The statement “going digital” was coined by marketers, back when businesses were first starting to rebrand themselves as digitally equipped and online-forward entities. In the decades since companies were scrambling to get their websites up and running, initiatives orchestrated by marketing leaders and social media outfits have transformed customer behavior and expectations.
As a result, today it is almost embarrassing for a company’s website and content to come off as even marginally outdated. What was cool and cutting-edge five years ago could be considered mere window dressing today. Consider the following insights generated from a Trasers study of over 9,000 respondents worldwide.
- A majority 54% of executives still think digital transformation is about websites and portals.
- About 39% of leadership have evolved their thought process and believe transformation is more about reinventing their value chains.
- Only 7% of respondents defined a future driven by powerful customer value propositions and digitalized experiences that could be a complete departure from their past.
Clearly, there is much to chew on.
How can marketing influence a company’s transformation initiative?
The role of marketing has and will remain centered around brand building, product definitions and placement, competitive positioning and pricing. These are the fundamentals. Each one of these aspects changes the moment that “product-service” definitions themselves change.
So how do we keep up? It begins with the never-ceasing determination to better understand your customers: their changing demographics, morphing behaviors, ways of interacting, evolving expectations, and how they come to define the concept of “value”. Companies that rethink their products and services from the perspective of the customer and provide complete, connected and consistent experiences along the chain of interactions will be the ones to come out ahead.
How can Marketing engender this line of thinking? Savvy CMOs have molded their Marketing platforms to serve as a compelling “voice of the customer” across the company by undertaking four specific steps.
| 1. Understand changing customer behavior | 2. Establish customer analytics throughout the marketing ecosystem |
|---|---|
| Learn the trends that affect your industry and your customers’ view of your products and services. If you are in a B2C business, become deeply familiar with your direct consumers. B2B businesses should undertake to understand the key drivers behind the changing preference of their end clients. | This entails creating a presence on social and indirect digital channels, tracking customer interactions with your content, products and services and then monitoring all transactions. This extends beyond Marketing and into Sales, Services and just about any other function. |
| 3. Install a Customer Value Proposition Council | 4. Develop an integrated Marketing function |
| Unify R&D/Innovation, Sales Services and Finance into one team with Marketing serving as the “voice of the customer”. Reimagine products and services so that they are customer-driven, differentiated and relevant. | An “outside-in” integration of experiences beginning with the buyer’s journey from prospect to the point of conversion must be completed. This needs to be further extended into the initialization, support and renewal phase of the product or service in order to develop an “end to end life cycle view” of the customer experience. Marketing now has data to share with all involved functions and thus help drive a “connected experience” for the customer. |
The truth is evident: forward-thinking marketing leaders are data-driven. They use information to ensure they remain highly self-aware, not just as it concerns marketing, but the other two functions involved in customer acquisition as well: R&D/Product Development and Sales. They go further and, in most cases, benchmark themselves against the competition. It’s not enough for them to just be doing the right things, but to be doing them ahead of their rivals.