Long before when there was a clear concept of marketing, businesses used street hawkers to gain the attention of their audiences. I guess that trait crept its way into the modern marketing world.  

We see marketing experts and agencies trying to portray businesses and brands as BIG. BOLD, and EPIC. But that doesn’t always work. In the effort of just being there in the face of their audience, trying to gain their attention, these marketing experts end up annoying them.  

To the customers, it feels like they are poking them and shouting in their faces. Invading their personal space. This ends up making things harder for the business/brand in the long run.  

Instead, they should try and listen to what the customer has to say. But how? By adopting a more customer-centric approach in their marketing efforts. 

If you want your brand to be able to build meaningful connections with your audience, then customer-centric marketing is the way forward.  

Let’s look at how a customer-centric approach to digital marketing can help you win. 

Customer-Centric Digital Marketing 

Before moving towards how a customer-centric approach can prove to be beneficial for your business. You first need to understand what it is. 

Customer-centric marketing is a strategic approach to marketing that prioritizes the needs, preferences, and experiences of your customers. It is unlike the traditional digital marketing approach that solely focuses on promoting and selling products or services. 

The customer-centric approach is aimed at providing personalized and positive experiences across all channels of your brand. No matter where the customer interacts with your business. Be it on social media, on your website, or at a physical location.  

The customer must have a cohesive positive experience. This helps build positive perceptions in the mind of your audiences. Leading to enhance brand loyalty and potentially brand advocacy. 

A customer-centric approach helps align all aspects of your business to the customer’s needs and preferences. When you start being more customer-centric you’ll notice an increase in engagement and revenue stream as well as long-term customer relationships.  

Does customer-centricity really work? Well, stats say it does. 

Why Be Customer-Centric? 

Adopting a more customer-centric approach in business has proven to be effective through various statistics. Studies highlight that it impacts positively on profitability, customer loyalty, and overall success of the business. 

The following key stats show why being customer-centric is worth it. 

1. Businesses that prioritize customer-centricity can grow their revenue 4 – 8% faster. 
2. 84% of businesses focusing on improving customer experiences increased their revenue and 79% were able to save on costs. 
3. How does 60% higher profits sound? That’s what businesses with a customer-centric strategy achieve on average. 
4. Customer-centricity can lead to higher retention rates. And a mere 2% improvement in customer retention can help cut costs by 10%. This is because retaining customers is significantly cheaper than acquiring new ones. 
5. Brands or businesses employing a customer-centric strategy can experience a 25% increase in customer loyalty. 
6. More than 80% of customers are willing to pay more to brands or businesses that provide better customer experiences. 
7. It can also help increase sales and revenue as personalized services have been found to increase online conversion rates by 8%. 
8. Word of mouth is the best form of marketing and 72% of customers with good online experiences will share it with others. 
9. 89% of consumers say that they’ll switch to a competitor after a poor customer experience. 
10. A report by Microsoft revealed that 96% of consumers believe that customer service is crucial for them to become loyal to a brand. 

Now, you may be wondering how you can be more customer-centric in your marketing approach? Then take out your notepad because the next section will tell you how. 

How To Be More Customer-Centric? 

As it is clear by the term “Customer-Centric”, you need to offer more positive experience to your customers. This means that understanding their needs and preferences should be your top priority. Understanding your audience/customers is only the first part.  

Here are a few tips that can help you be more customer-centric in your marketing efforts. 

Tip 1 – Use Data 

Using data, you can get meaningful insights into your customers. These insights will help you understand what empowers them or motivates them to interact with a brand. You can analyze different types of data to understand your audience better. You can use data such as; 

• Customer feedback data from surveys, reviews, social media comments, and other sources. This data will help you identify any areas of improvement and your customers’ pain points. This gives you a chance to listen to your customers. Using customer feedback, you’ll be able to understand what they love about your brand and what you need to improve in your marketing strategy. This data can help you improve customer experiences and enhance the quality of the services you provide. 
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• You should also focus on market research data. This data is crucial to remain up to date with the market situation, consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns.  
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• Use demographic data such as age, gender, location, income, and education level. This will help you in understanding the unique characteristics of your target audience. By understanding these characteristics you’ll be able to create user personas. More on this in the next section. 
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• Another type of data that you can use is psychographic data. This data provides information about your customers’ attitudes, values, pain points, and the challenges they face. You can use this data to tailor your brand messaging to connect with your customers on a deeper level. 
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• Behavioral data is crucial in understanding how your target audience reacts with a brand. This data includes purchase patterns, browsing behavior, and social media engagement history. This will help you gain insights into what your consumers are interested in and what motivates them to take action.  
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• Lastly, you must never ignore competitor data. This includes information about your competitors’ marketing strategies, products, and services. This data will drive your brand to be distinct and provide unique value to your customers. 

You can understand your ideal customers better by collecting and analyzing this data. This understanding or information can then be used to offer more personalized marketing experiences. 

Tip 2 – Create Customer Personas 

It is very important to create customer personas to employ a successful customer-centric approach. These personas represent your target audience in a personal way.  

By deeply understanding these personas you’ll be able identify how to react in every stage of the customer’s journey so that the customer has a smoot personalized experience. This also helps create a more effective sales funnel. 

These personas also help in segmenting your audience. This segmentation will help you offer more personalized campaigns and messages. This personalization will help you attract more customers and drive business growth. 

Tip 3 – Provide An Offer Thay Can’t Ignore 

Now that you have already understood what your audience wants and segmented them using user personas. All there’s left is to provide a proposition or an offer they can’t refuse.  

However, you must make sure that the proposition you’re offering directly speaks to your target audience. The proposition must be centered around your customers’ needs and pain points. It should emphasize how your company or brand can help them achieve their goals or solve a problem.  

You can use some social proof like customer testimonials in your messaging, to show that your product or service delivers as promised. 

Tip 4 – Pay Attention To Your Employees 

If you want to build a successful customer-centric digital marketing strategy, then you must make sure your customers get a cohesive and positive experience across all channels. This includes through your employees as well.  

Employees are your brand’s representatives. They are the ones that directly interact with the customers. They are the workforce that is capable of influencing customer interaction in favor of your business. This means that you should always pay close attention when hiring employees. 

When you’re hiring an employee, pay attention to personal traits closely. This is because some of them may not be aligned with your customer-centric approach. Plus, you should also invest in your employees’ soft skills.  

This will help them foster closer relationships and experiences for the customers. Customer experience should be the top priority for any brand or business focusing on a more customer-centric approach. 

Additionally, you must never forget to encourage and reward employees who continuously pay attention to customer needs and fulfill their expectations.  

Tip 5 – Be Open To Changes 

Once you’ve done all that’s mentioned above, you must remain open to changes. No one gets it right the first time. You may have to tweak and adjust your customer-centric digital marketing strategies until they work as intended. 

Till then you must make sure to continuously monitor your business. This will give you valuable insights into what your audience likes or dislikes. Moreover, monitoring will also help you timely identify any potential problems and resolve them promptly. This will ensure that your business operations remain running smoothly. 

Conclusion 

If you are worried about, how can you foster a more customer centric digital marketing approach. You can begin by understanding the psychology behind effective digital marketing. It’ll help you understand how your target audience reacts to certain marketing tactics and how you can encourage them to take action. 

So, the next time you hear someone say that we need to be more aggressive in our digital marketing, stop them right there and listen. Listen to your audience, figure out what moves them, what makes them feel satisfied, which traits they find attractive in a business. Once you get these insights, implement them across all your marketing channels.   

And voila, soon, you’ll have successfully implemented a customer-centric approach to your digital marketing efforts.