2022 is the year of the customer. There is a significant focus on customer experience this year and I’m secretly celebrating. I’ve literally been preaching this since 2017, and it only took 5 years and a pandemic to get here. What this means is that marketing activities are going to be more personalized and targeted. In order to do this, it takes a significant level of research and data to really understand your customer and their pain points. 

Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies

Over the past year, companies have had to rethink their entire strategy — many hired chief customer officers to support the customer experience. Marketing and leadership teams turned the mic over to their customers, listening to how prospects and clients feel about their interactions with the brand. 

Marketing efforts should be focused on growing brand authenticity and optimizing for the customer or prospect experience. It’s about building relationships rather than prioritizing sales or traditional marketing campaigns. This means that companies are investing in content marketing more than they ever have before. According to Hubspot, 82% report actively using content marketing, up from 70% last year. Video is the primary form of marketing media being created, followed by blogs (used by more than half of marketing teams), and infographics. 

Social Media is the Primary Marketing Approach

Because of the connection with the customer, social media will continue to be an important tactic for businesses. The Hubspot 2021 State of Marketing Report cited that social media will dominate and be the primary approach for most companies, based on the companies surveyed for their report. By establishing a direct relationship with your social media audience, you’ll learn exactly how to support, engage with, and convert them into loyal brand advocates. Interestingly, while the data showed that the most popular platform companies are using is Instagram, they are seeing the most ROI from Facebook. Facebook has a much higher likelihood to convert, especially as it relates to paid advertising through social. 

Invest in Customer Research

While you may think you have your strategy in order, if you don’t understand your customer, their pain points, or your value proposition for them all of that effort could be wasted. Executing a strategy that is based on assumption instead of data will certainly earn you some business, but it may not be earning the business you want. The quality of your leads should far outweigh the quantity because a lot of leads with a lower likelihood to convert is a lot of work for your internal teams which further increases your cost to convert. 

Before you start executing, make sure you have done the market & customer research. Design customized and useful surveys so the data can help guide and inform the strategy for your teams across the board. Make sure you challenge your teams not to start with last year's marketing strategy as a baseline, let the data dictate the strategy. The information should open your eyes to new strategies or preferred methods of communication you may not have even known your audience(s) wanted. 

No marketing strategy is perfect, and every effort isn’t going to be effective. Sometimes you have to fail to learn what works and what doesn’t, but if you talk to your customers, send out more surveys, and use data to inform your marketing efforts you will watch them become more human and personalized. If this all sounds great but you just don’t have the time or capacity on your team to execute, I’d love to chat to see how we might be able to work together. You can also follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn, or sign up for my newsletter in the footer to stay up to date.