leadership

Marketing customer centricity

While customer centricity is nothing new, customer experience lies at the heart of digital transformation.

Digital is putting customers in the driver seat, transforming their purchasing decisions. Today’s customers are more empowered, they can get a lot of information online way before they need to get in touch with a sales representative. It is a true shift in power and organizations need to adopt a customer centric approach across their company to offer value.

While most companies today claim to put their customers first, a surprisingly small number are actually doing it right. Servicing your customers well cannot be put into a “one size fits all” strategy and marketing plays an important role in helping to achieve customer centricity.

It’s all about “Personas”
The better you know your customers, the better you can give them what they want. Customer centric marketing needs to acknowledge that there is no average customer. Nobody wants to be spammed with generic email promotions that do not speak to your needs or is just plain boring. This is where personas can help you. By understanding your audiences and buyer types, you can craft a specific message, with relevant content, in the right channels, creating value along the way and hopefully creating long-term relationships, ideally with your customers becoming brand advocates.

Understanding the customer journey
The ‘customer journey’ can be defined as all interactions that customers’ have with a company’s brand, product or services across all touch points and channels. In today’s digital world it is imperative that a seamless experience is created across all channels – and this includes on- as well as offline. Understanding the customer journey allows us to better connect, communicate and give the right information at the right time of the journey or purchasing process.

Make use of data
Too many marketers talk about data-driven marketing but data is only useful if the right technology and know how is in place to capture and analyse. Every day customers are telling us what they want by clicking, sharing, downloading. And it is not about collecting vast amounts of data but more to look at the data and understanding what customers need and want and then using that insight to develop better marketing campaigns, design products and services as well as other efforts and initiatives.

Customer centric business = social business
Customer intimacy relies on two-way conversation. Social media allows you to understand and communicate with your customers, making your relationship with them more meaningful. Social media is a key channel for customers in their decision-making. Make sure that you are present where your customers are present, that you listen, identify the gaps in customer engahement and respond in real-time.

The shift towards becoming a customer centric organization is complex and takes a long time. Marketing plays an important role in helping create a change in corporate culture where the focus is on the customer. The future of marketing (as always) is exciting and challenging.

It’s time for more social savvy CEOs

A recent study from CEO.com showed that the leaders of today’s most powerful companies (aka Fortune 500) still see social media as a non-necessity in their leadership toolkit. In fact, 61% have no social media presence whatsoever.

Courtsesy CEO.com

This is totally anti-cyclical to consumers. Today there are more than 3 billion people on the internet and 2 billion are active social media users. We spend almost 3 hours online a day and 74% of consumers rely on social media to make buying decisions. So if social media is where your customers are, why aren’t there more CEOs active on social platforms?

Why Go Social?

The business of business are relationships. Relationships are inherently social. And leadership in the 21st century is all about strong communication. Social media provides multiple benefits for CEOs: it creates emotional connections, builds relationships and demonstrates innovation. Little side benefit: all of these increase leadership effectiveness.

A recent Weber Shandwick study said that 80% of employees would rather work for a social CEO. And 3 out of 4 consumers said they would be more likely purchase from companies who communicate on social media.

And we should not forget trust. Trust is the foundation for any business to operate. Be it internal or external, trust should be high on any CEO’s priority list. Edelman’s yearly Trust Barometer highlights exactly this. With more people placing trust in their peers and company employees than CEOs, social media provides a perfect channel for changing this. In today’s media landscape, there needs to be a move from just traditional media to a platform where CEOs can directly interact with stakeholders and customers. Richard Edelman defined the new role of the CEO to be the “Chief Engagement Officer”. A CEO that has a social profile can result in better communication, more transparency, higher employee morale and an improved brand image. By sharing stories, vision and values, the CEO moves from being just a business figure to a real person – resulting not only in greater visibility and influence, but also in more trust.

So Many More Opportunities

CEO.com’s study showed that those CEOs who are “active” on social media, Linkedin and Twitter were the preferred platforms of choice, although most of them were less active on the latter. With so much happening in the social media space, it will be interesting to see when executives will realize the benefits of exploring other platforms. Such as visual platforms like Instagram or YouTube. Personally, I also strongly believe that messaging and streaming apps will be interesting for CEOs to experiment with as these channels are genuinely social with their feedback mechanisms and their informality.

But when looking at today’s social CEO landscape, all this still lies in a very distant future.

Maybe for now it is sufficient for CEOs take some advice from Sir Richard Branson, who said, “Embracing social media isn’t just a bit of fun, it’s a vital way to communicate, keep your ear to the ground and improve your business.”

Elevate your leadership communication

Communication is important. And if you are a leader even more so. Understanding how to be a great communicator can make all the difference. There are many elements to being a communicator. Here are just a few highlights: Fireball_XL5

It’s all about personalization
Leadership is no longer about issuing corporate communications. It is about being personal. That is why it is important to develop relationships with the people in your team and organization. Think dialog not monologue. Make sure to ask the right questions and don’t forget to read between the lines. Just by watching and listening you can raise your organizational awareness immensly.

Listen. Really Listen
When we think of communication, we often think of talking. Listening is often overlooked although it is the most important princliple of great communication. You will never have a meaningful conversation if all you do is to broadcast. Even worse if all you do is broadcast the same messages. When you start to stop moving your lips and start to open your ears, you are on the right path to becoming a skilled communicator.

Keep an open mind
When your opinion matters more than anyone else’s then you stop listening. You stop learning. And you are closed off to new opportunities. There is nothing to fear about hearing other people’s opinions even if they may be dissenting to yours. Rather see it as an opportunity to challenge your way of thinking and to grow. At the end of the day it is not the opinion that matters, but the willingness to discuss it with an open mind.

Empathy is the new ego
Ego is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it only brings out the best in you but not in other people you have failed at being a good leader. Good communication is about being authentic and transparent. To do that you need to communicate with empathy and not arrogance.

Communication is so important. I see it every day. If we can get it right, we can build great teams and accelerate our business.

Let’s ban social media in the workplace (not)

We all have been through many technological changes in the workplace that have had a profound impact. I remember using a telex machine to confirm trades which then quickly moved to online trade confirmation platforms. Social media is no different. LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumbler, Facebook….you name it…it is what the people are using in the workplace – a lot. And not only the millennials also baby boomers and Generation X. And I would argue that managers and leaders need to see the benefits of using social media in the workplace. For their employees, the performance of the company and themselves.

From my experience, social media does not distract employees. Rather it increases communication. It enables us to connect quickly internally and externally without needing an introduction. Every online comment, re tweet or question answered shows that you have listening skills and that you can truly engage. Social media also helps us sell our business better. It has given us the tools to measure what works, what generates our customer’s interest and allows us to constantly adapt to our customer’s needs. It allows us to be more in touch with our market, understand trends and developments. And social media increases speed. How satisfying is it when you can make a customer happy by responding right away to a question on Twitter? Or that you can get vital information to your customers within a matter of seconds? We all know that lack in communication speed can easily mean a missed opportunity, possibly leaving behind a negative sentiment.

Social media – and the skills it requires – makes us more interactive, quick and persuasive. All great traits in employees and leaders alike. And as a technology it increases productivity. So we should stop worrying about employees watching that YouTube video or posting something on Facebook at work. Social media will be around for a while. And those who use it wisely and well it will increase their effectiveness as a person and as a company.