Have you bought your competitors’ product? This might sound like madness. You probably do competitor analysis, if not regularly at least once in a while, to keep your positioning fresh. Why would you need to go further than that? The answer to that question is that you need to experience their entire customer journey, from how they treat their prospective… Continue readingHave you bought your own product?
Building the case for a Contact Strategy Picture yourself sitting in the senior management meeting where you are seeking agreement to a contact strategy change management programme. You have spent several weeks developing the proposed approach. Built the watertight business case. You believe you have tacit approval from many people around the table for what you are proposing. Presentation finished,… Continue readingCustomer contact, the internal dimension
As you start to investigate where your customer contact/communications are causing problems with your customers you will quickly realise that what you need is a contact strategy. Your next question will be “What is a contact strategy?” if you have not come across this before. At a most basic level it should be rules that can be implemented organisation wide… Continue readingWhere existing customer contact goes wrong
Watch an online ad, navigate around a brand’s website or consume some social content on the likes of Facebook or Linkedin and you will notice one similarity – none of the content is connected. You read, watch or consume the content and then, if you’re lucky, it might link to a landing page. However, most of the time there’s no… Continue readingWhy is content not connected?
Why do you need to do anything differently with the way you contact your customers? (Your Contact Strategy.) Because change is inevitable and your customers have already changed. When things change and new information comes into existence, it is no longer possible to solve current problems with yesterday’s solutions. Do no harm The Hippocratic Oath has as one of its… Continue readingHouston we have contact…
Customer segmentation is in danger of describing but not understanding your customer… Who are these socio-demographic twins? Both male Both born 1948 Both grew up in the UK Both have divorced and re-married Both have grown up sons Both are very wealthy Both like to spend their holidays in the alps Both are world famous …. If they are both… Continue readingPosing questions around the danger of describing but not understanding
There is considerable amounts of noise and “trending” around customer journey mapping at the moment. While it is good to see that this now includes more about what content is required to guide customers through the stages of the marketing and sales cycle, there appears to be a lack of depth around the customers’ actual decision-making process with the focus… Continue readingWhat insight do you need to map a customer’s journey
What is “customer timing”? In the article on mapping the buyer journey, we discussed what the buying decision-making process is. As marketers, we can use this structure to get a better understanding of our customers. Customer timing is being ready when the customer is ready. It means being engaged with them so that when they are ready, you are the… Continue readingBuilding an audience to leverage customer timing
Is centralised content planning possible? Simple answer: yes. For many organisations, though, the gap between the production of content (i.e. within lots of separate teams) and planning content centrally may appear too enormous a challenge. To cross the gap, you need to take a big step back. Talking about ‘central planning’ has a ‘command and control’ air to it that… Continue readingCentralised content planning
The world of customer-centricity can be split into three camps. Firstly there are those that have embraced the need to transform themselves into a customer-centric business. Then secondly there are those who realise that being customer-centric is more than a cultural and behavioural attitude. Finally there is the third camp which contains the majority of businesses that have not yet… Continue readingWhat do I need to do differently to be customer-centric?