The Importance of Consumer-First Marketing
When crafting marketing pieces and campaigns, how much do you think about your customer? A customer-first marketing approach considers the customer's evolving needs and creates products and services that benefit them.
Keeping your customer's needs in mind when creating new products, services, marketing content, strategies, touchpoints, and campaigns will increase your response rates and conversions.
Why it's Important to Think About the Customer
Why is customer-first marketing important? This approach is essential because it focuses on your customer's needs and provides them with a better brand experience. Customer needs evolve, and your marketing strategy should change based on those needs.
A great example of changing needs can be seen in the way COVID-19 shaped consumers. Conditions quickly changed during the pandemic as consumers stayed home and found new ways to shop, work, and interact with others. There was a rise in digital consumption as consumers went online for entertainment and more. According to Forbes, total internet hits surged between 50% and 70%, and streaming also jumped by an estimated 12%.
Understanding consumers' preferred channels and needs will help determine your next move. In the case of the changes brought on by COVID-19, businesses needed to adapt to ensure they were targeting consumers on streaming services, apps, and social media. Marketing where your customers are frequenting with relevant messaging increases consumer engagement.
Strategizing Marketing Efforts for Your Customers
A customer-first approach begins with leveraging data to better understand and respond to consumer needs, preferences, and expectations in real time. Understanding your customer will help determine your messaging, what channels to target, and how to interact to nurture the relationship and achieve better results.
Drawing insights from data also enables you to personalize your marketing message better. Gone are the days of sending generic messages to every customer. Now, marketers can target customers with relevant messages that resonate with their interests. We can use vast data to find the customer's name, address, nearby store locations, the type of home they live in, their hobbies and interests, income, and relevant products or services based on what they looked at on your company's website. Learning more about your customer and applying this information in your marketing efforts helps produce better results as 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. With personalization, 97% of marketers witnessed a rise in business outcomes, and 63% saw an increase in customer interactions and conversion rates.
Along with relevant content, consider the channels you use to reach customers. What media do they prefer? Which do they engage with most? For example, let’s look at social media preferences. If you are targeting millennials on social platforms, you will likely focus on Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, and Snapchat, while businesses targeting boomers can utilize Facebook and LinkedIn. Based on customer data and understanding their preferences, Darwill can help you adjust your strategy to reach customers where they are.
With customer preferences in mind, Darwill can help tailor campaigns on channels your target audience will most likely interact with and respond to. Whether it's direct mail, digital marketing, or an omnichannel approach, we'll help you reach customers with relevant messages on the right channels.
Leverage Customer Insights to Drive Your Marketing
Get started by uncovering customer insights with our sophisticated data. We use data to back all our recommendations when it comes to building customer-first marketing strategies. Let Darwill help you target customers on the channels they use the most and deliver relevant messaging. Contact us to get started!
