Making Customer-Centric Marketing Real

Making Customer-Centric Marketing Real - click on the hyperlink to watch the video on YouTube

Forrester Research’s Peter Kim talks about the importance of Customer Advocacy, a term he says was coined by Forrester Research, for business success.  In a nutshell, by convincing your customers and prospects that your company is truly committed to their interests, you will win more customers, more customer loyalty and more business from each of  your customers. 

While the video is entitled Making Customer-Centric Marketing Real, Kim doesn’t focus much on the role of Marketing in Customer Advocacy, except perhaps to say that Marketers tend to understand the value of the concept, but in order sell it to others in the company, they need good hard metrics to prove to the others that Customer Advocacy, which is a big investment for a company, has real ROI.

What I would like to focus on is that Marketing owns  the PERCEPTION that a company adopts the value of Customer-Centricity. In the world of “Marketng 2.0″ and “Web 2.0″ the marketers’ job is to consistently feed examples of how the company loves, values and aids Joe Customer at all different levels of the Customer Experience, and clearly in today’s world of transparency to use Real “Joe Customers” to speak on company’s behalf… Good marketers can create a strong perception of Customer Advocacy and make it a differentiator for their company even if the company isn’t the top Customer Advocate on the block… But in the long run, to keep this message consistent, the marketer needs to mobilize support for customer advocacy across the organization and have some substance to support the marketing content…   The bottom line is that in today’s market, the marketers have a new and more important role than ever to convince management that what makes companies succeed today is not having the best product or fastest time to market, but, in the long run, the most loyal customer advocates.  Marketers can create buzz,  podcasts featuring testimonials, YouTube infomercials by happy customers and on-line customer forums (fora?) but the key point is that by doing this they are convincing management to invest in customer experience Far Outside the realm of influence of the Marketers so that there will be more Loyal Customer Advocates to support the next campaign… Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit better about being a Marketer? 

 

Customer-Centric Marketing

Check out a great article about Customer-Centric Marketing I came upon in Marketing Profs www.marketingprofs.com entitled:

Earning Customer Raves: Make  These Five Decisions, and Customers Will Grow Your Business for You

by Jeanne Bliss

In a nutshell, the article claims that customer loyalty depends on the company and its employees being human, creative and resourceful in all their interactions with customers. I translate this first and foremost to LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR CUSTOMER WANTS!  Make that the center of your marketing strategy.  Explains Ms Bliss, “When you make decisions that honor your employees and customers, they will tell your story for you. They will grow your business for you”  The key today however is making sure that everyone in your organization that has a part in the customer relationship be fully aware of and committed to implementing your marketing strategy in every customer interaction… Easier said than done, and requires that your marketing team be responsible for getting and keeping everyone in-house aware of and involved in all the marketing initiatives…

I haven’t read Ms Bliss’ entire book yet, but I plan to…

Vertical Industry Success

Marketers can increase the perceived value of a product or service in the eyes of their prospects by better understanding their industry-specific needs, as determined by the varied manufacturing processes, market conditions and business climate that are particular to each vertical industry, and by explaining to the prospects how the product or service they offer resolves the prospects’ specific challenges. Again the name of the game is listening — prospects have more confidence and trust in suppliers that have invested more effort to understand their vertical market and its needs.

Indeed, by focusing a marketing initiative on a given vertical, establishing a reputation as an expert in that area, developing relationships with well-known, strategic influencers in the vertical and by offering added value in the area of business intelligence, market research, industry-specific stats and figures, etc., you significantly increase the chances of any company that identifies themselves as a part of that vertical to at least consider your offer, if for no other reason than their assumption that their competitors in the vertical might be doing the same. Moreover, by incorporating the publication of every new customer win in the vertical as a key element of your marketing initiative, you measurably strengthen your attractiveness and credibility to all the prospects in the vertical. After selling to enough influential innovators in the sector and upon achieving a significant penetration in the market segment, you will from that point on much more easily win the followers as “after business”.

Another side benefit of a vertical industry marketing strategy is flexibility. Adapting the schedule of your marketing programs in accordance with the CAGR forecasts of each vertical will reduce risks and improve your closure rates and profit margins… As one analyst indicated in a post on Business Tech on c-Net News entitled “Recession demands vertical industry approach”:

Industry leaders like Accenture, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle that have long embraced a vertical industry sales and marketing strategy are best positioned to anticipate market opportunities and move resources around to capitalize on this. The bulk of vendors who take a horizontal approach must learn how to customize solutions and adapt sales/marketing toward vertical industries. In my mind, industry marketing is no longer a “nice to have.” It is a “gotta have.”

Now the big question is how to optimally use social media to develop the ultimate “Vertical Industry Marketing 2.0″ strategy – a combination of participation in vertical industry-based on-line communities, efficient Twittering at and after industry events, leveraging industry-specific groups on Linked In… what other social media tactics have you used for Vertical Industry Marketing Success?

Customer Success Drives Market Share

The best way to convince your prospects to buy your product or service is by causing them to identify with your existing happy customers and to feel confident that they will be equally satisfied.

This precept is even more relevant in today’s marketing environment, in which prospects are put off by a hard-sell approach. In an environment of interactive media, on-line communities and open access, the most successful marketing initiatives enable maximal interaction between prospects and real-live human customers, hearing what they both like and don’t like about your products and services in a genuine and authentic way. Such initiatives require that the marketing team develop and maintain extensive, long-term programs that give incentives to as many customers as possible to participate in these initiatives. For this to work, the marketing engine must be in place to efficiently record and publish your happy customers’ testimonials in ways that are creative and interesting while capturing your product’s key values. Even more important, the testimonials must be shared in a way that enables prospects to not only learn from and identify with the customers’ published content, yet also lets them have effective access to these customers in order to add the most critical element – credibility and trust.

Of course in an environment that involves open two-way communication between customers and prospects, your marketing and sales teams must be involved in every interaction, aware of what is going on and prepared to intervene and proactively respond to any activities that might have negative influence on the sales efforts.

Fellow marketers, what strategies and applications do you consider most effective for planning and managing your customer referencing programs? Which incentives do you use to encourage your customers from one end and your sales reps from the other to actively participate?