Gartner focus: Customer self-reflection and customer course change as a business priority
Updated: Oct 26, 2021
As a marketer, business owner, or agency director, you'll feel the pressure of keeping up with new trends, and it's tough to process everything.
Encouraging customer self-reflection and customer course change are worth reading about, though.
The result of a more traditional marketing activity, interviewing your customers and creating buyer personas, one business has found that encouraging customer self-reflection and customer change course results in a 24% uplift in engagement.
Think beyond creating buyer personas to full-on, cross-function department collaboration to produce insights that can be translated to digital and profitability potential (similar to the old-school 'cash cow' model for tech).
What are customer self-reflection and customer course change?
Customer self-reflection is when a person (customer) stops to consider their current situation. Customer course change is when that self-reflection leads to a new path -- a new choice.
The changing role of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs)
Far from being the voice of the customer when strategising, CMOs, according to Gartner, are now:
“Finding opportunities for course change, pinpointing a narrow customer need, and prioritising company actions to meet that need.” Gartner
Cross-function team projects
Gartner Business Quarterly tells of a case study that brings together a cross-functional team of marketers, data analysts, and developers to gain better insight into customer behaviour to find that 'narrow customer need'.
This departmental collaboration resulted in the business focussing on moments when a customer 'self-meditates'.
“That’s when Vanguard offers guidance and encouragement that could change what they do next. For example, his team designed a personal advisor service quiz that helps users identify their needs and commit to next steps. Those who completed the quiz were 24% more likely to begin working with a financial advisor.” Gartner
Creating a barrier to entry and embedding responsibility
Not only creating a barrier to entry, by focussing on a narrow customer need, you also encourage the customer to take time to breathe, think, and make the right decision. After all, the tech is at your fingertips, so comparing and considering is easier.
As corporate responsibility champions try to break free from the tick-box mentality, encouraging customer self-reflection is perhaps a step in the right direction toward the right thing to do too.
MPH Copy works with marketers and agencies to better understand their customers and find a narrow customer need to differentiate and create barriers to entry. We create content strategies based on real-time customer insights.
Email sarah@marketingperhour.co.uk or call direct on 07967608075 for more information.
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