The 5 Pillars of a Successful Customer-Oriented Marketing Strategy

Customer-oriented marketing helps determine how a product or service can effectively solve the problems and pain of customers and buyers.

Digital transformation has produced a plethora of new shiny tools and boosted an orientation towards a data-driven culture. And perhaps more importantly, it has empowered users.

According to HubSpot, 55% of customers rely on family recommendations, other customers’ opinions, or market research and have come to trust companies less.

How do you attract new users and make current customers love your brand?

It is no longer enough to create creative marketing campaigns. To make a significant impact, it is essential to switch to a customer-oriented marketing model and focus on a customer-centric approach.

This article discusses what you need to do to become a customer-oriented company and how this will impact your business goals.

Let’s get started on the five pillars of a successful customer-oriented marketing strategy.

Why Does Your Company Need a Customer-Oriented Culture?

Let’s take a step back and consider why digital marketing requires transformation today.

There’s no doubt that the digital age has built more informed buyers. They can choose from endless options and new experiences. For this reason, successful companies need to adapt to new customer behavior quickly and effectively.

That’s how customer-oriented marketing has gained momentum as a business approach in recent years, as an effective way to adapt to ever-changing customer behaviors.

This approach requires your whole company to stop looking in the mirror for solutions and focus on each customer’s specific needs and on how prospects and customers experience your brand.

To better illustrate how focusing on customer needs impacts your business processes, we have listed five reasons that show the importance of adopting a customer-oriented approach.

1. Personalization is key

First off, a customer-oriented strategy helps close more deals faster, especially for an international SEO services agency. Consumers are more aware of their buying power with brands and constantly seek new experiences.

Prospects no longer want to hear the same promotional speeches over and over. As a company, you need to win their trust.

In this scenario, customer-oriented marketing allows you to design a product strategy that considers all factors contributing to how customers perceive your brand.

2. Your customers’ purchase decisions are complex

Digital marketing enabled a multidirectional communication model in which a prospect’s path to becoming a customer is not linear, i.e., they are more inclined to research on their own on different channels before raising their hands.

This should inform the way you produce and distribute content.

You create a positive association when your brand significantly improves prospects lives through relevant and engaging content along their journey (including case studies that trigger their purchase decisions).

Thus, producing relevant and optimized content for a customer acquisition strategy effectively builds a lasting relationship.

3. The inbound marketing methodology has changed

A traditional approach uses a marketing and sales funnel to describe the customer journey. In a more customer-oriented cycle, however, it is represented as a flywheel.

As described by HubSpot in their blog post, it represents the momentum you gain when you align your entire company around delivering a remarkable customer experience.

This new approach puts buyers at the center and focuses on customer loyalty.

4. Data analysis (and understanding) has gained ground

A data enrichment strategy allows companies to collect and process more detailed information about individual customers or leads, allowing better tracking of their users and a holistic understanding of their behavior to market and sell to them more efficiently.

Basically, in any digital channel, it is possible to collect data to better segment the public, fully understand their needs, and, therefore, have all the inputs to design a more effective and customer-centric marketing strategy.

The reality is that you probably already have most of the data you need. Chances are, you are struggling to make sense of the data. A product like Breadcrumbs can work as a data sidekick and analyze your marketing, sales, and SaaS product data to surface the attributes and actions denoting high intent.

Get a free Breadcrumbs account to use our Reveal tool and:

• Connect the data sources.
• Set up your customer lists.
• Get the results.

Breadcrumbs Reveal is available on all Breadcrumbs plans; get started for free today.

5. Customer loyalty needs to be earned

Finally, a satisfied customer will not only remain loyal to your product but may be an promoter for your brand.

According to CapGemini, consumers having an emotional relationship with a brand spend up to twice more than less emotionally engaged consumers (49%.) Another important aspect is that engaged clients recommend the company at a rate of 80% instead of the average of 50%.

With these projections, investing in customer-focused activities is crucial.

The Five Pillars to Creating a Customer-Oriented Marketing Strategy

Now that you understand the importance of customer-oriented marketing, the next question is: what to consider when building a strategy that focuses on the consumer?

A consumer-oriented strategy must follow the following steps:

• Research into your ideal customer profile’s (ICP) interests and needs;
• Determine how you can adjust your product to meet those needs;
• Create differentiated products/messages to suit each buyer persona.

Here are the five pillars to build your strategy on:

1. Invest in interactive experiences

One of the advantages of digital marketing is that you have control over the type of experience that users will have when interacting with your digital channels, from the moment they do not know your brand until they become your customers.

Better than designing a flat experience is creating a dynamic experience, as interactive content achieves twice as much engagement as static content, according to DemandGen.

Thus, interactivity in marketing is especially useful to:

• Capture quality data;
• Feed your leads;
• Retain your customers;
• Improve engagement.

Among quizzes, infographics, interactive videos, calculators, and other formats, you can create a memorable content experience for your users.

That’s what Nequi, a brand responsible for a Colombian financial management application, does on its corporate blog.

Their blog posts, infographics, videos, and tests all encourage permanence on the website and build a relationship between users and the brand. In addition, customer feedback allows them to continue creating content that resonates with prospects and further cultivates this relationship:

2. Create high-quality digital channels

Having a customer-oriented strategy also means providing a secure, properly structured website with good technical performance to ensure the best customer experience.

According to Pingdom, 70% of customers say that the site’s speed affects their purchasing decisions. That is just one of the technical factors you must take care of on your website.

You can start your WPO (Web Performance Optimization) strategy in the following ways:

• Work with reliable hosting and technical support
• Use trusted content managers, like WordPress or Shopify;
• Compress the images on your site
• Disable plugins that you don’t use
• Use lighter themes
• Improve your digital visibility through content marketing

Taking care of your digital channels, such as a website or blog, will not only make an excellent first impression for users who do not yet know you, but it will also be your primary tool for nurturing them.

3. Establish different techniques to retain your customers

Your (digital) wallet is probably full of the loyalty cards of all your favorite stores.

That’s a classic example of a loyalty program, a strategy that rewards customers’ buying behavior and brings a sense of loyalty to the company helping drive a company’s growth, increasing its lifetime value, improving its reputation, and ultimately making its customers more satisfied.

That is just one of the solutions. However, there are several strategies that you can apply in your business to retain your customers, for example:

a. Branding

Create a powerful branding strategy that links your brand values ​​to those your potential customers stand for (if you’re looking for an example, we’re very proud of what we have at Breadcrumbs.) Weave those values into your branded merch as well. For example, promote your swag store so that people can get branded products that will help establish a deeper relationship with your audience.

b. Limited-time promos

You can send exclusive promotions by email or apply discounts during specific times of the year (i.e., Thanksgiving, Back-to-school)

c. Upsell and Cross-sell

Another great option your company has to retain customers is to upsell and cross-sell them with relevant products. While upselling can refer to upgrading their plan, cross-selling includes proposing a different product they may need.

How to know when to upsell or cross-sell to your customers? You can use Breadcrumbs to create your upsell and cross-sell scoring model and find which of your customers are ready to be upsold or cross-sold at the right time:

1. Connect your data sources with Breadcrumbs
2. Determine what makes a customer ready for upsell in the Fit model (e.g., 50% for the last NPS score, 50% for opening support tickets)
3. Determine what makes a customer ready for upsell in the Activity model (e.g., 30% attended a customer webinar, 40% viewed a support or resource article)
4. Choose your lead score threshold (e.g., 70)
5. Set the scoring model live

Learn how to create your upsell scoring model with Breadcrumbs today.

4. Personalized communication

Consumers today are hungry for personalized content. Creating copies is not enough anymore; you must establish a great customer relationship and improve customer engagement by appealing to their tastes, interests, and needs.

Successful customer-oriented companies use personalization to enhance customer experience and customer satisfaction.

To implement personalization, you first need to identify your buyer personas. Once you have done it, you can:

• Define which channels to use for each buyer persona (social networks, adv, or newsletters);
• Adjust your messages and use users’ preferences to show people in your ICP personalized content on different channels to improve engagement.

Spotify, for example, adjusts its campaigns email marketing with the history of its users to send information about their favorite artist’s events, new releases, and songs related to what they can not stop listening to:

These incredibly targeted emails attract clicks and create a valuable relationship with users who love to receive this type of content.

For this, the data hygiene of your email lists is crucial to ensure your email list’s data quality is good. You can use our email verifier–and run a check-up for free!

5. Take care of the after-sales service

A critical factor in customer-oriented marketing is after-sales service. 93% of customers return to buy from companies that offer excellent customer service, according to HubSpot.

Make sure to set up a customer support team that provides great customer service, listens to the customer’s point of view, and can collect and act on your customer’s feedback.

According to Invesp, investing in new customers costs between 5 and 25 times more than retaining existing ones; as a business owner, you will undoubtedly want to ensure your current customers’ feedback is heard as much as possible.

An after-sales service not only gives you the possibility to strengthen customer relationships. It also opens up a channel where consumers can express their opinions–valuable information you can use to improve your product or service and send to your sales teams to improve close rates.

[BONUS] The 5 metrics you need to evaluate your customer-oriented marketing strategy

Suppose you want to determine the success of your customer-oriented marketing strategy. In that case, you should follow a few metrics to assess how close (or far) you are to adjusting your service to create a memorable experience.

1. Lifetime value (LTV.) The LTV is the net amount of revenue a customer generates while maintaining a business relationship with the business.
2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC.) It shows how much you have invested in attracting a new customer. Comparing LTV to CAC lets you identify whether your efforts have brought positive business returns.
3. Return on investment (ROI.) ROI allows evaluation of the profitability of a given investment. It is one of the most influential metrics in marketing, as it determines whether actions bring real deal closing opportunities.
4. Net Promoter Score (NPS.) This metric allows you to find customer satisfaction by asking a simple but compelling question: “on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our products/services to a friend?”
5. Average session duration. The average session length is one of the metrics that best reflect the engagement generated by your content. The better the engagement, the more chances of conversion you will have. You can accurately analyze this metric in Google Analytics in the “Behavior” report.

Customer-Oriented Marketing: Final Thoughts

Digital transformation has definitely changed the way companies can acquire, upsell, cross-sell, retain and delight consumers.

Consumer-oriented marketing is essential to respond to such new demands as its approach is designed around the needs and interests of customers. Therefore, it is crucial to know who they are, their needs, and how we can tailor the product or service to them.

All of this can be done through customer interaction points along the consumer’s journey, such as interactive content, a secure website with good usability, building a long-term relationship, personalization, and after-sales service managed by superior support teams.

Finally, following the metrics that help you evaluate whether you are achieving the proposed objectives is essential.

FAQs

What is customer-oriented marketing?

Customer-oriented marketing is an approach designed around the needs and interests of consumers. It is a strategy focused on creating experiences that add value to the customer and facilitate their purchase decision. The ultimate goal is to make customers feel special, build loyalty, and increase deals.

What are some critical elements of a customer-oriented strategy?

The critical elements of a customer-oriented marketing strategy include interactive content, building a secure website with good usability, developing long-term relationships, providing personalization options, and ensuring after-sales service.

What is the goal of customer-oriented marketing?

The ultimate goal of customer-oriented marketing is to make customers feel special and increase deals. The focus is on creating experiences that add value to the customer and facilitate their purchase decisions.

As an example, it includes tailoring products or services to meet their needs, providing personalized experiences, and offering good customer service.

Through this approach, businesses can create long-term customer relationships and build loyalty.

What is customer orientation?

Customer orientation is a business strategy focusing on customers’ needs and interests. It is about understanding customers’ wants and giving them the best possible experience.

It includes creating products or services tailored to their needs, offering personalized experiences, and providing excellent customer service.

What are the benefits of customer orientation?

The primary benefit of customer orientation is that it can increase brand loyalty and help improve customer retention. It also helps to strengthen relationships with customers, leading to increased sales, better customer experience, improved customer satisfaction, and more loyal customers.

Customer orientation helps businesses understand their target audience better, allowing them to create more effective marketing strategies.

Why is customer orientation important in marketing?

Customer orientation helps businesses build trust and loyalty by showing customers that they are genuinely interested in their needs.

It also increases repeat business, allowing you to repeat business, allowing you to identify which tactics work best for your target audience while simultaneously assessing how close (or far) you are to adjusting your service to create a memorable experience.

It ultimately leads to happier customers, higher retention rates, and increased sales. Customer orientation also increases targeted engagement with users, as they are more likely to interact with content tailored specifically to them. This helps the business stay competitive and evolve its offerings over time.

How to implement customer orientation?

To implement customer orientation, businesses must first identify the needs of their target customers and design strategies that meet those needs.

It includes gathering customer feedback and analyzing customer data to understand their wants and desires better. Companies should create content and experiences tailored to their customers’ needs and provide personalized offers and discounts.

Also, businesses need a strong customer service team that responds quickly to customer inquiries and feedback.

Why is customer satisfaction important?

Customer satisfaction is crucial because it helps to ensure customers remain loyal and engaged with your brand. Satisfied customers have higher spending habits and are more likely to return for future purchases, recommend the company to friends and family, and provide positive reviews on social media or other review sites.

All of these factors combined create a positive cycle for the business that can help you achieve long-term success.

What are customer-oriented teams?

Customer-oriented teams are teams whose primary focus is on delivering exceptional customer service. These teams may be responsible for various activities, such as analyzing customer feedback and data, developing strategies to improve customer experience, and providing direct support to customers.

It is crucial to have a sufficient number of employees responsible for personal interaction with customers (support members, community managers, call center agents, and more.)

They aim to ensure that customers feel heard, valued, and satisfied with the services they are receiving. These employees can also be responsible for creating loyalty programs, helping to build relationships between customers and the business, and developing cost-effective customer retention strategies.