Customer Centricity and Marketing Success

Published February 2023

Why Customer Centricity is Key to Marketing Success

Are you looking to make your business more effective? Look no further than putting your customers first. In fact, companies that prioritize their customers, known as "customer-centric companies," are 60% more profitable than those that don't, according to Hubspot (2022). Let's dive into why customer focus is so crucial for your bottom line and why marketers need to focus on this in their strategies.

What is customer centricity?

Customer centricity is a business philosophy that puts the needs and wants of customers at the forefront of all business decisions and actions. It involves seeing the world from your customer's point of view and creating experiences that meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

How does this relate to marketing?

Knowing your target audience is a key concept of modern marketing. But customer centricity takes it a step further. You'll want a deeper understanding of your target audience than demographics, psychographics, and the like. In a customer-centric marketing strategy, you'll connect with them more closely and understand their motivations, pain points, and experience with your company from every angle.

In a customer-centric marketing environment, you do more than push out content and pitches. You advocate on behalf of your customer for targeted, personalized experiences that improve their relationship with your company.  By consistently putting your customers first, you can offer unique experiences that your competitors can't match. This sets you apart and helps you build a positive reputation in the marketplace. And this in turn can build customer loyalty because they feel truly heard and valued.

How to Make Customer Centricity a Priority

Making customer centricity a priority in your business takes time, effort, and commitment, but the rewards are well worth it. Here are a few steps you can take to get started:

Get leadership buy-in:  Getting senior leadership buy-in on customer focus can be a challenge, but it's an important step towards making it a priority in your business. Here are some tips to get your leaders on board:

Show the data:  Use data and research to show the clear business benefits of being customer-centric, such as increased profitability and customer loyalty.

Highlight success stories: Share examples of other companies that have successfully implemented a customer-centric approach and the positive impact it had on their business.

Emphasize the importance of customer experience: Make the case for how a focus on customer experience can improve customer satisfaction and drive long-term growth for the business.

Make a plan: Present a well-thought-out plan for how you will implement a customer-centric approach, including key metrics for measuring success.

Lead by example: Demonstrate your commitment to customer focus by incorporating it into your own practices and encouraging others to do the same. Advocate for the customer during presentations and meetings with colleagues.

• Listen to your customers: One of the most important aspects of customer centricity is actively seeking out and listening to customer feedback. This helps you better understand their needs and preferences and make improvements accordingly.
  
  As a marketer, you can facilitate this with customer feedback forms in your email campaigns or by conducting focus groups, among many options. Try removing the "no reply" email address in your email campaigns and responding to customers sometime, too. You'll be amazed and what you hear and learn when you put your ear to the ground.
  
  Part of this is also to ensure you're collecting and using the right customer data points to enable a customer-centric experience. Is your customer getting the right product advertised to them? Are they receiving emails at critical points of their lifecycle journey? Ask, test, probe, and find out.

• Put yourself in your customer's shoes: To truly see the world from your customer's point of view, you need to see things from their perspective. Consider their pain points, wants, and needs, and create experiences that address them. Test your company's experiences (purchases, returns, unsubscribes, etc.) thoroughly before and after launching them.
  
  You should also look into your marketing channels from a customer perspective. How are customers connecting with your business (social media, website, email, etc.) and what value are you providing them in each? What can you do to improve each touchpoint?

• Make sure you can measure: There's a lot of marketing technology in today's market, and it's critical to ensure you're measuring the right things and doing so over time.
  
  Your brand metrics - brand recall, brand sentiment, and net promoter score (NPS) - are important measures to understanding how you're doing over time with customers. Be sure to look for trends and key pain points that you can resolve.
  
  Your performance metrics are also key, but you'll need to look beyond averages and campaign generalities. Where are customers dropping off in your marketing funnel and why? 

• Make customer experience a priority: From product design to customer service, customer experience should be a top priority in every aspect of your business. This means creating experiences that are easy, convenient, and enjoyable for customers.

• Continually evaluate and improve: Finally, it's important to continually evaluate and improve your customer-centric practices. Listen to feedback, gather data, and make changes as needed to ensure that you are always putting your customers first.

Customers Are Your Success

Customer focus is essential for marketing success. By putting your customers at the center of your decisions and actions, you can create more effective marketing campaigns, stand out from the competition, continuously improve, and build trust and credibility with your customers. Empathy goes a long way to building your success.