Remember when you started hearing the “customer experience” buzzword thrown around? As a marketer, you were probably wondering what the big deal was — you’ve been focused on the customer experience for years.

That’s exactly what Rhoan Morgan was thinking. She’s worked in marketing for more than 25 years, and she’s seen firsthand the deep imprint technology has made on the industry. That’s why, more than a decade ago, she co-founded DemandLab, a consultancy that helps businesses leverage technology and data to meet customer success goals.

But to successfully cater to your customers, Rhoan urges B2B companies to look beyond the simple idea of customer experience and instead focus on a newer concept: the marketing-led customer experience.

Rhoan joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to explain exactly what the marketing-led customer experience looks like, why data and teamwork are critical to the process, and how you can begin implementing this into your larger strategy.

What is the Marketing-led Customer Experience?

The marketing-led customer experience is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a customer experience approach that turns marketers into customer champions, journey creators, and experience innovators, Rhoan describes.

“What you’re doing is you’re using technology, data, and content to really engage with a company’s audience — but in a way that matters to the customer,” she says.

Traditionally, several teams within an organization own the customer experience. Oftentimes, these teams operate in a vacuum. The marketing-led approach aims to make customer experience a more fluid “ecosystem.”

“When marketing-led customer experience is really well implemented in an organization, we’re seeing it’s optimizing every customer interaction, and it’s really pulling together what used to be a rather siloed process,” Rhoan says.

The reality is, B2C companies have been doing this for years (think: Amazon, Zappos, Nordstrom). Now, B2B companies are rising to meet these higher customer expectations.

The Key to Turning Loyal Customers Into Champions: Teamwork

It’s no secret customer loyalty is huge in the B2B world. And if you can turn a loyal customer into your champion? Even better. Those champions will give you repeat sales, and they’ll hand-deliver new leads. They’re invaluable.

But Rhoan says companies often don’t give loyalty initiatives enough attention (or budget). Usually, they’re missing one critical component: Teamwork.

That’s where this idea of the marketing-led customer experience comes into play.

“We might say it’s a marketing-led customer experience, but it absolutely is a full company-wide initiative,” Rhoan says. “Every single team member, every single team has to understand how they’re impacting the customer experience. They have to know how important it is that they’re playing a role.”

This might not be so obvious at first — aren’t the marketing, sales, and customer success teams interacting with customers the most?

Not entirely. Even accountants can (and should) impact the customer experience, Rhoan explains. For example, if a client is regularly late on payment, an accountant can gain insights from the backend of their invoicing software and work with the client to set up a process or schedule that suits the clients needs.

Using Data to Make Customer Experience a Company-wide Effort

So how can the marketing team drive this mission to the rest of the company? Data.

“And not only collecting it, but knowing how to then transform that data into something that is usable within the organization,” Rhoan adds.

If you’re not sure what data to tap into, she suggests starting with these three metrics:

1. Renewal rates
2. Churn rates
3. Sales cycle (so how quickly your buyers are moving through it and converting)

Think about how you can use this data to improve customer experience, then set specific goals around these points.

Rhoan urges marketers to examine each part of the process under a microscope. For example, if you want to focus on increasing renewal rates, take a good look at everything that touches the renewal process and really dissect each part.

Then, start making small tweaks to your process, so you can better understand what’s impacting the customer experience. Closely monitor and record the feedback.

Once you start collecting this insight and understanding how it could impact revenue, make your case to management. In order for marketing-led customer experience initiatives to work, you’ll need buy-in from every team on the organization.

Once everyone is on board, start sharing this data and these goals across the teams!

AMP Up Your Digital Marketing brings together the leading marketing practitioners to share how they are succeeding in today’s digital landscape. Each podcast episode focuses on providing you with the knowledge and strategies you need to be a successful marketer. Subscribe via Apple, FIR Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts. 

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