At the start of each year, many business owners begin to prepare by reviewing the concluding year’s popular marketing trends and refocus their strategies based on these findings. With many businesses transitioning to online stores due to unforeseen circumstances, customer-focused marketing is becoming more popular. Customer-focused marketing is multi-faceted, meaning there are many avenues in which business owners can approach. However, some are more popular than others making it essential for you to familiarize yourself with this growing marketing trend as we transition into the new year.
What Is Customer-Focused Marketing?
Companies that utilize customer-focused marketing give special attention to the immediate needs of their customers. The term customers can refer to contacts, members, donors, and more. Companies with customer-focused marketing strategies create a multi-faceted marketing effort that combines their customer service department and website content to allow customers to respond to the call to action. Instead of a customer being contacted at random, the opportunity to respond lets the customer choose when and how they want to hear from the organization. Adopting a customer-focused marketing strategy offers companies in every industry a variety of benefits:
- Gain an understanding of your customers on a personal level
- Personalize their experience
- Utilize efficient customer relationship management (CRM) software
- Give special attention to their experience
- Invest in customer education
Marketing Trend Focus Areas
Now that you understand customer-focused marketing and its offered benefits, certain aspects of your pre-existing marketing strategy should be finessed for maximum results in the new year. Below we’ll explore a few of the most relevant, but there are many additional focus areas business owners can strengthen.
Overall Customer Experience
Most successful marketing campaigns are based on how well marketers know their target audiences and existing customers. The more you gain familiarity with these groups, the easier it is to create customized experiences for each. To optimize the overall customer experience, it’s encouraged to interview or survey existing top clients that fit well with your ideal buyer profile. This will help you identify factors they consider when determining whether they want to purchase your products or services. Business owners can also dig deeper by studying ultimate end users of your products and services as many manufacturers aren’t direct-to-consumer. This will help you fine-tune the customer experience in its entirety, whether you’re interacting with every client or not.
Email inboxes of the consumer market fill up every day, especially with marketing messages as manufacturers attempt to catch their attention. The customer experience breaks down to these interactions, and many are drawn to a personalized message more than a generic one. When revamping your email marketing, it’s encouraged to contextualize any communications, so customers are aware you’re focused on them and their success rather than your own. View email marketing as a way to grab a customer’s attention and draw them to your product or service but keep it short so necessary information doesn’t take long to digest.
Employee Activation
Many business owners fail to remember that their employees are some of their most treasured customers as they’re familiar with your products, services, and have likely used them at one point. For successful customer-focused marketing, it’s recommended to engage your employees fully, which is called employee activation. Your target audiences are more likely to be attracted to your products and services if your employees are knowledgeable, portray a positive attitude about your company, and are aligned with your brand mission and values. There are many ways in which business owners can utilize employees to strengthen their marketing strategies:
- Extensive training and growth opportunities
- Encouragement to be involved in social media and advertising platforms (also known as employee advocacy)
- Blog post, video, and marketing content involvement to showcase company-wide talent
If the employees feel as though they’re appreciated and involved in your company, they will become more invested and inspired to show their support in many ways. This jump in motivation will trickle down to product sales and customer engagement.
Visuals Over Text
Today’s consumer market is more drawn to visual content than plain text as it’s easier to remember and more engaging. Some may not recognize this as smart speakers, and voice search has continued to transform and gain traction. Business owners are encouraged to incorporate a healthy number of visuals into their marketing. This will attract potential customers and help them associate your products and services with your company. Visual content can include a variety of options, from infographics to images and videos. When creating your digital content, it’s recommended to get creative as these design opportunities make your text more enjoyable and easier to absorb.
Fine-Tune Your Strategy
For success in the new year, business owners must develop an effective marketing strategy because marketing is continuing to grow in complexity. Rather than continuously thinking about what you’re doing with marketing, it would be best if you found a way to link every marketing decision back to the underlying meaning of your entire business. Adapting to this mindset and reforming your marketing strategy to better encapsulate this idea will help you create a well-rounded routine that benefits the customer experience, boosts brand recognition, and increases yearly revenue. As the new year carries on, business owners must view their marketing strategies as an opportunity to connect all areas of their business in one centralized location.
Don’t Forget About SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will remain high on the list for successful marketing to your target audiences. Business owners should continually pay attention to best practices for optimizing content, whether that be marketing materials, website copy, or something else entirely. An effective SEO strategy will help your company place high in SERPs. Still, it’s also vital to optimize featured snippet material as many in today’s consumer market focus entirely on this content when conducting their search. When optimizing your content for the new year, consider mobile device searches and voice search. Working this into your SEO strategy will help strengthen your appearance in SERPs and ensure you remain above the competition.
Robust Marketing Strategies Make a Difference
Business owners are encouraged to review their marketing strategies after each year as this helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and what can be done differently the following year. Customer-focused marketing trends have continued to grow in popularity as it opens the door for business owners to establish positive relationships with potential and existing customers and learn about their target audiences on a deeper level. 2020 has presented numerous obstacles for business owners in every industry, making it vital to fine-tune your marketing strategies so the new year can be successful.
Let’s start out 2021 with customer-focused marketing in mind!
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