In today’s world of Marketing and the desire for instant results, it’s easy for all of us – whether as marketing professionals or the business partners/clients we serve – to go straight to the tactics. Why? They’re tangible, they’re specific, and they represent an action. And the temptation to immediately jump to tactics is growing as technology innovations expand the array of tactics available, from experiential marketing to machine learning to various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR).

But before we christen any tactic as the panacea for our marketing and business objectives, smart marketing leaders know we have to return the focus to the most important part of the business equation: meeting the needs and expectations of the customer.

Hitting The Target But Missing The Mark

For many of us in our Marketing careers, we likely have encountered situations where we were accountable for a particular business objective but not all of the aspects of the customer experience vital to achieving that objective.

In certain financial services companies, for example, Marketing may have accountability for new account openings. And as Marketing teams or agencies often do, they focus primarily on those tactics or channels where Marketing has the most control – websites, email, direct mail, advertising, social media, sponsorships, etc. Those teams will then carefully track and show the results of their efforts within these channels.

And even if they meet or exceed their channel targets (brand awareness and consideration, website visits, email click-through rates, leads generated, etc.), those efforts will be considered subpar if they did not result in achieving, in this example, the new accounts goal.

Digging deeper into this particular example, we find there are several touchpoints outside of Marketing that have a direct, responsible role in this account-opening process. Areas ranging from Operations, Sales, the call center, IT, even Legal and Compliance are directly involved, therefore impacting this customer experience. And while associates in each of these areas may know their specific responsibilities, they’re often not aware of the interconnectivity of their collective actions affect how customers feel and act throughout this process.

At this point you may be wondering, what does all of this have to do with Marketing? Well, to borrow a line credited to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “we see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every aspect of the customer experience a little better.” As Marketing is often doing the inviting, it has a tremendous opportunity to play a leadership role in bringing different areas together to collaborate on improving the customer experience.

Whether your focus is B2C, B2B or both, here are FIVE Steps marketers can take to improve the customer experience, generate better business outcomes, and deepen relationships with your clients or business partners along the way:

Step 1: Frame the Right Problem to Solve

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A product area comes to your Marketing team and says it has a new product ready to roll out in a couple of weeks and Marketing needs to create a great campaign to promote it. “We just need a few ads, a website, some emails, and maybe some AR thing so we look cool.” You see the desire (order?) to jump straight to tactics. But before running immediately to execution, Marketing leaders first should be asking:

• What problem/need is this product going to solve? (determines criticality)

• For whom specifically? Which customer segment(s) will derive the most benefit? (determines target audience)

• How does this product compare to competitors’ products or other products we already have available? (determines level of differentiation)

• How important is this product rollout to achieving our business goals? (determines possible trade-off decisions)

• How do business goals align with customer needs? (determines company’s level of emphasis on customer experience)

• Are all key areas (Sales, Operations, IT, Customer Service, Legal, etc.) fully prepared for this rollout? (determines organizational readiness to deliver on the customer experience)

By asking, and getting answers to, these questions, you can then determine the level of priority, the anticipated customer experience, and the best marketing strategy.

Step 2: Identify the Customer Champion

Many of us have heard the saying, “if everyone is responsible, then nobody is responsible.” And this certainly can be true when it comes to customer experience.

For those companies willing to make CX a top priority, they should assign a specific person/group to have full accountability for the experience – i.e. the Customer Champion. To make this role successful, however, executive leadership must inform the broader organization that the Customer Champion is empowered to make decisions on actions needed to improve the customer experience, or else the role becomes little more than window dressing.

While a person/group in Marketing could take on this type of role, the organization at the very least should ensure the Customer Champion role works closely with Marketing, which often identifies CX gaps when developing the marketing strategy and the channels needed to support the strategy. Some of the top traits needed for this role include:

• Advocates for best customer experience (is willing to speak up to make sure all areas make the necessary improvements)

• Knows all areas involved in customer experience (similar to a primary care physician, this person should know enough to get the right specialists – i.e. subject matter experts – involved on specific issues)

• Not a senior executive or product owner (is close enough to the experience details yet possesses the objectivity to acknowledge the needed changes)

• Has good decision-making skills (balances what is right for the customer with what is right for the company)

Step 3: Validate Assumptions about the Customer

If you have similar stories to the ones noted above, you’ve probably also heard this type of response when asking a product owner what they know about the target customer: “I know they’ll want this product.” We’ll give ‘em high marks for enthusiasm and confidence, but note opportunities for improvement in customer knowledge and understanding. This is where the use of customer analytics and insights becomes so valuable.

By combining the quantitative (analytics) with the qualitative (insights), we gain a significantly deeper understanding of the right prospective and current customers to target and their motivation for using your product or service. As part of your process to fine-tune the target audience, be sure to ask:

• How many customer types are we targeting? Is this realistic?

• How do these customer types align with our brand and who we can best serve?

• How are these customers already experiencing our brand and how do they feel about that experience?

• How do their needs differ? If so, how different are those needs?

• What experiences would they expect? Should those experiences differ by customer type, especially if they’re a current customer vs. a prospect?

Step 4: Engage With Key Stakeholders

If your company has been around more than a few years and has more than, say, 50 employees, chances are pretty good that no one person or area knows all the end-to-end details of a particular customer experience. This is not uncommon and is often the result of company silos that exist because individual areas are only responsible (i.e. evaluated and compensated) for their specific activities.

This is where Marketing and/or the Customer Champion can step in to gather the key stakeholders and develop a “single source of truth” that all areas can turn to for determining how they can improve – or help another area improve – their part in the overall experience. And while Marketing can lead this exercise, it also can benefit from determining different or better ways to contact and/or engage customers once it knows how other areas are interacting with that customer based off those Marketing touchpoints.

This “single source of truth” often can take the form of a customer experience map. While it’s great if you have on staff, or can contract with, CX experts trained in creating these maps, you can still derive great benefit by at least cataloguing the following components:

• For each customer touchpoint, what are we asking the customer to do next? What if the customer decides to take an action different than what we’ve asked? With what or whom will that customer interact at this point?

• For each employee interacting with that customer, how are we asking them to handle this situation? What is that employee’s role and purpose for interacting with the customer? What information, resources or training will they need to keep the customer satisfied and proceeding to the next step?

• What are the technology needs for supporting each customer touchpoint? Do we already have these technology needs addressed, or will this require new IT work?

• Which legal and/or regulatory concerns must we address for each customer touchpoint? Are there ways to minimize our risk without hampering the customer experience we want to put forward?

• How does this customer experience impact our marketing strategies? Are we using the most appropriate and effective channels to engage with these customers? Should we revisit the language in our marketing content to ensure the customer knows what to expect from this experience?

Step 5: Specify Success And How To Measure It

For those marketers who have worked a lot with sales teams or product areas during their careers, you’ve probably encountered the frustration of differing opinions on how well the Marketing team is doing to support business goals. This could have been based on unknown or unrealistic expectations for what Marketing would deliver. To avoid repeating this situation in the future, Marketing leaders should sit down with their client or business partner to clarify and get shared agreement on:

• Specific metrics for business goals (e.g., product sales, new accounts)

• Specific metrics for marketing goals (e.g., leads generated, channel metrics, brand metrics)

• Value of marketing metrics to business metrics (e.g., why and how metrics such as brand consideration or positive social media interactions support lead generation)

• Integrated funnel or dashboard (so Marketing, business partners and the Customer Champion can work in lockstep)

• Timing to review results (so Marketing, business partners and the Customer Champion can collectively determine how/when/where adjustments should be made)

While all of us look forward to 2018 bringing us the next great innovation for communicating with customers, here’s hoping we all never lose sight of why our companies exist in the first place (to serve our customers) and what we can do to deliver the best experience possible after inviting them to our party.

What are your perspectives on this topic, and how can you help fellow marketers get better in this area? Share your thoughts here.

Justin Gioia has led marketing, customer segment and communications functions for several multi-billion dollar companies in the financial services, energy and biotech areas. He currently is looking for his next marketing leadership challenge.