As we mentioned in our blog post last week, our present situation is not only a safety issue; it's a business issue. The time is now to put new frameworks, processes, and systems in place to deliver value to the customers that matter most.
As we climb out of the COVID-19 uncertainty, how should we focus on the right customers that will drive growth? What strategies can we employ to be poised to take share once the markets turn?
Developing your B2P strategy [blog post on B2P] is part of the strategic continuum: Brand – Value, Value – Communications, Communications - Data-driven Account-Based Marketing. As you map out your business for the remainder of 2020: Focus your energy on appropriate marketing spend and efficient use of your sales team's time?
Many companies start with your ideal customer profile to find the companies that fit your services or products. That is a good start, so often it's subjective: Company A has been a stable customer, or Company B loves our products.
What we recommend, as your starting point, sits in your tech stack (CRM, ERP, and Financial Systems). To truly understand your ideal customer, you must initiate an accurate Segmentation Analysis by doing a deep data dive into your customer and financial systems. Further, embrace that you don't have all the right data to do this correctly, so explore ways to quantify otherwise qualitative descriptors and business practices of your existing and target customer base.
People tend to confuse market segmentation with price segmentation. In market segmentation, the goal is to find similar customers to market. Market segmentation is about the whole package, finding large segments of people that tend to behave and respond similarly.
Conversely, price segmentation is about determining who, within the market segment, is willing to pay (WTP) how much. Price segmentation generally is developed aftermarket segmentation.
Letting data tell you which customers fully utilize your offering, which customers are profitable, which customers are not. Without developing Customer, Marketing, and Price Segmentation, you are making decisions without full knowledge. [Case study on Customer Segmentation]
Once you have completed your Customer and Market Segmentation modeling and analysis, now you can begin the work to update your CRM, and this should be considered an ongoing process is going forward. By defining the new objects that not only tag the ideal customer profile but begin to bring visibility in the ranking so your marketing and sales teams can start mapping new target accounts. Use analytics from the learnings and scoring schemes from your segmentation process to "triage" your customers so Salespeople know where they should be spending their time and why.
If not already part of your tech stack, look at data-enrichment tools like Zoominfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, InfoUSA, Datanyze, Infer, Clearbit, InsideView, and Everstring.
Once again, via the segmentation process, determine those ideal customers and uncover which products and services are the best fit to align your growth and customer needs? Keep in mind that not all customers are created equal, and not all revenue dollars are created equal, overlay a Product Segmentation over your revised Customer Segmentation. The combination of Customer and Product Segmentation will be the beginning of your growth strategy with existing and target customers. A good start for your account mapping variables is customer scoring, product scoring, territory, family, and line item revenue and profit. Once you have finalized mapping, you should integrate it into your CRM. If using Salesforce Enterprise CRM, you can leverage Altify for strategic account planning.
Customer Intimacy is a crucial output from B2P strategy development. With that goal in place, how and who you target, coupled with how you communicate, will either set you up for success or unnecessary challenges for marketing and sales teams. Translating your Brand Strategy to a clearly defined value attributes and messaging framework by Persona and by Customer Segment is the foundation for your Account-Based Marketing and sets you up to deliver on your Brand Promise. [Case Study on Brand Strategy to Persona to Activation to ABM - Qualcomm]
As you develop messaging, make sure you're categorizing your messaging based on the Customer Experience Lifecycle (CXL).
You have customers and prospects that are in each stage of the CXL at all times. Prioritize your efforts by your newly developed Customer Scoring [existing and targeted].
To deliver on Customer Intimacy, look beyond your existing marketing toolbox. Video marketing/selling using tools like Vidyard and Wistia will allow for customization and a great way to stand out.
Conversational marketing via chatbot by means like Drift and Intercom can and will enhance the experience of prospects have with your brand and your site.
Revise your KPIs to measure the success of your B2P Data-driven ABM Strategy for both customers and prospects as they move through the CXL. Most of our reporting is output from Hubspot's existing library of pre-generated reports. For your updated dashboards, make sure you have visibility by target accounts by activity, sales rep, marketing, product/service usage, and Customer Scoring. Additional tools for reporting you can use; Domo, Microsoft BI, Tableau, Google Looker. If you want to look at ABM platforms to add to your stack, a few to look at Engagio, Terminus, 6Sense, Triblio, Madison Logic, and PathFactory.
The key to success is mapping and communicating first internally, then consistency externally. Questions to answer: What is our brand? What value do we provide to customers? What data sources do we leverage to understand and score customers? How are we going to focus on and measure the success of our defined ideal customers?
Integrating data into your strategy, decision making, marketing, and sales will help you grow your company, one customer at a time: the right customer, the ideal customer. Enhance your Customer Experience Lifecycle now, during these uncertain times, to be ready when things open up and capture market share.
Take advantage of the market disruptions in your industry to get closer to those customers you should embed with, and understand how to utilize your scare resources (Salespeople, and Marketing $$$s) more appropriately.
In our next blog, we will show how the lockdown has actually increased productivity through higher availability and focus, and how this increased proficiency can further target to increase your chances of market share success.
