The Customer-Centric Marketer
In my previous post I talked about the customer-centric organizational approach. I discussed how businesses are shifting from taking a product-centric approach to customer-centric approach in an attempt to create a superior tailor-made customer experience that will eventually increase their bottom line.
I mentioned that even though management-science theorists identified the tremendous power consumers hold in the business environment more than fifty years ago, a customer-centric business approach is only now gaining momentum, thanks to digitalization.
In this post I would like to talk about the tactical changes this approach requires and focus on a tool that can help you figure out where your business is on the road to customer centricity.
In order to put their consumers in the center of their business, companies need to learn their consumers’ buying journey, starting with their needs and wants, where they go to look for information, what type of media influence them into purchasing, how and where they buy, which devices they use, and so forth. This data, usually collected from numerous platforms, must be integrated and analyzed into unified knowledge. In turn, this knowledge will be the solid ground on which the businesses will build their end-to-end superior customer experience.
How can you find out where your business is on the road to customer centricity? All you need is ten to fifteen minutes. Consulting firm Booz & Company, along with SaaS company Bazaarvoice, has developed a Digital Customer Centricity Profiler. The Profiler is aimed at helping companies better understand their digital customer-centric capabilities by comparing themselves to industry leader on indices such as segmentation, real-time decision-making, personalization, content optimization, innovation, social influence, etc.
On the basis of your answers, your company will be categorized in to one of four customer-centric profiles. Leaders are companies that, through their superior capabilities to gather insight and analysis, have created high-quality profit-generating platforms. Scholars have great insight and analysis practices, but their accumulated knowledge is still not translated into actions. Pioneers have vast digital and social presence, but they are not sufficiently customer centric because they are not based on deep and extensive customer insight. Last but not least, Novices have not yet completely shaped their digital-marketing practices and are still working on understanding the knowledge they need to gather in order to create successful customer-centric platforms.
The business world is making huge steps toward customer centricity. Huge businesses such as Nike, 3M, Apple, and Coca-Cola are able to save on marketing by listening to their customers and designing their experience accordingly. Even if it turns out you are a Novice when it comes to customer centricity, do not get discouraged. Use it as an opportunity to learn how customer centricity is achieved in your industry.
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