A customer-centric marketing plan is about more than just knowing how to get leads based on your ideal customer. It’s about making a marketing plan focusing on what’s best for your customers.
This marketing style also means putting the customer first in every part of your business. Because good marketing won’t work if the other parts of your business aren’t also in line with what customers want.
In this post, we’ll talk about what customer-centric marketing is, why you need it, along with the best practices for creating a customer-focused marketing plan that works.
What is customer centric marketing
A customer centric marketing strategy prioritizes the needs and interests of customers. It happens when making advertising, selling, and promotion decisions. The focus is on comprehending why your customers require your company’s products or services. So that you can deliver immense value to enhance some aspect of their work or personal life.
Before implementing a strategy, consumer-centric marketing carefully considers both its positive and negative effects on customers. It is a method of conducting business. This is done to increase customer loyalty, satisfaction, and referrals.
This type of strategy asks:
- Is this going to benefit my clients?
- Would my customers like it?
- Does this help my customers?
- What would my customers think about it?
- What problems are my customers having right now?
- What do my clients want and need?
As we’ve already said, putting the customer first isn’t just about marketing. It’s important to find ways to ensure that your business focuses on the customer in every way. This includes sales, helping customers, finances, and other areas. This way of doing things will not only show customers that you care about them. But it will also help you tailor your marketing efforts better.
Why is a customer centric marketing strategy necessary?
Putting customers first will help you build better relationships with your audience. It will also help you to gain their loyalty, and build a business that will last. Customers want to feel like they are part of something bigger than the product itself.
With customer centric marketing, customers are encouraged to tell you what they want from your next product or service. These valuable consumer insights will help your business to grow. And They’ll feel like they belong to the brand community.
Statistics show that loyal customers spend 67 percent more money on a brand than other customers. Despite this, it is much easier to sell products to them because they have come to trust your brand over time.
When you have a loyal customer base, it takes much less time, money, and work to get customers to make a purchase. Loyal customers don’t need as much persuading. Instead, they can hop right back into the sales funnel.
Also, loyal customers are more likely to create user-generated content for you. When customers are happy with a brand or a purchase, they want to tell their friends and family about it. Satisfied customers will share your content or their experience on social media for their entire network to see. This quickly raises awareness of your brand and brings in more customers. Guess the best part? It’s totally free!
In reality, 82 percent of Americans ask friends and family for advice before purchasing. So, if you use a customer-centered marketing strategy and your customers start sharing your content, you can expect more traffic, leads, and sales.
How to succeed customer centric marketing
For customer-centered marketing to work, you need to act on purpose. The change does not just happen on its own. Here are some tips and tricks you can do to refocus your marketing on your customers.
Involve leaders
For a new strategy to work, it’s important to get the support and enthusiasm of senior leadership. If senior leaders make customers a priority in every channel and interaction, it will encourage others in the organization to do the same. You can get leadership on board by holding regular meetings to teach them about customer centric marketing, talk about upcoming campaigns, and think of creative ways to promote the brand.
Customer research
Here are some ways to find out more about your customers:
- Ask customers how they feel about the service or product quality through surveys. Also, ask about what the company does well, where it can do better, and how they most often interact with the brand.
- Talk to current and former customers one-on-one. Inquire about their experiences with the organization. Why do they stay with them or why do they leave? You can also ask past customers what would have made them stay if you had changed something.
- Use social media and Google Alerts to see what people say about your business online. If customers complain on Twitter about your website’s navigation, it may be time to update. You can also gauge the social media content your customers like. On TikTok, followers may like behind-the-scenes videos. While Twitter users like having questions answered or reading essential announcements.
- Read emails from customers and listen in on calls. And see how they are communicating with your business.
- Use data from analytics tools to keep track of how customers to act.
Every customer interaction
Customers or potential customers can be at any point in their journey with your company. This is why it’s important to create appeal at every touchpoint. Every part of the buyer’s cycle, whether they are talking to your company on social media, calling to get help with a problem, or at the end of buying a product/service, you should make them happy and engaged.
Nordstrom’s personalized products/services are based on customer behavior and Starbucks’ system for quickly meeting. Customer needs are examples of adding value to different customer interactions. Bacardi’s virtual whisky tasting is similar. These actions make customer interactions fun, engaging, and accessible.
Marketing that focuses on customers
The customer journey has become less linear as technology changes how people interact with brands and businesses. To keep up with the ever-changing journey, companies need to take a customer centric marketing strategy. This will help them build stronger relationships with their customers, becoming some of their biggest fans.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we learned about customer-centric marketing and how to succeed in it. You probably won’t know your customers right away. But your growth will explode if you learn to focus more on customers. It may take some time, but it will be worth it in the end.
The best thing is you can improve your customer-centric marketing with QuestionPro CX. So, contact QuestionPro now to discover how to boost customer loyalty and collect valuable consumer insights through our CX survey and analytics management platform.
