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Blinded by Channel-Centric Marketing: the Eye of the Beholder

February 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

 

channel centric marketing blinds usWhen social media started to become ‘big’, a new species was born : the social media expert, also known as pundit, maven or guru. Many of them had a PR or blogging background and few had a (digital) marketing background.

There is nothing wrong with that. At least, until they started talking about…marketing. This new breed of opinion makers, often blinded by personal branding and influence scores, rapidly started shouting that the end of traditional digital marketing had arrived. Email was dead, blogging would follow and advertising was doomed.

As we all know, history has a tendency to repeat itself. In no time social media got siloed and nicely divided in the organizational structures we have known for ages. The battle for the ownership of social media could start. ROI became Return On Influence and KPIs changed overnight. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Connected marketing, Customer-centricity, Opinion, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Key Question Marketers Forget to Ask

February 5, 2012 By 2 Comments

 

What do your customers want“What do we want?”. It is the question marketers (and managers) ask each time they consider launching a new project or solving a business question. Answering it is a must if you want to develop a proper strategy. Define the goals, analyze the best ways to achieve them, determine how to measure success, launch, monitor and improve.

The answer to the question what we want (to achieve), is usually simple and comes down to what Jim Sterne defined as the three business goals: improve customer satisfaction, lower costs and/or raise revenue. Obviously, depending on the project, these three goals can take many forms and offer various roads to get there. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Customer-centricity Tagged With: , ,

Brian Solis on Digital Darwinism and Customer-Centricity

December 29, 2011 By 2 Comments

The End of Business As Usual by Brian SolisAs you probably know, Brian Solis published a new book a while back, called ‘The End of Business as Usual’. Since it’s an ideal time to catch up with my reading before going underground for the end of the year, I asked Brian some questions that are related to the ideas he develops in it. 

A talk about Digital Darwinism, customer-centricity (and how many businesses unfortunately siloed social media), the social business and a new breed of consumers that requires you to be extremely adaptive.

Or, as Brian says: #AdaptorDie. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Connected marketing, Customer-centricity, Interview, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Customer-centricity in a Social World: Redefining the Customer

December 17, 2011 By 4 Comments

customer centricity

Customer-centricity is a term we are using increasingly in marketing lately. It has been used in a CRM context since ages and today, CRM is becoming more marketing-oriented than ever before. Customer-centricity was defined as providing positive consumer experiences for a long time. 

Now we define it in a much broader sense: as a strategy whereby needs and behaviors drive the business. In that sense, it is nothing more than a slogan for most organizations. However, things are changing fast. The proliferation of channels, along with changing consumer behavior and buying journeys, force us to do more than simply pay lip-service to customer-centricity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Connected marketing, Customer-centricity, Management Tagged With:

Customer-centric Web Optimization: Focus on the Customer Top Tasks

December 13, 2011 By 2 Comments

The customer is the masterDuring the first of his two keynotes at our Antwerp event, Gerry McGovern showed why and how customer-centric businesses should focus on the top tasks of their website visitors and customers in general. Online customer-centricity in practice.

Identify your customer top tasks, remove the distractions and clutter, make it simple, reduce the noise, and don’t fall for the cult of volume, Gerry says. In his presentation, which you find below, Gerry showed the do’s and don’t’s, using practical examples. A summary and some key takeaways.

You might ask yourself what the small image in this post, showing a master and his apprentice, means. With it, Gerry wanted to make a simple but unmistakably clear point: the customer is the master. We are the apprentices. Period. Indeed, it’s not about what we, as businesses or marketers think is relevant or even functional and effective but what about website visitors, and customers decide. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Conversion marketing, Customer-centricity, Marketing optimization, Usability Tagged With: , ,

Listen to the Voice of the Customer or Stop Doing Business

November 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

Voice of the customerIn a recent study by MarketTools 34% of executives surveyed stated that they were aware of customers using social media to comment on or complain about their company and/or its products. That’s about one-third of respondents. Great, isn’t it?

It seems some executives realize that the voice of the customer is channel-agnostic and consumers use social media. However, when looking at how the voice of the customer is taken into account, what customer-centricity is partially about, the outcome is quite shocking, yet not surprising anymore: based on this study the voice of the customer most of the time simply seems not taken into account at all. Less than one-fourth of the executives that were aware customers use social media to comment or complain, said their companies always respond to these customers.

When it boils down to customer service, the research found that 23 percent of companies provide it on Facebook, with 12 percent providing customer service and support via Twitter. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Connected marketing, Customer engagement, Customer relationships, Customer service, Customer-centricity, Research, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , ,
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