What Does it Mean to be Customer-centric?

Traditionally, companies have focused on profit and return on investment (ROI). Data on what did or didn’t work was the foundation for all sales and marketing decisions. Customers and their experience with a brand were often seen as an afterthought.

Conventional sales and marketing involve the mass dissemination of impersonal information to large, broad audiences. Reaching large audiences was the goal and this was achieved with historical data, trends, and industry best practices. The results were short-term marketing and sales success.

Customers and their experiences are the most important thing for customer-centric companies. This includes all their sales and marketing decisions and strategies. Specifically, you'll need to provide an excellent customer experience in every stage of the sales and marketing funnel.

A customer-centric business uses many data points along the buyer’s journey to provide the best customer experience possible. For personalized relationship building between brands and customers, each buyer's journey stage provides a unique experience.  

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The Importance of Being Customer-centric

More and more companies are becoming customer-centric. The biggest reason businesses are turning to a customer-first strategy is an increase in sales. Here is a numbered list of some other reasons for an increased drive to make your sales and marketing more customer-centric: 

1. Achieve Better Long-term Growth and Success

Customer-centric businesses outperform companies that don’t in market share and revenue generation. The former focuses on their customers and their needs. The latter focuses on key performance indicators (KPIs), ROI, and techniques. 

Businesses that put customers first achieve better long-term growth and success. Customer-centric companies have revenue growth of 4%-8% more than their competitors. Also, 79% of businesses that put customers first report large cost savings. 

Greater customer retention is the source of higher growth and lower costs. Repeat customers are five times cheaper than acquired ones. Customer retention saves companies money. Businesses can save 10% when they improve customer retention by just 2%. 

Customer-first businesses keep customers because they make the effort to provide personalized experiences. These experiences are what customers want. Over 80% of customers want brands to know them, and 66% will share personal data with companies that demonstrate they are interested in them. 

Customers are seeking brand relationships now more than ever. Customer-centric companies recognize the importance of these relationships. These companies do well because they meet their customer’s demand for a relationship. 

2. Drive Customer Loyalty

Your customers are vital for business growth and success. You’ve likely researched and experimented with the latest trends to get more customers. How many of your customers come back for repeat purchases?

If you’re cycling through new customers because your current ones don’t stick around, your marketing strategies are not customer-centric. You’re likely focusing more on trends and technology than on customer experience.

To deliver an excellent customer experience, consider how your marketing and sales tactics nurture your customers through the buyer’s journey. Nurturing your customers through your funnel produces trust and increases revenue. If you’re on the fence about moving toward customer-centricity, here are some stats that might change your mind: 

• More than two-thirds of customers remain loyal to a brand that offers excellent customer service. This number is higher than loyalty produced by brand recognition and price combined. Additionally, customer-centric companies have 20% more customer confidence. 

What’s more, customer-centric companies have a 25% increase in customer loyalty according to a Gallup Workplace study. Loyal customers are the kind you want. They will save your business money and will more likely be ambassadors for your brand, telling others about you.  

3. Customer Experience is Required for Marketing Executives 

To succeed in today’s marketing arena, chief marketing officers need to tailor their strategies around customer experience. When companies put customers first, customer experience will be second nature. 

When you put customers first, you’ll identify what your customers need and meet them. This will lift your company above the high competition in today’s digital world. The key advantage your brand will have is increased customer loyalty where people will only turn to your brand. 

Today’s buying cycle has changed. Marketing executives must curate messaging on various platforms to provide a good user experience throughout the buyer’s journey. This is the new way of generating ROI. 

To succeed in generating ROI, marketing executives and their teams need to know customer behavior, megatrends, past performance, and the competition. While it’s easy to try the latest technology, it won’t generate lasting business success. Focus on putting customers first before channels, and your customers will thank you. 

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How to Develop a Customer-centric Strategy

Having a customer-centric strategy is crucial in lead and sales generation. If your sales and marketing strategy doesn’t revolve around your customers, it’s time to start. These are the steps you should take to transition to a customer-centric strategy: 

1. Know what your company’s vision, values, and mission are.  Create a company mission of putting customers first. The lasting relationships with customers should be the basis of every organizational decision and function. 

2. Get widespread organizational support. For your customer-first sales and marketing approach to succeed, you must get widespread organizational buy-in. Workshops showing how various positions impact customer experiences are good techniques for generating customer-first support throughout the organization. 

3. Know your buyer’s journey. Customer experience is at the heart of a customer-centric strategy. To provide excellent customer experiences, you need to know your buyer’s journey. When you map out the stages of your buyer’s journey, create personalized sales and marketing tactics for each step. 

4. Don’t ignore data. While putting customers first and delivering excellent customer experiences is important, data can help improve your customer-centric strategies. Data improves customer experience with your brand. Data can also be used for your key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with your customers’ sales and marketing experiences.  

One thing to note is the temptation to focus only on data related to customer experience and behavior. Instead, look at data and metrics on all sides of your business. This will give you the comprehensive information necessary for your marketing to improve and grow.

Customer touch points along your sales and marketing funnel can guide you to bettering customer experience and achieving customer-centric objectives and goals. Ask how you can improve customer experience throughout your customer journey.  

5. Change up your email marketing and SEO strategies. It is easy to focus on data instead of customers with these two marketing strategies. While these strategies are needed to generate revenue, slight changes to make them more customer-centric can make them more effective. 

• Email Marketing

Many businesses try to persuade customers to opt-in to emails when they make a purchase. While some customers may opt-in, many find this technique annoying and impersonal. 

To establish a better connection with customers, encourage them to be ambassadors for your brand. Build a community around your product or service and encourage customers to join and participate. 

• SEO 

Chances are your SEO strategy focuses on ranking on Google. While this isn’t bad, it can be more effective if it is also customer-centric. Create content that both speaks to the customer and ranks on Google. 

Your customers likely use many digital channels. They browse websites, social media, and video platforms. To reach and establish personal relationships, you’ll need to provide a good customer experience on the channels they use. 

Since each online channel is different, your digital marketing strategy for each one needs to be different as well. When you do this, you’ll offer a better customer experience, increasing the likelihood of sales. 

6. Focus on the whole funnel, not just the top of the funnel. Many profit-first businesses focus on getting new customers. Once a new customer is attained, the customer then goes through the rest of the sales funnel alone. With no additional relationship building, customers are likely to drop out of the funnel and fail to convert. 

If you’re customer-centric, you’ll try to place yourself in the shoes of your customers. As they travel through the customer journey, what are their wants and needs and how will you help them? Focus on the whole sales funnel, not just the top. 

To elevate your company’s ROI, your sales and marketing tactics need to be customer-centric. This means you need to provide excellent customer experience throughout the entire buyer’s journey.

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Your customers want a relationship with your brand. When your business is customer-centric, you use data to understand your customers’ needs. You’ll then tailor your marketing efforts around building personal relationships with customers. 

You build trust with customers as you get to know them and offer them an excellent customer experience. As a customer-centric business, every decision is focused on your customers and how their experience will be impacted. By putting customers first, you’ll be rewarded with loyal customers and a better ROI.