At Rawww, we have the pleasure of working with so many different brands and however different they are our advice is always the same: apply customer-centric marketing.
What is customer-centric marketing?
As a marketing approach, customer-centric marketing is crucial as it is all about the customer. By focusing on the needs and wants of customers – what they look for in relation to your brand – as well as applying customer data (for insight into factors such as buying behaviour, engagement and interests) you can make all the difference in how your brand is perceived and how it grows.
The customer point of view
As a business, you understand what you want to do, how you want to be seen, and, of course, what you have to sell… but does your customer know? One way to figure out if you’re understood from a customer perspective is to think of it at a glance:
“A prospective customer should be able to understand what you do at a glance.”
People are savvy. We live in an information loaded, digitally led world where we’re being bombarded with so much information that, if it doesn’t make sense in an instant, we’re likely to drop it and move on to the next thing. This is why identifying and utilising a key core message about your business or brand is so useful. If a prospective customer sees your brand and gets it, they’ll become engaged and want to know more.
Think of it in terms of your website; opinions and even tests show mixed results on how long a person will stay on a web page but it can be as little as 5-10 seconds. Why? If there is no clear value proposition, attention wanes quickly, but, if they understand who you are quite quickly, they’re more likely to stay. The key to getting prospective customers to understand who you are is in the messaging, that, in turn, should come from customer-centric marketing.
“It doesn’t matter what you know about your brand. If the customer doesn’t get it, you won’t get them.”
You have the knowledge and experience you need for your industry, but to get this across to your customer, you need to convey your message in ways they understand and putting a little background work into how to do that can really help grow your business, and your brand.
The customer experience
When it comes to customer-centric marketing, think of the customer experience. If you take the time to understand what drives customers, and how you can relate that to your business and brand, you can really tap into what matters most to them, as well as where to invest your time and money when it comes to your overall marketing plan. We’ve already spoken about applying customer data to understand customer behaviour, but you can also use feedback forms, sales funnels to implement and strategise every step of the sales journey, customer interviews and even in-page feedback widgets.
And, by establishing those meaningful connections with customers, you establish loyalty, which will keep customers coming back for more – long after their first purchase from your business or connection with your service.
To understand how customer-centric marketing works in the real world of business and why it keeps customers coming back for more, just take a look at Amazon. Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) is a big fan of this marketing tool and applies customer-driven strategy to ensure they give their customers what they want. Indeed, a lot of the profit that Amazon generates goes directly back into development projects aimed at taking the brand even closer to its customers and answering their needs.
This is achieved by closely watching the interactions of customers and consistently working on gaining insight into what they want, what pleases them, what they would like to see improved, as well as their ideas and needs. By adopting this approach, Amazon goes from strength to strength and shows that Bezos’ trust in ‘putting the customer at the centre of everything they do’ works.
Taking customer-centric marketing further
Consider these three simple factors to help ensure your brand moves to be more customer-centric:
An easy to use website
Make sure your website is easy and safe to use; that it provides relevant and valuable content, and that it offers the seamless online experience that users have come to expect when they browse. You might want a more complicated or flashy design, but if your users can’t access what they need…they’ll soon move on from your brand.
Content marketing they want to see
Always focus on creating quality content when it comes to content marketing. Write interesting blogs, make podcasts and vlogs and make sure whatever you put out to customers and prospects has value. Look at what customers are searching for through keyword research and analytics.
Be available
Connection is so important. Customers want to be able to contact you, easily and quickly and this should be at the heart of any customer-centric marketing strategy. Make support available and offer a variety of channels for contact: phone, email, social media and chat boxes.
Are you ready to see how you can benefit from customer-centric marketing? Contact us today and let us tell you more about how the right customer-driven marketing strategy can help propel your business forward.
