Learn from the Drucker School of Business about Customer & Market Strategy.

In my experience in Marketing, have unfortunately witnessed many Marketers and Marketing teams that fail to put themselves into a customer focused mindset, that helps lead to better Marketing outcomes.  

In my opinion, it is of no fault to the Marketer and more fault to modern marketing practices.  Where more and more companies put more and more technology between themselves and the customer

The result is an imbalance between customers and companies.

I found myself in this situation, where our Marketing team was more focused on output instead of effectiveness.  We continued pushing out campaign after campaign, without creating a feedback loop to iterate on the campaign and create a better experience for clients and future clients.  Finally, once we took time to evaluate our campaigns, we saw that our Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) were trending down and we were to blame.  

It wasn’t until one of our retrospectives, that a team member shared their learning from a recent Salesforce Trailhead,  Drucker School—Customer & Market Strategy from the Drucker School of Business at Claremont University, and recommended we take the Customer Centric Assessment and share how we scored.  Once we shared our scores, it was evident that there was work to be done. 

First thing we did was create a feedback loop at every level.  We created channels for our clients and customers to provide feedback on our messaging.  We created channels for Sales to provide feedback on our Campaigns.  We would “soft” launch our campaigns internally before going live with them.  We learned to embrace feedback and iterate on our process.  

Did this make our campaign launch time longer?  Yes.  Did it make our campaigns more effective?  Yes. In the end we were able to better segment and fine tune our messaging.  Our theme was “Scale globally, Market Locally.”  We had better engagement at all levels, especially from Sales, who were satisfied with being able to better engage with clients and potential clients about the products and services promoted in our campaigns.   

In closing, find a way to accept feedback.  This can be made easier by defining a mission and setting goals.  That gives you a base to measure your feedback.  Does it align with your goals?  Does it align with your mission?  Are you aligned with the company and leadership? 

Then create your feedback loop.  Then find time to sit down and analyze your feedback. Eventually you will find yourself moving from “Work to be done” to “Best in class.”

Thank you for tuning in, this is Market Lite.  Our goal is to provide you with the best in class Marketing Content that helps you improve your Marketing Return on Investment(ROI).