Editorial
The Gist
- Customer-centricity. Focus on customer needs before choosing marketing channels.
- Value statements. Develop a customer-centric value statement for guided decisions.
- Smart channels. Use tools like AR to personalize customer experiences.
In today’s current environment, marketing feels more about cost and efficiency than about creativity — the balance between art and science is askew. The relentless pressure to achieve more with fewer resources, amid stagnant budgets and the ongoing need to demonstrate their value to leadership, coupled with looming market challenges, has left marketing leaders besieged by both internal and external forces.
One of the barriers, which is partially self-inflicted, is that marketers have been all about the customer, but not in the way that they should. They have been adding more to the experience, more channels acquiring more data, but to no avail. A mere 5% of customers recalled a memorable and valuable digital interaction with a brand.
Instead of focusing directly on customer needs, marketing leaders often focus on a channel-first customer experience (CX), which is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. Marketers must build their CX by identifying the customer needs first before focusing on channels. While it may seem straightforward, it's surprisingly common for marketing leaders not to adopt this approach, whether due to technological debt or other internal factors.
Ultimately, this approach fosters stronger, more sustainable customer relationships, resulting in customers who are more likely to make a purchase, demonstrate brand loyalty and be willing to pay a premium.
With such positive outcomes, the question then becomes — how exactly do we achieve a customer-focused customer journey?
Focus on Customers’ Standards for Success
Many brands leapfrog to a channel as the solution, missing a critical step: to create a clear, customer-centric value statement that will serve as the compass for the project. This is otherwise known as the experience thesis statement. Doing this ensures that each decision regarding CX ties back to the thesis so as not to succumb to opinion (shiny-object syndrome) or common biases.
The thesis statement reflects the goal that target customers (the personas who are of strategic importance for the brand) expect the brand to deliver. It includes the indicators that signal whether those goals have been met.
Marketing leaders should look to achieve two goals when developing a thesis statement. First, ensure that the experience is helping customers accomplish something from which they’ll derive value. Second, it should help align all stakeholders on what specific business target this experience will help their companies achieve.
Related Article: Content for Every Stage: Maximizing Engagement in the Modern Customer Journey
Highlight Personal Benefits for Customer-Centricity
What should the customer-centric value statement focus on? While societal and functional benefits positively impact brand commitment, Gartner research has found that personal benefits have an outsized impact on brand commitment — more than societal and functional combined.
Personal benefits have three important characteristics:
- Focus on the customer, not the company.
- Emphasize the outcome the customer will receive.
- Fulfill a psychological need for the customer.
In fact, the more customer-centric the brand promise is, the more impactful the potential brand experiences will be. Consumers are 1.73 times more likely to buy more when they realize something new about their own needs or goals.
Related Article: Augmented Reality, Experimentation, Ecommerce and Your Customer Base
Channels Are Stepping Stones to Better Customer Experience
Customers do not think or assign value based on channels; they do so based on the experiences a brand delivers. More specifically, they want to be clear on their next steps and feel confident in their decisions.
With this in mind, consider augmented reality (AR) tools. While they are often viewed as more of a luxury, they can be essential to CX if value is outlined first. AR tools are often used on product pages to aid shoppers’ decisions for product sizing. But leaders who recognize the importance of creating value statements first to highlight products in a new way through AR can be more purposeful in helping customers better understand and learn about their requirements through visualization. In this way, AR is less “fun” and more so furthers “self-learning.”
For example, clothing brands can ask customers to take a quiz to discover their personal style and ask questions focused on personal traits, preferred style and habits in order to recommend products that match their responses. Only then does a customer work with an AR tool to find clothing specifically tailored toward them.
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If this is married with the ability to allow users to add products to their carts directly from guided selling pages, a brand can differentiate themselves from peers and meet consumer needs that they just outlined. This customer-first mindset not only helps to close a sale, but also leads to more loyal customers and less returns, ultimately impacting the bottom line in multiple ways.
If marketing leaders begin by identifying and aligning around the objectives of their target customers, they will be able to deliver results in line with the outcomes the brand is aiming to achieve. Remember, when a brand focuses on understanding how to help a customer feel good about themselves and their decisions, they are less likely to return products and more likely to return as loyal customers.
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