Customer Centric Marketing.

Marketing has always been about making your product known to the target market, to gain their patronage.

But really, is it?

Customers are the reason a business exists. If your marketing is not focused on satisfying the customers, is it really effective?

In times past, the 4Ps of marketing was the ultimate guide. The Ps stand for: product, price, place, and promotion.

The 4Ps of marketing are very vital to the success of your marketing efforts. The only problem is that they are focused on the business, not the customer. And really, you are not in business for yourself; you are here for the customers.

Customer centric marketing involves channeling all your marketing efforts to the customer, having the customer at the centerpoint of your marketing efforts, ensuring their satisfaction. It is a marketing approach that is designed to focus on the needs and interests of the customer, prioritizing the customer over any other factor through the use of intuition, common sense, studying consumer behaviour, data, etc.

To make your marketing customer centric, you ought to first of all, see things from your customer’s point of view. It’s not enough to know your business and your products or service indepthly. If you don’t know your customers indepthly, you are doing your marketing wrong. This will help you tie your product to your customer in the best way possible.

The beautiful thing about the 4Ps of marketing is that they can also be used in a customer centric way, they don’t have to be used the way it was used years ago. We shall be analyzing them one at a time.

For Product, instead of just thinking of what features you want to include in the product, you should focus on what your customers want in the product.

• What do they look out for?
• What are their interests and values?
• How can it satisfy the customers optimally?
• How can your product meet the needs of your customers?
• Is the User Experience favourable?

These are the questions that should be put into consideration when working on the product. As much as you like a certain feature in your product, it doesn’t matter as much as what the customers actually prefer. When talking about the price, here are a couple of questions to consider.

• How much does my target customer value this product?
• What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?
• How will your price compare to competitors?
• Are there any possible established price points for the product/service in this area?

As much as you consider how much you put into creating the product, you must consider the value the customer attaches to it because it will determine if they will consider the cost you put into it worth it and if they will buy it at the price you set.

When you are considering the Place factor, how you will reach your customers, you should be more focused on how they want to be reached, not just how you think is best to get to them. Ask yourself some pertinent questions:

• Where do they shop?
• How do they shop?
• Do they like home delivery?
• Where do they like to engage?

Talking about Promotion, how you will get their attention, here a few questions to answer:

• Where do they spend their time?
• What do they do at such places, whether online or physical.
• What times are they at such places?

being customer centered in your marketing efforts is highly underestimated. but it is very important because the more effort you put into giving value to the people that matter the most, the people you are in business for, your customer, the better it will bring results for your marketing.