Geoff Wolf, EVP Client Strategy
T’was two weeks before Christmas, and all through the night
The CMO was thinking “What can we do better? What are we doing right?”
A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is the person who sits up at night worrying about the customer journey and brand messaging – especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The customer journey and messaging are more important than ever today, but unfortunately are rarely thought about as much as they should be.
Let’s look at these two dimensions that drive the marketing world and what an annual Christmas season recap of the year might illuminate for marketing success.
Customer Journey
As research has proven what marketers have long known through gut instinct, many CMOs have become students of Neuroscience. Since purchasing is done by people, not machines, there are very powerful feelings that lie below our cognitive functions that drive buying behavior. Thanks to technology, our instincts are now well documented by science.
Mapping the customer journey from awareness to post-purchase, to second purchase enables us to leverage human behavior to dramatically drive sales through tactical marketing practices.
Once the customer journey has been mapped for various customer segments, the next step is to review the elements of that journey. The holiday season is a great time for this exercise. Through the lens of customer journey behavior, the big lessons of the year will become evident and reveal actionable opportunities for the coming season.
Case Study
One horticulture company had been growing their business for decades with a very successful business model and customer journey marketing. Well defined prospecting segments and a good understanding of the first-time buyer’s experience led to a high success rate converting new buyers to 2x buyers, with excellent long term retention. The business was very profitable and typically grew year over year.
Then, in 2016 sales began to decline for the first time. The first disappointing year was “understood” as perhaps just a poor weather season. When it was followed by further declines in sales, management realized that a much bigger change was taking place. The marketplace had shifted around the brand and consumer behavior was now different. New brand awareness and trust would have to be developed to regain sales growth.
While they had mapped the customer journey from first purchase on, they hadn’t yet taken a look at pre-purchase behavior. So building new awareness and trust for the brand story was sorely needed. To fill this need, they defined a new persona around an existing customer group that buys multiple times a year, spends a lot of money, and also tends to tell all their family and friends that they should be buying from the brand; in other words, they spread new awareness and build trust. This group would be called the “brand evangelists,” and fill the niche missing from the customer journey.
In the past, the marketing program had only addressed these buyers in terms of contact strategy, as “best RFM buyers.” However, with their own separate persona, at each step of the relationship, messages, content and contact points could be targeted very precisely for this valuable group to encourage the “word-of-mouth” referrals that help expand sales.
This is a very actionable customer journey opportunity. These are the type of customers that a successful CMO should be seeking to identify, learn from and adjust the marketing plan every season.
Clear Messaging
Another thing that keeps our CMO busy – and nocturnal – is the central truth that drives all of our brands. Is the story being told still relevant and clear?
Customer personas offer well defined targets to tell our story, but it’s important to tell the right story. The customer base may be aging in the marketplace. Are we telling the younger generations the same “old” story? If so, that story is probably missing the mark.
Here is a case study of a demographic market shift around a business story:
A distributer of retail store supply materials has been in business for a long time selling to mostly small and medium size businesses who tend to be family businesses. As the generations who founded the business are now retiring, the next generation is taking over the role of running the operations. The original message of “fast, quality” service may no longer be enough for the distributor brand to hang onto a competitive edge, especially with Amazon in the marketplace.
As the old relationships transition to the next generation, a refresh of the message and story must be considered to make sure the best customers do not find new resources to meet their needs. The Christmas season provides a terrific time to revisit the customer perception landscape that is unfolding in front of each brand.
The proactive CMO is dreaming not of sugar plums, but of a new customer survey that can be launched immediately after the holiday purchases are over. This survey will ask questions about how the customers feel about their purchases rather than customer service experience. The sentiments discovered in the survey will serve as an integral part of refreshed, clear messaging to be rolled out in the coming year.
Well defined messaging and storytelling are now being widely recognized in the business world as a more important foundation for success, while customer journey mapping enables that story telling. Here are two key takeaways:
- Be sure to have a basic customer journey understanding of the people that purchase from you. This can be as simple as the 4 – 6 main stages of the journey.
- Add an annual “Post-Holiday” customer survey to you marketing program. This survey should focus on customer feelings rather than service levels.
If either of these crucial elements of any marketing endeavor are keeping you up at night, you have questions about the proper customer survey, shoot me an email at geoffw@jschmid.com. It’s what we do!
The CMO spoke not a word, barely taking time to rest,
Asking and listening leads to success,
He was heard to exclaim as he turned out the light,
“It WILL be a Merry Christmas for all, with customer insights!”
Tags: branding, customer journey, Geoff Wolf, marketing