Customer-Centric Marketing: Build Relationships, Create Advocates, and Influence Your Customers

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

A New Order of Business

KEEP IT REAL

We've looked at how customer centricity and understanding the new customer purchase journey can be the key to success for organizations of any size. And yet achieving this goal can be difficult, elusive at best. While we recognize changes unfolding in front of us, our organizations seem totally unprepared to let go of old methods, cultures, and thinking that are significantly out of step with evolving customer expectations.

I honestly think that as technology gets smarter, we humans are getting dumber when it counts. We seem to be living in the moment. Instead of living through experiences, we fill our lives with stuff—a great deal of it digital. Here lies the real challenge for businesses and individuals: How do you build a real relationship, which takes time to develop, if you only get a moment? How do you create relationships with people who are increasingly isolated or living in a self-induced digital bubble when these relationships are online and built around tweets?

I'm betting the answer lies in communications that revolve around simplicity, empathy, and intimacy, and this approach does not just apply to customers; it applies to everyone in your organization. There is no better example than the shoemaker and how he built his business around quality products, superior experience, and intimate customer knowledge. I leave ...