From Business 2 Community: Are you customer-centric?
I was speaking on a panel addressing digital experience, Web content management, and marketing when I realized that there was one glaring waste of marketing dollars we still need to talk about: the product-centric marketing we continue to do while claiming we’re customer-centric. In other words, putting product first in our marketing efforts, rather than responding to the customer’s individual needs and context.
Product-centric marketing happens all the time under the guise of customer-centric methods, such as targeting. Here’s an example: One conference attendee raised his hand and shared an eye-opening story from his own life. He had recently been shopping for a drill for a home improvement project. He checked out two major home improvement retailers, both in person and online. He went back and forth between the two sites, browsing products, then narrowed his choices and started comparing nitty-gritty drill specifications and features. He finally made his decision, went into one store, and bought the drill he wanted.
You’d think that was the end of a pretty uneventful story, but his interactions with the home improvement stores didn’t stop there. He continued to receive emails and retargeted ads from both stores trying to sell him a drill. Many brands would believe this was a customer-centric tactic. But one email perfectly captured the problem: It offered him a discount on the very same drill he had just bought.
