As far as marketing is concerned, you can never be short of strategies or techniques. Businesses devise novel ways of marketing every day to attract more customers and to enhance the experience of the existing ones. One such approach has been customer-centric marketing, which has mainly been prevalent in OTT, Media, Retail, eCommerce, and EdTech websites.
What Is Customer-Centric Marketing?
At first glance, this term seems confusing because the customer is always the primary target of marketing campaigns. Consumer-centric marketing adds much more value to a customer’s experience by understanding the simple fact that there is no “average” or “general” customer. You cannot target the casual window shopper the same way you target someone who has been doing business with you for years.
Let’s understand some of the building blocks that activate customer-centric marketing.
Customer Data
Data is one of the biggest assets companies have in today’s world, and with the right analytics tools, this data is the primary requirement to understand the consumer’s point of view. A person’s browsing pattern in your business site, preferred products, ratings, feedback, and other data you can collect from their online persona helps you personalize that customer’s experience.
A proper customer data platform – aided by the AI algorithm in your system – is the foundation for personalization.
What Is Personalization?
Every customer is unique, so, from the company’s perspective, you should ideally cater to the needs of every customer, and personalization is precisely this. Using customer data, you should be able to identify which customer requires what product, what problems they face, and so on.
In the words of renowned entrepreneur Seth Godin, personalization is finding products for your customers and not finding customers for your products.
Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM)
CLM is the process of providing your audience the kind of communication and experience they want as they move from prospects to regular customers and, ideally, to advocates. CLM is essentially another form of personalization.
Great ads, offers, and feedback bring you prospects, consistent and successful service help you retain them, and regular follow-ups (email newsletters, information on the latest products, special discounts) and loyalty benefits convert the customers into advocates.
Why Make Use of Customer-Centric Marketing?
1. Customer Loyalty and Retention
Consumer-centric marketing matters for your business because customer loyalty and retention are critical metrics of a company’s performance. Customers will select your brand over others and stick to it if they have a better user experience – be it the user interface of the website, product suggestions, or newsletters.
If your customers are loyal long enough, they will soon turn to advocates: people who spread the word and popularize your brand for you – technically for free – creating a virtuous cycle.
2. Efficiency
Marketing can be expensive, so your strategy should maximize the conversion rate. A closely related term to consumer-centric marketing is lifecycle marketing; this differentiation will help you serve your customers more efficiently because you know which message and mode of communication to use for which type of customer.
3. Agility
Unpredictability and randomness are inherent parts of human behavior, which is why traditional marketing strategies fail to work when customers keep changing their demands (and they do). With personalization, you can quickly reset the customer preferences if the data implies so and cater to their new needs almost immediately. Engaging with the customers at the right time with the correct requirements is possible only with consumer-centric marketing.
Conclusion
Identifying customer wants, serving them, and, ultimately, fostering customer loyalty is what every company wishes to do in today’s marketing world. Customer-centric marketing strategies put the consumer above everything else, for they can genuinely boost the value and image of your brand. Customer-centric marketing is the new marketing reality, and it is here to stay.
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