Customer obsessed B2B firms are twice as likely to enjoy loyal customer relationships and see revenue growth of 10% (Source: Forrester).
To obsess with customer experience, first learn about your customer. This implies that you build a learning mechanism in place to learn about your customer’s issues as well as the key contacts that you will need to be engaging with.
Customer obsession should be at the heart of every targeted marketing program. How you go about selecting, targeting and engaging with your target accounts depends upon key customer insights that you generate through your customer obsessed insight program.
So how do you go about ensuring that you have a customer obsessed insight program in place? Here are 3 ways:
Go beyond existing information to understand the dynamics of your customers
Customer obsessed firms not only develop the tools, data and processes to understand customers – but they have a mechanism in place to develop insights that demonstrate empathy. According to Forrester Research, customer obsessed firms have the cultural belief that obsession is central to their success. Hence, you should be going beyond just developing data and processes to understand customers but really instilling a cultural belief around customer obsession.
Place your customers central to your targeted marketing strategy
Placing your customers at the centre of your targeted marketing strategy such as Account Based Marketing is vital to the success of any such marketing strategy. Your potential customers, their needs and strategic priorities have to be at the heart of every content and messaging. According to Demand Gen Report, 31% of ABM practitioners face challenges in developing target content for specific accounts or personas. By placing your customers’ needs, strategic priorities and challenges at the centre of your targeted marketing strategy, you will be able be overcome such content development challenges and be more customer obsessive.
Conduct individualized deep-dive into target accounts and their industries
What’s different now in 2019 as compared to 2014 when ABM was just introduced is the plethora of information available at your fingertips. You can conduct individualized deep-dive research into target accounts as well as their industries to unearth key insights which can make or break your targeted marketing initiatives. Conducting such specific desk research around the account and their industries would yield great benefits for ABM marketers who face data and insight problems.
Conclusion
Customer obsessed firms are more likely to enjoy loyal relationships with their customers and enjoy revenue growth. Going beyond existing information to really understand the dynamics of your customers to establish a level of empathy is one such way to develop customer obsession. Placing customers central is another key way to do so. Finally, conducting individualized deep-dive into target accounts and industries would yield great benefits and would alleviate some of the major problems facing ABM marketers.