Marketers Must Focus on Helping Customers to Remain Competitive

Marketers Must Focus on Helping Customers to Remain Competitive
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Big data and analytics allow marketers to know their target audience better than ever. However, in a world of information overload, marketers must focus campaigns on actually helping customers accomplish their objectives, according to Gartner.

Their research shows that 44% of customers worry they’ve missed a better option every time they make a purchase. To mitigate this feeling of uncertainty, brands must focus on building stronger relationships between customers and their brand by helping customers understand their options, make a purchase, give them confidence and reassure their decision.

Gartner research on personalization shows more than half of customers report they will unsubscribe from a company’s communications and 38% will stop doing business with a company if they find personalization efforts to be “creepy.“ On the other hand, that same research reveals that messaging designed to provide valuable assistance or support, while using as few data dimensions as possible, delivers the greatest commercial benefit.

Similarly, B2B buyers today will also reward suppliers who make the purchase process easier. Gartner research shows that customers who receive helpful information that eases the purchase process are three times as likely to buy the bigger, more expensive option, with less regret.  B2B marketers must rethink their content marketing strategies to focus on “buyer enablement“, the provision of information and/or tools to customers that support the completion of specific buying jobs throughout the purchase process.

The concept of helping customers also emerges in how brands improve the customer experience (CX). Gartner research finds that while customers will punish brands for underperformance, they are highly unlikely to reward brands for exceptional performance. Instead, when customers feel a sense of self-affirmation, they are more likely to reward the brand that generated that feeling.

Lastly, when looking at the potential value of a brand connection, Gartner research reveals that the common approach of “shared values“ has little impact on brand connection for customers. Instead, irrespective of what a brand believes, customers are three times more likely to feel a strong brand connection when they perceive that brand to deliver a range of personal benefits, how a brand helps them achieve their goals, present themselves to others or feel about themselves.