Customer-driven marketing strategy is key for businesses today, as customers demand more personalization and businesses look to optimize marketing ROI. By identifying and targeting those customers that have the highest lifetime value, companies save money while tailoring marketing campaigns to fit their customers to a “T.”
Of course, that all sounds good in theory. Without a successful customer-driven marketing strategy, your organization will struggle to reap the potential benefits of targeting customers. Or, your company may not even know where to begin segmenting and targeting customers because of the overwhelming amount of customer data available today. And, if your customer data remains siloed, you are not getting the 360-degree view of your customers that is so critical to customer-driven marketing itself. To aid you in your quest to make better business decisions based on your customers, we have rounded up expert tips for creating your customer-driven marketing strategy. Our tips come from industry leaders and customer-driven marketing authorities, so you are sure to find the insight and guidance you need to begin designing or refining your own strategy. Please note, we have listed our 50 expert tips on creating a customer-driven marketing strategy here, in no particular order.
See how the core feature of the Intelligent Engagement Platform, Customer DNA can help you create a customer driven marketing strategy.
1. Use marketing research to target a specific market
@HoustonChron
Business and technology writer Chris Joseph explains that a customer-driven marketing strategy consist of several key elements in his Houston Chronicle article, Elements of a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy. One of his tips is to use marketing research to target a specific market, because the insights you gain from the research enables you to retain customers and use them to gain additional business.
Three key tips we like from Elements of a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Use marketing research to identify common demographics within your customer base
- Focus on meeting the needs of your customers and examine how you can meet those needs with your products or services
- Use customer feedback to make changes or improvements to continue to meet customer needs
Cost: FREE
2. Make differentiation a priority
@jjl_inter
JJL International, a news organization that strives to maintain unbiased reporting and in-depth analysis aimed at creating a conversation, emphasizes the need to make differentiation a priority in 4 Steps to Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy. When you emphasize your differences, you imply that you have an advantage over competitors and appeal more to customers.
Three key tips we like from 4 Steps to Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Know which part of the marketplace you are targeting
- Ensure that your marketing offer occupies a clear, distinctive place in relation to your competitors
- Consider the type of customer segmentation that will most benefit your organization: geographic, demographic, psychographic, or behavioral
Cost: FREE
3. Get customer feedback
@BrennerMichael
Content Marketing consultant and CEO of Marketing Insiders, Michael Brenner describes his three steps to creating a customer-driven marketing plan in this blog post. One of the tips we most like is to get customer feedback, because organizations need to know their customers to be sure they are meeting their needs.
Three key tips we like from 3 Steps to a Customer-Driven Marketing Plan:
- Remember the words of Peter Drucker: “The aim of marketing is to know the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself”
- Identify the challenges your customers face and their priorities
- Conduct keyword research to know the search terms your customers are using when searching for information
Cost: FREE
4. Ask the right questions
@GrahamDBrown
Investor, entrepreneur, and podcast radio host for startup founders and investors, Graham D. Brown suggests that asking the right questions should be a key component of your customer-driven marketing strategy. Brown illustrates his tip by describing how Zappos and LEGO have created customer-driven marketing strategy via the right questions in his article, which includes embedded videos.
Three key tips we like from How to Build a Customer Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Go beyond delivering what customers want by exceeding their expectations
- Ask the right questions to build relationships
- Wow customers with each and every interaction
Cost: FREE
5. Put customers first instead of product
@tfm_event
@IngledewStephen
Technology for Marketing offers TFM Insights to deliver the latest marketing technology tips and insights to readers. In this TFM Insights article, Standard Life marketing managing director Stephen Ingledew shares his tips for developing a customer-driven marketing strategy, including putting customers ahead of product.
Three key tips we like from 10 Tips for Developing a Customer Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Shift from what you do and what you offer to how you offer and how you engage
- Consider organizational value in terms of the experience of the customer instead of investment product
- View customers as active drivers of business and ask how to bring them in through conversation and engagement
Cost: FREE
6. Satisfy customer desires and needs
@B2Community
@paysoncooper
Business 2 Community is an open community of contributors that covers breaking news and top trends in social media, digital marketing, content marketing, social selling, and more. Marketing consultant Payson Cooper shares her take on customer-driven marketing strategy in her article, which emphasizes the importance of satisfying customer desires and needs.
Three key ideas we like from Customer Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Gear all of your marketing efforts toward your customers’ desires and needs
- Ask for customer feedback constantly
- Work toward building customer loyalty and evangelists
Cost: FREE
7. Build customer loyalty
@customerthink
@Kelly_Crothers
CustomerThink is a global thought lead in customer-centric business management. In her CustomerThink article, Four Strategies for Building a Customer-Driven Organization, marketing professional Kelly Crothers encourages organizations to build customer loyalty by delighting each customer and offering quality products and services before and after the sale to nurture a community that praises you on social networks.
Three key tips we like from Four Strategies for Building a Customer-Driven Organization:
- Track your Net Promoter Score (NPS) to monitor the level of delight you bring to your customers and gain a full understanding of how they view your brand
- Listen and react to your customers, especially via social media
- Work to make your employees your best brand champions
Cost: FREE
8. Engage your fans in new ways
@Curalate
Curalate is a leading visual commerce platform used by hundreds of the world’s most loved brands. Curalate writer Stacy Goodman explains that one of the best ways to create a customer-driven marketing strategy is to engage fans in a new way using visual social channels and images.
Three key tips we like from 4 Tips for Creating Consumer-Driven Social Campaigns in 2015:
- Encourage customers to share images of themselves using your brand in fun ways on social channels
- Ask fans to reimagine your image and submit photos using a dedicated hashtag
- Create beautiful, inspiring content to get customers’ attention on various social channels
Cost: FREE
9. Find a balance with personalization
@Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur has been inspiring, informing, and celebrating entrepreneurs for more than 40 years. FullContact vice president of marketing John Arnold, Entrepreneur contributor, explores the need to find a balance with personalization when creating a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Top 10 Customer-Centric Marketing Trends for 2016:
- Personalization has been successful, but the rules are changing and marketers must adapt to meet customers’ expectations for relevant content and content that is not too highly personalized
- Take advantage of advocate marketing
- Use social media monitoring tools to respond to social engagements and open dialogue with customers who have a need for your service or product
Cost: FREE
10. Curate the best experiences
@MyTotalRetail
@SorianoJeff
Formerly Retail Online Integration, TotalRetail offers information and ideas that retailers, catalogers, online marketers, and brand merchants can use to achieve cross-channel success. In this TotalRetail article, Offerpop senior director of demand generation Jeff Soriano explains that organizations should curate the best experiences to attract others as part of their customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from 3 Steps for Building a Consumer-Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Foster engaging interactions that inspire customers to share content
- Showcase customers by curating the best experiences to attract others
- Leverage user-generated content (UGC) across all of your other channels by displaying it in customer emails, advertisements, in-store displays, etc.
Cost: FREE
11. Map your customer’s journey
@dmnews
@btemkin
DMN is a leading provider of digital and data-driven marketing analysis, research, and content. In his DMN article, 10 Customer Experience Tips for Marketers, Temkin Group managing partner and customer experience transformist Bruce Temkin highlights the importance of mapping your customer’s journey when designing your customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from 10 Customer Experience Tips for Marketers:
- Include the customer view and the internal view when approaching customer journey mapping
- Innovate around customer lifecycle events, such as having a new baby or buying a home
- Use customer research to identify brand values and then make those values explicit
Cost: FREE
12. Consider each aspect of the customer journey
@RetentionSci
Retention Science focuses on building existing relationships to build businesses. In How to Bridge the Customer Gap with Data-Driven Marketing, Retention Science sales VP Scott Schnarrs shares some highlights from an interview with TechnologyAdvice’s Clark Buckner about the tools marketers need to better understand data, marketing trends, and modern-day marketing challenges. One tip for customer-driven marketing that resulted from the interview is to consider each aspect of the customer journey.
Three key tips we like from How to Bridge the Customer Gap with Data-Driven Marketing:
- Focus on each aspect of the customer journey so that you can focus on engaging customers at each stage
- Focus on personalization and treat people like people
- Pay attention to customer details
Cost: FREE
13. Utilize best practices in positioning
@udemy
The world’s largest destination for online courses, Udemy shares tips for creating a winning business strategy in the blog post Segmentation Targeting Positioning: Create a Winning Business Strategy. One of their components for creating a successful customer-driven marketing strategy is to utilize best practices in positioning. As Udemy explains, the goal is to “create the right impression and deliver on the promises made,” which involves marketing segmentation, targeting, and positioning as basic elements of putting customers first.
Three key tips we like from Segmentation Targeting Positioning: Create a Winning Business Strategy:
- Begin by creating a positioning map based on customer perceptions of your brand in relation to an existing competitor’s brand
- Identify value differences
- Choose competitive advantages
Cost: FREE
14. Make flexibility and convenience a priority
@EntreInsights
Cleverism provides practical and strategic insights into starting, funding, and growing your business. Their insights are appropriate for startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, technologists, and others who want to create sound business and marketing plans. Their blog post, Product-Driven vs. Customer-Driven Businesses, explains the differences between product-driven business and customer-driven business and suggests that making flexibility and convenience a priority is a key to creating a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Product-Driven vs. Customer-Driven Businesses:
- Customers look for convenience, so businesses that make convenience a priority succeed
- Maximize customer contact
- Include value-added benefits for customers
Cost: FREE
15. Use buyer personas to better understand customers
@HubSpot
@pamelump
HubSpot is the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform, with 18,000 customers in more than 90 countries. HubSpot’s principal marketing manager of optimization Pamela Vaughan shares her tips for creating detailed buyer personas as part of a customer-driven marketing strategy in her HubSpot blog post, which also offers a free persona template to get you started.
Three key tips we like from How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Persona Template]:
- Companies should use buyer personas to internalize the ideal customer you want to attract and to related to customers as real people
- Deep understandings of buyer personas helps to drive content creation, product development, sales follow-up, and anything relating to customer acquisition and retention
- Use buyer personas to personalize marketing for various segments of your audience
Cost: FREE
16. Share customer journey maps across the organization
@CMO_com
@MichaelHinshaw
CMO delivers digital marketing insights, expertise, and inspiration for and by marketing leaders. In Customer Journey Mapping: 10 Tips for Beginners, McorpCX CEO Michael Hinshaw touts the benefits of sharing customer journey maps across the organization for companies seeking to create a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Customer Journey Mapping: 10 Tips for Beginners:
- Create easy-to-understand maps that you can socialize and share across your organization
- Involve key stakeholders early and involve them often when creating customer journey maps
- Customer journey maps should include the good and the bad, to help close performance gaps and identify best practices that are working
Cost: FREE
17. Reward customer loyalty
@HoustonChron
In this article for the Houston Chronicle, writer Rick Suttle emphasizes the point that companies’ customer-driven marketing strategies should be well planned and properly managed so they can have a direct impact on sales and profits. One way to create such a marketing strategy is to be sure to reward customer loyalty via frequency marketing programs.
Three key tips we like from Customer Driven Marketing Strategies:
- You may attract new customers and retain existing customers by rewarding customer loyalty
- Frequency programs may exist for several years
- Needs-based marketing is a good option for business customers
Cost: FREE
18. Get a close look at your customers
@JennySchade
JRS Consulting works to help businesses dramatically increase customer attraction. President of JRS Consulting, Jenny Schade emphasizes the importance of getting a close look at customers in her article, Customer-Driven Marketing: Listening to Who’s Really Calling the Shots – Your Customer.
Three key tips we like from Customer-Driven Marketing: Listening to Who’s Really Calling the Shots – Your Customer:
- Conduct beneath-the-surface customer research to get a good look at your customers
- Include employees in your approach to customer-driven marketing strategy so that you can ensure you are meeting customers’ needs
- Understanding customers involves understanding their customer experience, the employee experience, and the system
Cost: FREE
19. Use an integrated marketing campaign
@azcentral
AZCentral is Arizona’s top local site for breaking news, politics, and more. In her AZCentral article, Sparrow Writing + Editorial Services owner Nicole Breit shares the four steps that she deems as being critical to designing a customer-driven marketing strategy, including using an integrated marketing campaign.
Three key tips we like from Describe Four Major Steps in Designing a Customer Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Integrated marketing campaigns increase your chances of reaching prospects wherever they are, so that you can connect their problems with your solutions
- Integrated marketing helps companies reach prospects and customers through their preferred touch points, such as content marketing, text messaging, social media, e-newsletters, phone calls, etc.
- It’s also important to track customer responses to campaigns to determine its success and plan future marketing efforts
Cost: FREE
20. Be a leader in data-driven marketing
@Forbes
Home for the world’s business leaders, Forbes shares information from a report that shows data-driven marketing is the driving force behind customer engagement and market growth in this article. Because of the success of data-driven marketing, companies that lead the industry are in a better position to profit and grow.
Three key tips we like from New Report Shows Data-Driven Marketing Drives Customer Engagement; Market Growth:
- Data-driven marketing leaders have achieved competitive advantage in customer engagement and loyalty and are nearly three times more likely to have increased revenues
- To be most effective, companies need to draw on resources from across the enterprise and base marketing on customer intelligence
- Companies need to move beyond customers’ demographic data
Cost: FREE
21. Focus on targeting
@macdailybites
Chris Brown, marketing, branding, and product development consultant, shares strategies for customer-driven marketing strategy in this blog post. As Brown explains, targeting customers that will build the right relationships for achieving the maximum customer value and equity is critical to a successful strategy.
Three key tips we like from Marketing 101: Overview of Customer Driven Marketing Strategies:
- Identify one or more marketing segments and develop products and marketing programs targeted to each type of consumer you plan to pursue
- Customer-driven marketing strategy includes selecting the right customers to serve and deciding upon a unique value proposition
- Segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning are four distinct steps that should be included in customer-driven marketing
Cost: FREE
22. Rely on relevant data
@ngdata_com
NGDATA helps companies operationalize their data analytics through our real-time, analytics-based customer experience management solution, Lily Enterprise. Our blog post, 35 Experts Reveal the Single Most Important Ingredient to Any Effective Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy, is a comprehensive resource for anyone looking to learn more about this type of strategy. One of our favorite tips in the post comes from marketer Doug Fowler: rely on relevant data. As Doug explains, relevant data helps companies create “marketing that is mutually beneficial both for the business and its customers.”
Three key tips we like from 35 Experts Reveal the Single Most Important Ingredient to Any Effective Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy:
- Understand that every customer is unique
- Gather data on the specific challenges your customers face and the solutions they prefer
- Talk to your customers and find out what they want
Cost: FREE
23. Prioritize segmentation, targeting, positioning, and differentiation
@MaxMarketing415
Maximilian Claessens is the author behind Marketing-Insider.eu. Claessens reminds readers that marketing exists to create value for customers and build relationships with them to capture value. Customer-driven marketing involves companies making segmentation, targeting, positioning, and differentiation a priority.
Three key tips we like from The Marketing Strategy: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning & Differentiation:
- Segment customers based on criteria that are relevant to the company
- Focus on serving and satisfying targeted customers
- Center marketing strategy on customers’ needs by delivering superior value
Cost: FREE
24. Gain a complete understanding of your market
@MetroMBADallas
University of Dallas – Satish and Yasmin Gupta College of Business students recently heard insights from alum Steve Springer, who has experience in data-driven marketing at Verizon. Springer helped students understand the importance of gaining a complete understanding of your market when creating a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from UT Dallas Alumni Speaks about Customer-Driven Marketing:
- Gaining new customers can be difficult, especially when product is limited, so traditional marketing techniques may not be effective
- Customer-driven marketing is helpful for acquisition, retention, and upsell
- Use data to support all marketing decisions, especially if you have a limited marketing budget
Cost: FREE
25. Engage customers in the right context
@Signal
A global leader in real-time, cross-channel marketing technologies, Signal powers thousands of brands and agencies. In their predictions for digital marketing in 2016, Signal’s team of digital experts and thought leaders focuses on customer-based marketing for increased flexibility and control in campaigns.
Three key tips we like from Signal’s Prediction for Digital Marketing in 2016: Improved People-Based Marketing Options Will Give Advertisers Flexibility and Control:
- Marketers need to take advantage of technology that helps them target multi-device customers on all of the sites and apps they frequent
- Move to people-based engagement across all of your channels
- Companies must strive to engage customers in the context of the relationship at each step of their journey
Cost: FREE
26. Understand your customer’s needs
@sjvilardi
Get2Strategy, and their chief storyteller Sally Vilardi, focus on customer acquisition and brand awareness. Get2Strategy understands that successful companies identify their most valuable customers and create strategy for finding more like them, and one key ingredient is understanding each of your customer’s needs.
Three key tips we like from Customer Driven Marketing:
- Go beyond knowing how your company’s services or products meet a customer’s needs and begin connecting with customers by understanding how they will be affected by your services or products and how you can satisfy all of their personal needs
- Bring new ideas, solutions, and perspectives to your customers
- Listen to customers and forget your goals so you can focus on them
Cost: FREE
27. Use the voice of the customer
@ribbonfarm
@vgr
ribbonfarm is a blog that has been featured or mentioned on The Economist, the New York Times, and other prominent places for its in-depth takes on various themes. In Product-Driven Versus Customer-Driven, ribbonfarm founder and editor in chief Venkatesh Rao explores the two types of businesses and uses examples of some of today’s top enterprises to illustrate the characteristics of each. One characteristic of customer-driven businesses is using the voice of the customer.
Three key tips we like from Product-Driven Versus Customer-Driven:
- Use the voice of the customer to recognize patterns and processes that help you steal customers from competitors
- Being customer driven means that your organization needs to turn customers’ frustration into success
- Successful customer-driven organizations are good at listening and pattern recognition and have high empathy
Cost: FREE
28. Create a consistent customer experience
@LoginRadius
LoginRadius is a leading customer identity and access management platform that creates a single customer view. Their blog post, Identify Driven Marketing: 5 Things You Need to Know, explains that customer-driven marketing relies on creating consistent customer experience.
Three key tips we like from Identify Driven Marketing: 5 Things You Need to Know:
- Businesses need to prioritize creating more localized and personalized customer experiences
- Customer personas aid organizations in delivering consistent, targeted, personalized messages and offers to customers
- Customer-driven marketing improves the customer experience and helps organizations engage with customers, which increases customer retention and loyalty
Cost: FREE
29. Deliver consistent engagement across all channels
@KOVACorp
A leading voice in the communications industry, KOVA Corp showcases customer-driven marketing in relation to customer service in this blog post. The post examines the benefits of gathering insight into customers from customer service, because “customers expect service to be agile and seamless whether the interaction is in-person, mobile or online.” Today’s consumers interact with brands on various channels, so they need to have a consistent experience across them.
Three key tips we like from Customer Service-Driven Marketing:
- To achieve maximum customer satisfaction, organizations must completely understand a customer’s journey and experience with the brand in order to deliver consistent engagement across all channels
- Good and bad reviews from customers often travel across many digital platforms and have a long-lasting impact on your brand
- Strategic planning and solid execution are needed to establishing a collaborative partnership with marketing to ensure brand messaging consistency and continuity and top-quality interactions through each engagement
Cost: FREE
30. Engage customers online
@Inc
@WendySLea
Inc offers everything readers need to know to start and grow a business. In her Inc.com article, CEO Wendy Lea highlights the need for organizations to deliver ongoing, meaningful contact to drive revenue, rather than focus on touchpoints. Companies need to be more engaging, so part of their customer-driven marketing strategy must be to engage customers online.
Three key tips we like from The New Rules of Customer Engagement:
- Use social technologies to form meaningful relationships with customers that are ongoing and involve frequent online interactions
- Companies need to listen to customers who have conversations about your brands in traditional channels and on social media
- Build trust and relationships with consumers via honest interactions over time that create positive experiences and outcomes for customers
Cost: FREE
31. Implement a co-creation strategy
@visioncritical
Vision Critical creates enterprise-grade customer intelligence software that helps companies build better products, launch successful marketing campaigns, and improve customer experience. Serve Nazlioglu’s Vision Critical article, Co-Creation: 5 Examples of Brands Driving Customer-Driven Innovation, explains that co-creation “taps into the insights of the customers at the right point in the innovation process.” Co-creation is considered an innovation in customer-driven marketing and has already brought success to some major enterprises.
Three key tips we like from Co-Creation: 5 Examples of Brands Driving Customer-Driven Innovation:
- Major brands use co-creation and customization to remain relevant, especially to Millennials
- Other brands utilize co-creation to create ad formats and are committing to standing beside consumers to learn more about developing their messages
- Co-creation is applicable to sales, service interaction, and social media
Cost: FREE
32. Encourage customers to tell their stories
@customerthink
In this CustomerThink article, ERDM president and DMA Marketing Hall of Famer Ernan Roman shares his insight into the importance of getting consumers to emotionally engage with your brand. That’s why one component of your customer-driven marketing strategy should be to encourage customers to tell their stories.
Three key tips we like from 3 Ways to Get Consumers to Emotionally Engage with Your Brand:
- One factor that determines whether shoppers will purchase from you once or more in the future is meaningful engagement
- Companies encourage social media participation from customers to they can tell their story while recognizing the brand
- Customers seek input from one another, so giving them the opportunity to tell their stories allows others to gather opinions, experiences, and reviews to validate the choices they have made
Cost: FREE
33. Make decisions based on consumer behavior
@sailthru
Sailthru is a customer retention platform that helps modern marketers build lasting relationships with their customers. Steve Wood’s Sailthru post, Discounting 101: Consumer-Driven vs. Market-Driven Discounts, touts the advantages of making decisions based on consumer behavior.
Three key tips we like from Discounting 101: Consumer-Driven vs. Market-Driven Discounts:
- When considering discounts for your brand, consider using consumer-driven discounts triggered by customer behavior
- Making decisions based on consumer behavior requires using strong data and testing
- The most effective types of consumer-driven discounts are the welcome series, shopper abandonment, re-engagement, flash sales, VIP programs, customer acquisition, and create brand loyalty
Cost: FREE
34. Adapt to customer demands
@SmallBiz_Help
Small Biz Resources offers small business advice on a variety of topics. Richard Hollis’ Small Biz Resources’ article, Marketing Your Brand in a Customer Driven Digital Economy, urges businesses to adapt to customer demands because consumer influence is powerful and far reaching today. Hollis is an experienced business leader and entrepreneur
Three key tips we like from Marketing Your Brand in a Customer Driven Digital Economy:
- Adapt to customer demands for changes in the design of products and searches and their delivery
- Engage customers and know them better than before, in order to connect and create a personal relationship with them
- You can meet customer demands by delivering value, listening and engaging, creating a branded experience, and building customer loyalty
Cost: FREE
35. Anticipate customers’ needs
@Forbes
@pega
Pegasystems develops strategic applications for sales, marketing, service, and operations that drive business agility for global enterprises. In his Forbes article on customer engagement, Pega’s CTO and VP of product marketing Don Schuerman points out that today’s customers expect customer service free of hassle and challenges. That’s why companies looking to create successful customer-driven marketing strategies should do all they can to anticipate customers’ needs.
Three key tips we like from How Would You Engage Customers if Technology Was Not in the Way?:
- Companies that cannot quickly and easily resolve customer issues lose customers
- Organizations needs advanced technology that connects contact centers, websites, and apps through to operations centers to anticipate customers’ needs
- Craft the experience through the eyes of the customer
Cost: FREE
36. Marketing must pervade the entire organization
@McKinsey
McKinsey & Company has been a trusted advisor to leading businesses, governments, and institutions for 90 years. In their marketing article, We’re All Marketers Now, Tom French, Laura Faberge, and Paul Magill focus on the fact that organizations must commit to engaging customers, and the entire organization must be redefined as a marketing organization in order to make it happen.
Three key tips we like from We’re All Marketers Now:
- Customers do not separate marketing from the product, marketing from their in-store or online experience, or marketing from the company, which makes everyone in the organization responsible for marketing
- Companies should become marketing vehicles, and the marketing organization should become the customer-enagemnt engine that is responsible for all tasks relating to customer engagement approaches
- To get marketing to pervade an entire organization, there must be a mind-set shirt around customer interaction touchpoints that add up to create the customer experience
Cost: FREE
37. Prioritize quality over quantity
@ravishukle
Ravi Shukle is a social media and online customer service expert. His LikeableLocal blog post, How Brands Can Use Social Media to Create a Customer-Driven Focus, takes a look at just how far-reaching a bad customer service experience can be for an organization and the steps companies should take to avoid creating a negative experience for customers when they are online.
Three key tips we like from How Brands Can Use Social Media to Create a Customer-Driven Focus:
- Do not worry about how many conversations you have with loyal customers; instead, focus on the quality of the conversations
- Engage in deep conversations to determine what customers’ pain points are in addition to the specific areas they hope to improve
- Empathize with a customer’s situation instead of responding with a generic response
Cost: FREE
38. Focus on onboarding engaged customers
@MarketingSherpa
MarketingSherpa provides B2B and consumer marketing professionals with practical research and case studies on what is working in marketing today. Their case study on NakedWines.com explores how companies can focus on onboarding engaged customers via email.
Three key tips we like from Email Marketing: How NakedWines.com Integrated an Email Onboarding Process to Engage Customers:
- Try establishing a community of customers and top members who support your company in return for a discount or other incentive
- Consider using the impact of engagement instead of how much a customer spent on his first order to determine your top-quality customers
- Offer several ways for customers to interact with your brand
Cost: FREE
39. Listen to customers and fill their needs
@PwC_LLP
PricewaterhouseCoopers is known for helping companies build relationships to create value. Their Growing Your Business white paper, Customer Engagement: Reaping the Rewards of Digital Outreach, points to listening to customers and filling their needs as a key component of building a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Customer Engagement: Reaping the Rewards of Digital Outreach:
- Make listening to the customer the heart of all you do
- The more you listen to customers, the better your chances of correctly identifying their needs and then filling them
- Better data on customer behaviors and desires is critical for listening to them and then delivering solutions to meet their needs
Cost: FREE
40. Use technology to get a 360-degree view of customers
@Avaya
With Avaya, companies go into the world of business communications. In this Avaya article, Laurent Philonenko describes how mobile engagement is helping to power the customer-driven revolution. Thanks to converged IT environments, companies are now able to get a 360-degree view of customers that enables marketers and CIOs to see what drives them.
Three key ideas we like from Open, Mobile Engagement Powering the Customer-Driven Revolution:
- Companies that utilize advanced technology are able to adapt to change more quickly and offer a richer customer experience
- Consider utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics to identify customer trends across data streams
- Companies are better able to anticipate consumer needs when they humanize the customer experience with advanced tech and analytics
Cost: FREE
41. Create a frictionless customer experience
@RayStendall
Ray Stendall is dedicated to helping organizations empower employees to fully engage customers via business processes. In Turn Your Company into a Customer Driven and Employee Centered Business, Stendall looks at what it takes to transform itself into a customer-driven organization. One of his tips is to create a frictionless customer experience, and he includes embedded video in the article to help illustrate his points.
Three key tips we like from Turn Your Company into a Customer Driven and Employee Centered Business:
- Consider the attitudes, beliefs, character traits, and habits of executives in relation to employees and then with customers
- Be wary of direct and indirect friction points
- Be sure the majority of your customers come from warm referrals
Cost: FREE
42. Focus on customer engagement
@RosettaMktg
An agency focused on customer engagement, Rosetta connects data, engaging experiences, and technologies to create meaningful relationships with customers to drive business. They share How Technology Marketers Can Better Engage Customers, a white paper for CMOs of technology organizations that are seeking to build more meaningful customer relationships. While it is geared toward tech CMOs, their advice to focus on customer engagement is applicable to anyone looking to create a successful customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from How Technology Marketers Can Better Engage Customers:
- Marketers should be more insightful to engage more deeply with audiences
- Rather than feel as though you need to be everywhere to reach customers, focus on the moments when customers want to engage and the ones that have the most positive impact on conversions or relationship building
- Consistently engaging customers with relevant content at the right moments is key
Cost: FREE
43. Don’t forget about the end-to-end journey
@HarvardBiz
The Harvard Business Review is a leading destination for smart management thinking. The focus is on customer service and the end-to-end journey in The Truth About Customer Experience, an article by Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncan, and Conor Jones, all of whom are McKinsey partners.
Three key tips we like from The Truth About Customer Experience:
- The customer’s end-to-end journey gives a more accurate picture of the customer than touchpoints do
- Companies are more successful when they skillfully manage the entire customer experience
- When done well, customer experience reduces churn and builds competitive advantage
Cost: FREE
44. Use a technology platform to manage customer data
@Marketingland
Marketing Land is the destination for digital marketing news. Jeff Hirsch’s Marketing Land article, Activate Data to Engage the Right Individual, shares insight into brands’ ability to manage data and one-to-one engagements and their level of success in meeting customers’ expectations for personalized marketing messages. As Hirsch suggests, using a technology platform to manage customer data is more important now than ever before.
Three key tips we like from Activate Data to Engage the Right Individual:
- Marketers must reach customers at the individual level with strategies that center on personal interactions
- Data-driven marketing is critical to creating effective personalized communication
- Organizations must have in-depth data that is actionable if they are going to create engaging, personalized content
Cost: FREE
45. Empower employees to deliver amazing customer experience
@angelabandlow
Software marketing executive with a passion for helping companies grow their businesses via CRM and social media marketing, Angela Bandlow shares her Microsoft Dynamics article, Top 5 Takeaways from Customer Driven. She highlights five key points from Microsoft’s Customer Driven, a virtual event that examines the technology landscape and the impact of digital transformation on customer engagement in the new service economy. One of her takeaways, empower employees to deliver amazing customer experience, is key to creating a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Top 5 Takeaways from Customer Driven:
- If you want an amazing customer experience, you need to empower your employees to deliver them
- Unified CRM technology aids employees in delivering intelligent customer engagement
- Empowered employees can inspire brand loyalty
Cost: FREE
46. Tap into customer emotion
@WundermanEMEA
Wunderman EMEA is all about driving customer engagement with a mix of creative and data. Their Customer Engagement: Leveraging the Power of Emotional Value Exchange(s) promotes the need to tap into customer emotion as part of a customer-driven marketing strategy.
Three key tips we like from Customer Engagement: Leveraging the Power of Emotional Value Exchange(s):
- So many companies vie for the attention of customers that successful companies understand being relevant and connecting with consumers in personal and emotional ways are key to earning their attention and engaging them
- The key is to engage instead of interrupt
- Companies should focus on the emotional value exchange and connecting the value of the brand with the value(s) of consumers
Cost: FREE
47. Respond quickly to customers
@AIIMIntl
AIIM delivers market research, expert advice, and skills development to community leaders who are committed to information-driven innovation. John Mancini’s The #AIIM15 Digital Transformation Hot Seat: Doing Business in the Customer-Driven Era shares responses to three questions he posed to senior VP of product and solutions marketing at Koufax, David Caldeira, about digital transformation and the customer-driven era. One solution that arose from the conversation is to respond quickly to customers.
Three key tips we like from The #AIIM15 Digital Transformation Hot Seat: Doing Business in the Customer-Driven Era:
- Mobile-first has resulted in the need to accelerate customer service and meeting their demands more quickly
- Companies must determine how to provide immediate, high-quality service to meet customer needs and expectations
- Companies that are nimble and responsive are more successful
Cost: FREE
48. Establish a customer-centric culture
@SkipPrichard
@JeanneBliss
Skip Prichard is a CEO and business leader on a mission to share ideas and inspiration. He does both in How to Build a Customer Driven Growth Engine, which includes insight from Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine. One of the keys to creating a customer-driven marketing strategy to come out of their conversation is to establish a customer-centric culture.
Three key tips we like from How to Build a Customer Driven Growth Engine:
- Companies must have a commitment to customer-driven growth and prove so via actions and choices
- A commitment to customers must go hand-in-hand with deliberate operational behavior
- Employ the journey framework to build an operational code of conduct to think about the experience and determine what they must do for customers to honor them and earn the right to growth
Cost: FREE
49. Put customer experience first
@SAPCommNet
@joergkoesters
The SAP Community Network is the social network for SAP professionals. Technology marketing executive and retail ambassador for SAP, Joerg Koesters focuses on the customer-driven, omnichannel revolution in his SAP Community Network article and highlights the importance of putting customer experience first.
Three key tips we like from Are You Ready for the Customer Driven, Omnichannel Revolution?:
- Technology has resulted in a number of customer touchpoints, including mobile, social media, in-store messaging, and connected displays, that give companies the opportunity to reach customers across multiple channels simultaneously but also the challenges of being heard above the noise
- The key is to deliver consistent, engaging customer experience across channels
- Customer experience must include contextual, personalized messaging
Cost: FREE
50. Turn customer data into actionable insights
@mcmerchant
@jonslaught
MultichannelMerchant incorporates eCommerce, operations, fulfillment, and marketing. Jon Noronha, senior product manager with Optimizely, focuses on personalization and the value of actionable insights in his Multichannel Merchant article, 4 Ways Data-Driven Personalization Will Improve Your Business.
Three key tips we like from 4 Ways Data-Driven Personalization Will Improve Your Business:
- Connect all of your customer data and utilize it to create a more dynamic, enjoyable experience for customers
- Customer data is the key to delivering delightful, relevant experiences that results in more revenue and brand loyalty
- Data helps companies discover valuable customer behaviors
Cost: FREE