The Journey to Customer Centricity

Cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty is a pri­or­i­ty for today’s mar­keters, but the chal­lenges it presents can dif­fer from com­pa­ny to com­pa­ny. Some com­mon threads for the most suc­cess­ful mar­keters, how­ev­er, involve ana­lyz­ing data and using insights from this analy­sis to shape the cus­tomer jour­ney from begin­ning to end. Sev­er­al recent con­trib­u­tors to CMO.com shared some help­ful insights on the kinds of data to focus on, direc­tions for con­tent mar­ket­ing, and how a focus on cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty can help CMOs have a last­ing and suc­cess­ful career with a company.

Tom Kelshaw, direc­tor of inno­va­tion at Maxus, shared some insights on emo­tion ana­lyt­ics, which is “the process of record­ing and analysing emo­tion­al respons­es to ads.” Emo­tion ana­lyt­ics gives mar­keters addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to mea­sure and adapt their mar­ket­ing mes­sages quick­ly. Kelshaw shared that it allows mar­keters to cap­ture valu­able sys­tem 1 data, which is defined as “people’s imme­di­ate, vis­cer­al and emo­tion-dri­ven respons­es.” This kind of data can be dif­fi­cult to artic­u­late out­side of emo­tion analytics.

Lee Odd­en, CEO of TopRank Mar­ket­ing, shared that, accord­ing to the Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Institute’s 2017 report, 87 per­cent of com­pa­nies in the UK have adopt­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing. This is good news, but a 2016 study by Con­duc­tor found that a sur­pris­ing 38 per­cent of con­tent mar­keters rarely use data to guide their edi­to­r­i­al plan­ning and “45% of B2C con­tent mar­keters don’t tar­get their con­tent.” Odd­en point­ed out that com­pa­nies who utilise data insights to focus on under­stand­ing and impact­ing the cus­tomer jour­ney will be in a much bet­ter posi­tion to achieve their con­tent mar­ket­ing goals in 2017 and beyond.

Fred Prego, group insight direc­tor for gam­ing retail­er GAME, recent­ly sat down to speak with CMO.com about GAME’s approach to shap­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. GAME’s mobile app is designed to be use­ful to cus­tomers both in and out of the store. The app gives cus­tomers game trail­ers, buy­ing options, and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ences. In fact, Prego shared how his com­pa­ny teamed up with Xbox 2015 for the launch of Halo 5: Guardians, allow­ing peo­ple to use aug­ment­ed real­i­ty to pose with char­ac­ters from the game. GAME con­tin­ues to evolve its dig­i­tal approach to pro­vide peo­ple with a great cus­tomer experience.

Fur­ther com­ment­ing on the chal­lenges mar­keters face with con­tent mar­ket­ing, TNT’s head of dig­i­tal con­tent, Denise Kuschews­ki, shared how TNT is deliv­er­ing “deli­cious con­tent” to its cus­tomers. Draw­ing from Adobe’s recent report, “Mass Pro­duc­ing Deli­cious­ness,” Kuschews­ki defined good con­tent as con­tent that “not only pro­vides val­ue to the view­er, it answers their ques­tions … and builds their con­fi­dence.” Fur­ther­more, she laid the ground­work for a “snack­able con­tent strat­e­gy” that com­pa­nies can use to give cus­tomers use­ful and rel­e­vant content.

Thomas Bar­ta, cus­tomer lead­er­ship pio­neer, keynote speak­er, and author, dis­cussed rea­sons why CMOs leave com­pa­nies so often, either because they choose to do so or as the result of being fired. He also shared some insights on how today’s CMOs can last longer and be more suc­cess­ful in their com­pa­nies. Bar­ta point­ed out that the CMO’s suc­cess is good for the com­pa­ny as well because the adverse is usu­al­ly true: fail­ure of the CMO usu­al­ly means fail­ure of the com­pa­ny. Although being a CMO requires a com­plex set of skills, a focus on cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty is key.

We invite you to learn some new strate­gies from our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com. Please let us know what you think.