The scientific method is an elegant one – always experimenting in the pursuit of the truth and accepting that new facts overturn previous belief. Our experiences shape and builds our understanding, and and it’s critical to never assume we know everything.
Great marketing is borne of this mindset. Best practices, judgment, and instinct guide marketing strategy, but what sets makes it great is the practice of experimenting, observing, analyzing and breaking new ground.
If you’re a Marketer today, and you’re not thinking this way, it’s time to reflect on whether you’re doing your best.
Marketing must be transformational
Your organization might be failing because it’s not responding to changes in your marketplace. And, you might not even know it.
Unless you acknowledge that marketing needs to adopt an inquiring and observational mindset in order to identify and lead business transformation, then you’re missing a huge opportunity – for you and for your organization.
We’ve seen some spectacular failures where brands just haven’t responded to change quickly enough; Borders and Blockbusters have become sad case studies in failure. And, we’ve seen others like Amazon and Uber who have not only responded to new customer preferences, but been forward-thinking enough to shape them. So what about your organization? How can you make sure it’s a master of change, not a slave to it?
Understand and experiment based on holistic observation
Be brave enough to keep asking questions about your customers and your organization, and develop the means to answer them. Stay close to your customers – understanding what they want and why, what they’re doing, when and how.
This isn’t a new idea. But there are modern approaches that provide new insight, about customers, and opening up a whole new line of understanding. It has the potential to keep us right on the pulse of change so we can tell the organization how to respond.
What exactly is this new method?
SugarCRM recently partnered with Telsyte to talk with 255 CMOs in Australian & New Zealand about how they’re getting closer to customers and shaping business transformation based on their observations.
From those results, we produced a report for marketing leaders entitled “Digital Leaders Use Customer Journey Maps to Guide Business Transformation.”
The paper looks at the value of personas and customer journey maps in relation to business transformation, and some of the practical steps to implementing them.
About half the Marketing leaders said:
“Our team promotes an understanding of the customer across the organization, helping to shape its entire approach to business transformation.”
Are you in this half?
For all your CRM needs contact InnoventCRM today on 1300 781 681 or info@innoventcrm.com.au