We live in an age of personalization, and customers expect their favorite brands to be tailored to their preferences and desires. As a marketer, it’s imperative that you recognize this fact and do everything possible to reach your target audience with customer-centric marketing strategies.
5 Tips and Strategies for a Customer-Centric Approach
Depending on your business, you’ll need to take different steps to adopt a customer-centric approach. Let’s take a look at a few of these tips and where they fit into the marketing picture.
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Start with Logos and Visuals
The first way to appeal to your customers and make marketing about them is by developing visuals and design elements that relate to the target audience. Take the logo, for example. Contrary to popular belief, your logo isn’t just about your business. It’s also about the customers that support your brand. A company’s logo should represent the brand and engage customers.
Here’s a helpful suggestion. Use a free logo generator or similar tool to create a bunch of logos. Then, put them in front of a focus group or random selection of customers. Ask them for opinions on each logo. Notice the language they use when discussing each selection and get a feel for what they prefer.
Using this information, you can then go back to the drawing board with your own logo and make some tweaks that you feel will make your brand more customer-centric. It’s a small exercise, but can produce some keen insights.
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Join the Conversation
There’s an issue with many modern content marketing strategies. Far too many brands leverage content marketing as a tool for speaking at customers, as opposed to speaking to their needs. There’s a big difference.
When speaking at customers, you’re simply furthering your brand’s own initiative and telling them what to do. On the other hand, when you speak to customers, you’re meeting them where they are and hitting on relevant pain points that matter to them.
Here’s a simple strategy for joining the conversation. Actively participate in message boards and support forums. Find out where your customers go to discuss your products and engage with them there. Here’s a good guide on how to use online forums in the appropriate manner.
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Collect and Act Upon Data
Do you really know who your customers are, or have you made assumptions based on a couple random interactions? The reality is that many marketers don’t have a comprehensive understanding of their target market. And unless you make a commitment to collecting data and using it in the appropriate manner, you’ll find it’s nearly impossible to develop a customer-centric approach to marketing.
There are plenty of strategies for collecting customer data. These include email surveys, point of sale data collection, website analytics, and more. Pool together your resources and make a commitment to understand who your customers really are. Then, armed with this data, make educated choices as to which marketing strategies are worth your time.
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Leverage Social Media for Direct Interaction
Social media has a number of valuable business uses, but its value is maximized when leveraged as a tool for direct interaction. Customers have grown to expect a brand’s presence on social media, but what they really crave is one-on-one interactions.
Respond to comments as they’re posted. “Like” your follower’s content and reach out when you find something helpful. Share content that your audience will find valuable. The ability to participate in social media is something previous generations of marketers would have longed for – don’t let it pass you by.
“Invest in a social media monitoring tool, whether free or paid, to keep an eye on mentions of your brand and your competitors,” suggests marketer Jenna Hanington. “This will help you stay on top of your social engagement, while also making it easier to schedule and plan out posts ahead of time.”
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Use SMS for Meaningful Contact
One final tip is to consider the use of SMS as a new medium for sending out marketing messages. SMS has extremely high open rates – much higher than email – and is viewed as much more personalized than alternative modes of communication. If you haven’t looked into it yet, it’s worth a shot.
Put the Customer First
In retail, there’s a saying that you’ll commonly hear manager reiterate to employees over and over again: “The customer is always right.” Now, this doesn’t mean the customer is literally always right and the employee is always wrong. Instead, it serves as a reminder that when a dispute arises, the customer should never be blamed. All solutions should be tailored to the customer, even if they’re in the wrong.
