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Forrester Offers Seven Steps to Better Marketing

The key to the marketer's success is to focus on the needs of the customer and the benefits that can be delivered, according to a new report from Forrester.

"Focusing on consumer needs is a healthy first principle that will engender success and avoid technology-led strategies," said Forrester Analyst Anthony Mullen in a release.

Marketers must pivot their strategy from a channel-based to a needs-based approach. This will ensure that marketers focus on the benefits they can bring customers and will avoid the problem of new technologies shaping strategies too early in the process.

Mullen outlines seven steps to a needs-based marketing strategy, suggesting replacement of the concept that brand strategies are driven by how marketers can meet their own objectives with the idea that consumers' needs must drive the approach.

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Marketers aren’t alone in feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of emerging technologies and the competitors that are capitalizing on them.

The steps are:

1. Select a customer whom you wish to serve. Capture a sense of what these people want from life.

2. Select a customer life cycle stage to focus on. Select the area in which you need to improve the experience for customers: discover, explore, buy, or engage.

3. Identify the fundamental customer need(s) you will fulfill. Examine the needs (comfort, variety, uniqueness, connection, or a mix) these customers have for the stage of the life cycle you wish to serve.

4. Identify the benefit your customers want next from your marketing. Highlight how you can  add value to support these customers’ needs.

5. Explore the features that will deliver these benefits. Outline the features in a technology-agnostic manner that can deliver these benefits.

6. Select the technology to deliver the features. Choose the technologies to develop, commission, or license to deliver the feature.

7. Set key performance indicators (KPIs). Outline what measurable benefit this will deliver to your brand.

Customer needs and benefits should drive emerging touchpoint strategy.

Complexity, technology faddism, and a disconnected entrepreneurial culture slow marketers down, yield bad data, duplicate integration costs, and ultimately create a poor-quality experience for customers.

Reduce complexity and increase speed of response by having a clear strategy focused on customers’ needs and the benefits you can bring to them.

2 comments about "Forrester Offers Seven Steps to Better Marketing".
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  1. Matt Sincaglia from RedPeg Marketing, October 17, 2013 at 9:42 a.m.

    There is a major flaw in these steps if Forrester is building them chronologically. Step 7 should be moved all the way to the front. We should use marketing efforts to solve business challenges. By defining quantitative and qualitative KPIs up front, the rest of this process can fall into place. Using results-driven objectives helps to build programs that can accomplish business' needs. Aren't those needs are equally as important as those of your consumers?

  2. Anthony Mullen from Forrester, October 18, 2013 at 9:35 a.m.

    Hi Matt,

    Thanks for the comment. There are two stages to creating a good marriage between what your customers need and how it can benefit your brand. First, a period of obsessing around how you can be of relevance to your customers and adjacent groups - irrespective of your own agenda/goals/technology stack. This will give you a long list of things you could theoretically do. Second, that list is then prioritised based on the KPI for each feature (benefit to you) and your existing capability to deliver it. This would be a road-mapping phase.

    An old approach to strategy would have been to say "we need more 20% more reach on mobile" and then a scramble for approaches would ensue. This isn't as strong a root as - "how can we support the needs of consumers?".

    Remember stage 2 (select lifecycle) will implicitly narrow the field for you by focussing on discover, explore, buy, or engage.

    Hope that helps and that you can get a chance to read the report.

    Anthony

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