An Essential Guide to User Centric Marketing — Review

In the last article we learnt how to build a systematic growth marketing process and how to test different hypotheses by running experiments effectively. Often while running experiments for finding growth opportunities we come across having thorough user research or to have a User Centric Marketing approach.

So what exactly is User Centric Marketing?

This article addresses exactly the above question.

In the early 90’s whenever you wanted to buy or opt for a product or service, you would have to look for people who know about the particular service or product and rely completely on the peer’s recommendations.

Fast forward to the modern era, whenever you want to buy a product or service, what’s the first thing you do?

You Google it!

Am I correct?

Of Course I Am. I have just finished watching a series on netflix, the next thing i did was to search about the similar titles that are on netflix.

That’s just how we are accustomed to find answers to our questions these days. This is the major difference between how people used to find the answers then and how they find them now.

Since this is a major behaviour change, we as businesses should also know how our customers are using all the digital channels available to them and when they are using it.

Let’s get started!

Why Do We Need a User Centric Approach

We have fairly established the fact that we need a User Centric Marketing approach, now lets focus on why exactly we need to have it?

What would you say if i say,

Our existing approach to any marketing plan always fails to optimize the full potential of the digital marketing ecosystem!

If you find me wrong, tell me, how many times have you really optimized your landing pages after you have started a Google Ads campaign?

How many times have you changed or edited your Facebook AD copy after you have started your campaign?

If you do it continuously for an ongoing campaign, then voila, you have the spirit of a growth marketer.

If you don’t, then don’t worry. We all have done it. Launched a campaign and just sat in front of our monitor hoping the leads would come, hoping the audience likes the post or whatever desirable action you want them to take.

This is where we unconsciously fall into the trap of traditional marketing and completely forget the advantages the world of digital marketing has given us.

Before the digital era, print was only the major medium of marketing communication available with marketers. Once a creative went to print, there was no way to take it back irrespective of any mistakes such as incorrect messages or typographical errors.

Now, we have so many digital mediums with the power of editing & scaling in our hands.

We can easily alter the message our digital assets are sending.

The digital medium also provides us with a good amount of data to study and make decisions.

Now we understand why user centric digital marketing is important.

You can easily change the message your brand conveys to what the customer really wants to hear!

How to Adopt a User Centric Approach

Think this,

It’s almost impossible to make someone do something without knowing him / her?

The better you know that person the better are the chances to convince him to do what you want!

Isn’t that right?

This is what User Centric Approach does to your marketing plan, it shifts it premise from “What you assume your customer wants” to “what he actually wants”

The best way to adopt a user centric approach to your marketing strategy is to start with having a solid user research.

That just doesn’t mean having the regular “Consumer Personas” of your audience.

It is about thinking more than that, such as,

What Your Customer’s Objections Are?

What influences their decisions?

What are their goals on a personal level?

What are their friends saying?

What brands are being recommended on a daily basis?

What are their fears?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can craft your messages more effectively that are cohesive with the psyche of your customer’s psyche which in return makes the whole sales process or the conversion process simpler.

How to better understand your audience?

Usually when someone says, how do I better understand my target audience, huge investments and expenses come to mind.

That’s not always the case, there are ways you can harness the power of data without spending a new dollar!

According to Paul Boag, The user centric marketing coach at CXL Institute there are lots of existing sources within your company or business that can answer crucial questions about your target audience!

Here are a few of them,

The Sales Team

The Support Team

Past Research Documents That Were Overlooked

Past Campaigns Data

Social Data

Your company’s sales team is the face of your company when it comes to your customers. They are in touch with your customers all the time. They answer their questions, they get turned down by the customers, they often know a lot of personal information about their customers.

You can always talk to your sales team and find out common pain points your customers are having or what are the real common objections they are facing day to day.

The customer support team is the dungeon of data. It tells you directly what all problems your customers are facing while using your product or service.

This can be the first place you can look into to find and identify all the major problems your customers are facing and then solve them by deploying tangible solutions through your product or the service.

Just like the above, there are hundreds of factors to look into the past campaigns, social media metrics to find what makes your customers share information or maybe, what kind of information they are sharing, who influences them, what are moaning about!

Once you learn about these things you can then come up with agendas, messages and communication assets that incorporate your user’s feelings!

Conclusion

We have learnt how traditional marketing traps are screwing our digital marketing strategies. We also have learnt how User Centric Marketing can drive more loyalty & revenue for your business and all the benefits that come with it. Such as,

Focusing more on User Research & User Centric Experience Design, Identifying what your customers are really expecting from you as a business.

We also learnt why we need a user centric approach and how to start adopting user experiences into your marketing strategies.

What other factors do you think are important when it comes to User Centric Marketing?