As I was thinking further about this, I came across an article in Harvard Business Review's latest November 2010 issue titled "Stress-Test Your Strategy: The 7 Questions to Ask" by Robert Simons. Not surprisingly, his first question is whether companies really know the answer to "Who is your primary customer?" His main argument is that companies often struggle to serve too many customers and in the end fail to serve any one customer really well. His example of McDonalds shifting focus from franchisees to ultimate consumers as their primary customer which led to their huge success is a great example.
In my experience as a marketer, we simply cannot afford to serve too many constituents effectively at the same time. Besides the endemic resource and budget constraints, it also becomes impractical to really hone in on a strong position and supporting messaging if the efforts are dispersed to address different audiences at the same time. Further, with volume of messages and channels of content distribution exploding these days, it is all the more critical for marketers to stay fixated on one primary customer in order to communicate something of relevance based on continuous engagement and feedback from the audience we are trying to serve.
Consequently, my focus today is on the end customer. The end consumer of our products and solutions is my only primary customer. So, what about all the others who also need to be served: the field, program teams, partners, product organization, etc.? Well, in my view, these others are simply channels to get our message across to the primary customer. These others are not my primary customers. My job is to enable these channels with the right strategy, message, content, etc. so that they can get the right message across to the single primary customer.
Pros and cons of this approach? For one thing, it has helped my team focus on one primary (and most important) audience - the end consumer of our solutions - and generate meaningful and consistently high quality engagements. By constant engagement with this primary customer, we are able to learn iteratively and improve. The challenge has been resetting expectations of some other customers (channels) we have also tried to serve as primary customers in the past. Change is certainly not easy to come!
So, who is your primary customer? What is your experience serving them? Would like to hear your thoughts.
Thanks
Vinay
Vinay
Agree with the points you make. I would take this one step further and say all customer-serving internal stakeholders (Sales, Marketing, Prod Development, Customer Service, etc.) should make customer-centricity their primary focus. When we have a common customer goal to align to, cross-departmental strategy, objective setting and alignment should become easier (provided that politics don't interfere to a great extent). With all teams rowing in the same direction, success should be achieved with less effort, as opposed to expending energy frothing about while the competition glides on by.
ReplyDeleteWith the customer as the focal point, success is defined by customer acceptance. Personal opinion becomes less important in guiding internal decision-making on what the customer needs to see, hear or experience. Customer engagement and feedback should drive the actions we take and the outputs we produce, giving us a more objective means to measure our success.
Good point about the need for the entire organization to become customer centric. Perhaps marketing can take the lead and permeate the idea elsewhere in the organization...
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