6 Tips to Build a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

Keeping the customer a top priority isn’t just a boardroom buzzword but one of the most sure-shot growth drivers for a company’s success.

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000.” – Jeff Bezos

Brands like Amazon, Starbucks, Hilton, and more have created the blueprint for customer experience and fashioned a pivot from price/product-centric marketing to customer-centricity.

What, though, is customer-centric marketing?

A customer-centric marketing strategy is one that focuses on understanding your customers’ needs and delivering value to them at every touchpoint.

Companies with a customer-centric, data-driven marketing and sales platform improve marketing ROI by 15-20% or more.^[1]

In this blog post, we’ll talk about what customer-centric marketing is and some foolproof tips to create a customer-centric marketing strategy.

Understanding Customer-Centric Marketing and its Principles

Customer-centric marketing is a marketing strategy that prioritizes the needs, preferences, and overall satisfaction of the customer.

It is centered on understanding the customer’s behavior, motivations, and desires in order to develop targeted marketing strategies and provide personalized experiences.

The following are the key principles of customer-centric marketing:

Customer Understanding: Customer understanding entails gaining in-depth knowledge of the target audience by collecting and analyzing data on their demographics, behaviors, preferences, and feedback. This data assists marketers in developing a thorough understanding of their customer’s needs and expectations.

Personalization: Marketers can create personalized experiences tailored to individual customers using customer data. This could entail segmenting the customer base and sending personalized messages, offers, and recommendations based on their specific interests and behaviors.

Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding the customer journey from the first point of contact to the final purchase decision and beyond is central to customer-centric marketing. Marketers can identify opportunities to improve the overall experience and address pain points by mapping out the customer’s interactions, emotions, and touchpoints at each stage.

Relationship Building: A key component of customer-centric marketing is the development of long-term relationships with customers. Customer loyalty is developed through personalized communication, excellent customer service, and ongoing engagement. This strategy focuses on retaining current customers and fostering brand advocacy through positive experiences.

Continuous Improvement: Customer-centric marketing is a dynamic process that necessitates ongoing analysis and optimization. Marketers track customer feedback, metrics, and market trends to identify gaps in their strategies and refine them. Regular evaluation and adaptation ensure that marketing efforts remain relevant to changing customer needs and preferences.

Now that we’ve explored the concept of customer-centric marketing, let’s delve into six essential tips for creating an effective customer-centric marketing strategy.

Tips to Create a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

To create a customer-centric marketing strategy, it’s crucial to focus on putting the customer at the heart of your approach. By following these six key tips, you can effectively align your marketing efforts with customer needs and build lasting relationships:

1. Get the Senior Leadership Involved

Leadership support is essential for the success of any new strategy. When leaders model customer-centricity, employees are more likely to do the same when dealing with customers. To gain the support of senior management, hold regular meetings to educate them on customer-centric marketing, discuss upcoming campaigns, and brainstorm creative ways to promote the brand. Stay close to customers to see what they are saying and what they need.

2. Gauge User Personas

To be successful with customer-centric marketing, you need to understand your target audience. And here are some ways to do it:

• Conduct customer surveys
• Interview current and former customers
• Track customer behavior using data gathered from analytics tools
• Monitor social media and set up Google Alerts
• Examine customer emails and phone calls
• Talk to front-line teams such as customer support and sales

By understanding your target audience, you can create marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with them. This will lead to more conversions and a better customer experience.

3. Create a Structure that Revolves Around the Customer

The best return on investment can be found in customer-focused infrastructure. The best way to provide individualized experiences at scale is to use systems and workflows.

Targeted messaging based on customer segmentation is necessary for directing customers to the resources that best meet their needs. Flows tailored to specific customer requirements or specific tasks can be generated by an optimized design.

Hyper-personalization is essential for customer-centric marketing to succeed. Customers need to be segmented in your systems so that you can effectively communicate with each individual.

You can divide up your user base in an infinite number of different ways. The more specific information you have about your customer base (such as the services they use, their level of activity, and the jobs they hold), the more effectively you can market to them.

Instead of designing tools to help the company achieve its goals (like increasing sign-ups), it would be smarter to focus on customer needs.

4. Improve the Worth of Every Interaction with Customers

It’s important to create appeal at every touchpoint because customers or potential customers can be at any point in their journey with your company.

Offer multiple channels for customers to interact with your business such as phone, email, live chat, social media, and more. Ensure a consistent experience across all channels and allow customers to seamlessly switch channels.

At every stage of the buyer’s journey — from initial contact on social media to final checkout — customers should feel excitement and enthusiasm for your company and its products and services.

5. Put Out Information that People can Use and Appreciate

Customers will see and engage with content such as your brochures, website, blog, and sales deck. Content created by a customer-centric marketing team is structured in a way that makes it useful to customers even if it doesn’t feature any overt product promotion.

First Round Review founding editor Camille Ricketts suggests using the following four questions to create the most useful content possible.

• Which specific consumers do you have in mind?
• Who are they, exactly?
• What are their problem statements?
• Whether or not these issues directly relate to your offerings, how can your brand help to rectify them?

6. Iterate Based on Customer Feedback

It’s okay if your first few guesses aren’t exactly right. To truly focus on the needs of your customers, you must constantly tune in, adjust, and give an appropriate response to their feedback.

Your marketing approach will evolve over time as you collect, analyze, and respond to customer feedback in a closed-loop feedback system.

Wrapping Up

The key to unlocking the potential of personalized experiences, constructing long-lasting relationships, and driving business growth lies in implementing a customer-centric marketing strategy. Once you make your business driven by customer-centricity; customer loyalty, satisfaction, and business growth will come out naturally.

Ready to Revamp Your Marketing Approach? Let’s Talk!

Statistics References:

^[1] McKinsey & Co.