Since the turn of the millennium, mastering and perfecting the Customer Experience (CX) has been a goal for Marketing Leaders. Through CX strategy, leading revenue marketing teams will uncover areas of friction and process as a continuous feedback loop between Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. As the CMO, remember—you are the one who ultimately owns the automation tools and analytics that can inform sales leadership about the current state of CX and how it’s improving. Knowing how and why customers select specific products can help your company allocate spending and elevate CX.
The goal for the majority of Revenue Marketing teams will be to achieve alignment with Sales and Customer Success on shared revenue objectives. Still, best-in-class revenue marketing teams have the tools to drive deeper results through customer experience. These tools can be leveraged to optimize touchpoints across the customer lifecycle. And through a successful CX strategy, Revenue Marketing teams will support the acquisition, nurturing, and retention of customers.
CMOs Are in a Position to Own the Customer Journey and Acquire Lifelong Customers Along the Way
As a Marketing Leader, you are most likely (and constantly, for that matter) reminded by Sales that “we need more leads” or “we need better leads.” To help you find the answers, take advantage of our Revenue Marketing Strategy Tool, which can help you and your team as you re-invent yourselves into revenue-driving marketers.
And as the CMO, you’re uniquely positioned to own the customer journey, from form-fill to closed deal. Owning that customer journey will enable you and your team to generate faster returns on Marketing’s investments through shorter sales cycles. How? Marketing will find itself able to capture buyer preferences, intent data, and buyer feedback which can be incorporated into your strategy for future prospecting. By capturing this feedback and reinvesting it in your strategy, you’re fueling the continuous feedback engine to enable your team to acquire more prospects in the future.
A Holistic View of the Customer Will Provide at-Bats for Sales to Cross-Sell
Best-in-class Revenue Marketing teams will also assist in driving revenue growth through personalization. By “personalization,” we are simply referring to customization to nurture the customer throughout the customer’s journey. Through a well-rounded universal view of the customer, you as the CMO are in the position to recognize patterns (in buying behavior, for example). By understanding the Buyer’s journey and mapping touchpoints to that journey, you can introduce relevant content at relevant times to drive further penetration. Sales can then leverage that feedback loop to target key pain points in the customer journey and introduce cross-sell and up-sell plays that would solve those issues. Re-engaging customers at the correct time based on propensity-to-buy will drive further revenue through penetration and increase the light shined on Marketing’s contribution to revenue.
Recognize Patterns to Identify Pockets of Churn
Lastly, driving measurable improvements in customer retention is an important and often overlooked way for Marketing to have an impact on revenue. Churn, or the “leaky bucket,” is an inevitable part of any business. Remember that 80% of your future sales are likely to come from 20% of your current customers. Capturing insights from customer touchpoints will allow your team to leverage that information for identifying likely areas of churn. For example, this may allow you to identify customers whose data center usage has declined year-over-year, which would be an indication of possible churn. Those insights then get baked back into the model to prevent future churn (remember: continuous loop).
Leading revenue teams will also prevent churn by mastering the customer journey and staying relevant. Providing real-time solutions for anticipated pain points will make you a hero, and on top of that – it will drive value for your customers.
Next Steps
To recap, best-in-class Revenue Marketing teams will leverage CX strategy to be able to support the acquisition of customers, as the CMO owns the entire Customer Experience (from form-fill to closed deal). Secondly, the nurturing of customers because your team will identify areas along the customer journey that are ripe for cross-sell/upsell opportunities. And last but not least, the retention of customers, since you will be able to identify early indicators of attrition. So as the Marketing Leader, what are you supposed to do about all of this?
Again, the most important next step you can take is to leverage our Revenue Marketing Strategy Tool to activate your strategy. With a common framework to align objectives, define tactics, and place big bets - what do you have to lose?
