Driving increased revenue and market share requires a comprehensive knowledge of your customer along with aa commitment to the customer experience. CEOs should be an advocate for improving customer experience (CX) that drives successful B2B customer acquisition. Specifically, when talking to marketing leaders about B2B marketing strategies, CEOs should be asking these tough questions to ensure that CX is central to the marketing strategy:
HAVE YOU IDENTIFIED TARGET PERSONAS IN YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY?
Going through the exercise to develop personas based on market and customer research is fundamental to understanding your target customer. Additionally, personas help marketing teams engage these customers in the buyer journey based on motivators and detractors. For example, persona-based web experiences are 2 to 5 times more effective. Yet, only 44% of B2B marketers use personas as a part of their B2B marketing strategy. CEOs focused on successful customer acquisition should expect personas are incorporated into the marketing touchpoints along the buyer journey.
HAVE YOU MAPPED A PERSONA-BASED CUSTOMER JOURNEY TO SUPPORT B2B CUSTOMER ACQUISITION?
Once personas are developed, marketing should create persona-based experiences that move target customers forward in their journey to purchase your B2B organization’s product or service. B2B marketing strategies should play into each customer touchpoint along the buyer journey. To create inspired customer experiences that contribute to increase revenue and return on marketing program investment, marketing leaders must focus on the touchpoints that move the buyer forward. CEOs should be asking hard-hitting questions to ensure marketing’s focus is aligned with B2B customer acquisition.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE AND MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY?
Supporting the successful execution of an organization-wide customer experience initiative should be a B2B marketing strategy that has clear goals and metrics. Your marketing leadership should outline how their B2B marketing programs create direct contribution to revenue and fuel high growth. CEOs should expect marketing to provide the customer experience metrics that show direct contribution to B2B customer acquisition.
NEXT STEPS
A customer-centric organization is critical for B2B customer acquisition. This customer centricity should start at the top with CEOs advocating for customer experience initiatives. CEOs should be asking their marketing leadership the hard questions to ensure customer experience is embedded in marketing programs and support driving customer acquisition. Inquiring about personas, customer journeys and success metrics should help CEOs gauge marketing’s alignment with the organization’s revenue and growth goals.
Finding a demand generation agency that partners with CEOs and marketing leaders to embrace customer experiences that fuel high growth and increase market share is very important!
