-centric. However, making the shift to focusing on the customer can make all the difference. Perhaps you'll find Don Pepper's explanation about difference between customer-centricity and product-centricity useful:

· Product-centricity starts with having a product or service that responds to customer needs and then finding as many customers as possible who have these needs.

· Customer-centricity starts with the individual customer and aims to meet the needs of that customer in as many respects as possible.

Furthermore, research has found that customer-centric companies enjoy greater customer satisfaction. And a Booz Allen study found that businesses that are successful at customer-centricity outperform industry peers two-to-one in revenue growth and generate margins 5%-10% above their competitors.

When you shift to a customer-centric strategy, you are building an organization that holds the informed knowledge of the customer and the marketplace at its core. Your organization is aligned around customer commitments, customer relationships, and enhanced customer knowledge. All of which is power. While your products might be able to be copied and your channels disrupted, how well you know your customers and your market gives you a market advantage. While the transformation from product-centric to customer-centric comes with a cost, the benefits you can reap often far outweigh them. Curious to see transformation in action? Read Case Study 36 to learn how we helped Winton Global transform from product-centric to customer-centric with a focus on accountability.

Shift Your Marketing to Focus Customers

Making the shift to being customer-centric takes deliberate action. It means more than just changing the conversation with your customers. It means changing your Marketing organization from the inside out; especially in four key areas.

1. Customer orientation. Marketing needs to reorient itself to encompass the entire customer lifecycle. To do this, Marketing leaders must create a data-driven, customer-centric culture as well as processes for transforming data into insights.

2. Solutions vs. Selling. A customer-centric transformation means you leave the world of selling "products" for the world of solving problems. This applies to ALL business decisions.

3. Front-line vs. top-down driven. Focus on those who interact directly with your customers every day. This means your Sales, Marketing, and Service personnel who are in the trenches. You need to arm these people with the skills, resources, and authority necessary to manage "moments of truth."

4. Engineer or reengineer business processes. If you want to transform your Marketing into a Best-in-Class Marketing organization that leverages systems and tools to drive effectiveness and efficiency deliver on growth you'll need to "bite the bullet" and possibly rework every business process, including your Marketing processes and systems. This often requires establishing a fully functional Marketing Ops organization.

Marketing Ops: Your Behind the Scenes Wizard for Customer Strategy

Marketing Operations serves as the central nervous system. It is the branch of the entire organization that facilitates the planning, performance management, resource management, and tools to support a data-driven customer-centric organization.

So what should your Marketing Ops function provide you with to be able to succeed in all of these areas? At a bare minimum, your Marketing Operations function should help you improve your performance in three primary areas:

  1. Decisions
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Accountability

The capacity of Marketing Ops must expand beyond campaign automation and financial governance to a role that drives alignment, accountability, and agility. This is particularly prevalent if you want a Marketing organization that serves as a value creator. By creating or expanding the Marketing Ops role and skill set, your Marketing organization is better able to meet your C-Suite's performance expectations.

Use these resources to strengthen your Marketing Ops:

  • Read some How to Guides. We recommend The Role of Marketing Operations in Improving Marketing Performance.
  • Listen to educational recordings. One we would suggest starting with would be the Marketing Ops Technology Summit.
  • Read case studies to learn how a little help allowed companies to make it all happen. Begin with Case Study 38: Making Marketing Relevant to the C-Suite.

Research by Deloitte finds that CEOs expect their Marketing leaders to drive revenue growth, own the customer experience, dig in to data-based insights, operate in real-time, and master metrics that matter. To realize the performance targets of the organization, your leadership team wants Marketing to perform better.

Customer-centricity. It's more than just a buzzword; it's more than just a platitude.

This concept, while not new, has become one of the most popular topics among today's business leaders as companies explore ways to increase market momentum, customer share, and new product adoption. Yet, the Global Customer Service Barometer survey conducted by American Express found that "just over six in ten customers agree that companies meet their expectations."

Why is this the case? Despite their claims that they keep the customer first, many B2B companies remain product-centric. However, making the shift to focusing on the customer can make all the difference. Perhaps you'll find Don Pepper's explanation about difference between customer-centricity and product-centricity useful:

· Product-centricity starts with having a product or service that responds to customer needs and then finding as many customers as possible who have these needs.

· Customer-centricity starts with the individual customer and aims to meet the needs of that customer in as many respects as possible.

Furthermore, research has found that customer-centric companies enjoy greater customer satisfaction. And a Booz Allen study found that businesses that are successful at customer-centricity outperform industry peers two-to-one in revenue growth and generate margins 5%-10% above their competitors.

When you shift to a customer-centric strategy, you are building an organization that holds the informed knowledge of the customer and the marketplace at its core. Your organization is aligned around customer commitments, customer relationships, and enhanced customer knowledge. All of which is power. While your products might be able to be copied and your channels disrupted, how well you know your customers and your market gives you a market advantage. While the transformation from product-centric to customer-centric comes with a cost, the benefits you can reap often far outweigh them. Curious to see transformation in action? Read Case Study 36 to learn how we helped Winton Global transform from product-centric to customer-centric with a focus on accountability.

Shift Your Marketing to Focus Customers

Making the shift to being customer-centric takes deliberate action. It means more than just changing the conversation with your customers. It means changing your Marketing organization from the inside out; especially in four key areas.

1. Customer orientation. Marketing needs to reorient itself to encompass the entire customer lifecycle. To do this, Marketing leaders must create a data-driven, customer-centric culture as well as processes for transforming data into insights.

2. Solutions vs. Selling. A customer-centric transformation means you leave the world of selling "products" for the world of solving problems. This applies to ALL business decisions.

3. Front-line vs. top-down driven. Focus on those who interact directly with your customers every day. This means your Sales, Marketing, and Service personnel who are in the trenches. You need to arm these people with the skills, resources, and authority necessary to manage "moments of truth."

4. Engineer or reengineer business processes. If you want to transform your Marketing into a Best-in-Class Marketing organization that leverages systems and tools to drive effectiveness and efficiency deliver on growth you'll need to "bite the bullet" and possibly rework every business process, including your Marketing processes and systems. This often requires establishing a fully functional Marketing Ops organization.

Marketing Ops: Your Behind the Scenes Wizard for Customer Strategy

Marketing Operations serves as the central nervous system. It is the branch of the entire organization that facilitates the planning, performance management, resource management, and tools to support a data-driven customer-centric organization.

So what should your Marketing Ops function provide you with to be able to succeed in all of these areas? At a bare minimum, your Marketing Operations function should help you improve your performance in three primary areas:

  1. Decisions
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Accountability

The capacity of Marketing Ops must expand beyond campaign automation and financial governance to a role that drives alignment, accountability, and agility. This is particularly prevalent if you want a Marketing organization that serves as a value creator. By creating or expanding the Marketing Ops role and skill set, your Marketing organization is better able to meet your C-Suite's performance expectations.

Use these resources to strengthen your Marketing Ops:

  • Read some How to Guides. We recommend The Role of Marketing Operations in Improving Marketing Performance.
  • Listen to educational recordings. One we would suggest starting with would be the Marketing Ops Technology Summit.
  • Read case studies to learn how a little help allowed companies to make it all happen. Begin with Case Study 38: Making Marketing Relevant to the C-Suite.

Research by Deloitte finds that CEOs expect their Marketing leaders to drive revenue growth, own the customer experience, dig in to data-based insights, operate in real-time, and master metrics that matter. To realize the performance targets of the organization, your leadership team wants Marketing to perform better.

If you're feeling the pressure to meet these rising performance expectations, it may be time to revisit your Marketing organizations processes, tools, data and analytics, alignment and accountability. Find out how here.

Maddie Keist
visionedge marketing

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