Monthly Archives: August 2015

How CMOs Can Achieve Better Marketing With Goal-Directed Buyer Personas

When it comes to buyer personas, the expression “if it were only that simple” certainly applies. There has been an abundance of advice on how to create buyer personas – simply. In the past two years alone, there have been numerous articles, postings, books, and templates on how to create buyer personas. Many professed buyer persona experts each promising simple steps towards creating buyer personas. When I first launched the concept of buyer personas in 2001, the worry then was helping marketing and sales executives to understand what was behind the development of personas. And, how to get past looking…

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What CMOs Need To Know About Listening To The Customer

It is a generally accepted notion that listening is vital to having positive and healthy interpersonal relationships. Listening is an essential skill for leaders in business, politics, sports, and in many different aspects of culture and society. As a country, we have had many leaders rise to the occasion upon their ability to listen and connect with people and their causes. For CMOs today, listening to customers has become one of the key ingredients shaping their success in connecting brands with customers. Expanding the growth of their customer base is predicated, to a high degree, on having listening be an active…

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Staying Relevant In An Era Of Disruption And Elusive Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty continues to be a top-of-mind concern for CEOs, as studies and surveys from the likes of IBM and others have shown. During the past decade or more, we have seen the use of customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Score, and the rise in customer experience as means for gauging customer loyalty. The central points being that of keeping customers satisfied and providing great customer experiences will keep customers loyal. In fact, a recent study on customer experience surveying 500 plus executives sponsored by Genesys, showed a very strong correlation between providing high-quality customer experiences and customer retention. Here…

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Gaining The Attention Of Buyers In A Hyper-Connected World

As we have all experienced, our hyper-connected world is becoming more chaotic with more mediums vying for our attention. Advanced digital technologies have meant more channels to hear, see, and search for information. For many consumers as well as business buyers, the overwhelming availability of choices can create anxiety-laden confusion. Causing a seemingly straightforward effort to turn into an exercise fraught with indecision. When we strip away the layers and boil down to the kernel, what most businesses are vying for is the attention of buyers. Attention is, nowadays, a very precious jewel organizations strive to possess. Gaining the attention…

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