USER CENTRIC MARKETING: Championing ease for progressive brands (CXL REVIEW)
Our world now has an influx of brands willing to embrace digital. We see it in the continuous rise in digital marketing budgets over the years. We see it in the multiple add that plagues our stories, our mobile apps,etc.
Prior to this era, startups and even existing businesses needed funds primarily for research and development, acquisition of fixed assets, working capital and traditional marketing.
But now, firms are obviously skewing from that practice to aggressively investing in driving traffic digitally and ensuring top of mind through it’s digital channels.
This trend has continue to work and fail by providing the needed goals, or failure. The degree of failure can be near zero they’re willing to do it the customer’s way.
A typical marketing orientation stresses on the need to put the customers first because they will eventually dictate your brand’s existence.
Unfortunately, many firms are embracing more and more technology tools, black hat and manipulative approach and obsession with data to achieve their desired aim. But these ways will eventually cripple the firm’s very fast.
The need to put the customers first and embrace co creation gave birth to user centric marketing.
User centric marketing is important because we cannot afford to continually alienate the customers because they can damage any brand.
The internet that gave brands an opportunity for disruption has also given customers the power to give an organized and negative complaint that could deal the brand name a massive blow.
User centric marketing should take the center stage in all brand does because the sole aim of all managerial effort is to satisfy the customers profitably.
User centric marketing draws from a user focused design and experience to better understand users and their journey, so we design our marketing strategies around them.
Getting Started With User Centric Marketing without spending much
There are ways to do marketing the right way, and you don’t have to break the bank to do it. If you want to focus on this marketing orientation, you need to do the following;
1. Understanding your audience
What is user centric marketing without understanding your audience?
You need a deep understanding of who your target users are and what they like doing, qualities, knowledge about your brand, their goals,etc.
It is common knowledge to know that consumer behavior changes very fast and what might be working few years ago might not work now.
There are various tools that you can use in knowing more about your customers. Personas can be used to give a fictional representative of your target audience.
It usually contains the demographic characteristics, likes, preference etc of the individual. It helps to give a face to the user of your product.
However, the traditional personas we use are too static for this era, because they are a snapshot in time.
Since users are stochastic and require consistent research to understand what they like, advanced but similar tools like empathy maps can be used.
Information in an empathy map does not ask who the customers are, taste, occupation, and those persona characteristics.
Instead it goes for their QUESTIONS, OBJECTIONS, PAIN, GAIN, GOALS, INFLUENCES.
For you to excellently know your customers at every given time, you need a customer journey Map. It shows where they are on the journey (funnel).
Traditional personas are not as effective because they are obviously a snapshot in time. In this noise filled and highly distracting world, a snap shot of the life of a person will not necessarily be enough to work with.
Customer journey mapping gives a real time overview of customers. A customer journey should have different characteristics along the way.
It is the visualization of how the customers think at every point of the funnel.
Every different user will travel in slightly different ways. An accurate journey is impossible because people are different, but it tends to be more realistic.
2. Look Inward
For you to better practice user centric marketing, you need to look into the brand’s activities and processes.
There may be existing research that gives insights about the target market, although they might not be relevant, but collect everything. Look out for more information from the;
A. The sales team: They have one on one interactions with the users and might have handled one or more objections in the past, pain points/ frustrations, testimonial, frequently asked questions etc.
It is very important to initiate to get data from them and you would be surprised by how much information they have to give out.
B. Customer support team: they have information regarding frequently asked questions, pain points and objections from the customers.
C. Social Media team: people who handle your social media page should know about some information about the end user. They have direct access to the online touch point, what your competitions are doing online, etc.
D. Data analyst: They can utilize popular tools to track online behavior onsite and online. There are many tools that aid their operation. Eg, serpstat tracks keyword query that people are using that relates to your brand offering, Google analytics, hotjar,etc are some tools at their disposal.
User Centric Marketing is the way to go if you want to remain relevant for a very long time.
With the knowledge gotten from understanding how users think, firms can make excellent decision in budgeting where to channel resources, know the accurate channel tool to deploy and the right mix of strategies to use.
This is my submission for the CXL INSTITUTE'S GROWTH MARKETING MINI DEGREE SCHOLARSHIP.
Joining this program has been an excellent eye opener and a sure way for any digital marketing professional to seamlessly transition into growth marketing.
