The Connected Omnichannel Experience: An Interview with Marty Kihn, SVP Strategy, SalesForce
Release Date: 01/23/2022
The B2B Journey Map: An Interview with Jim Tincher, President, Heart of the Customer
Customer First Thinking
B2B companies tend to be laggards when it comes to delivering a superior customer experience, focused more on selling than servicing. But as a result of digital disruption, they have finally begun to embrace the need for a better post-sale journey, according to Jim Tincher, a leading expert in B2B experience design.
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Saving Market Research: An Interview with Brett Townsend, SVP of Strategy, Quester
Customer First Thinking
The market research industry is facing an existential crisis. Brand marketers have lost faith in old school methods of research – too slow, cumbersome and costly, in their view. To regain the trust of marketers, the consumer insights industry has to modernize their practices and start delivering insights that make more of a strategic impact, says Brett Townsend, a leading market research authority.
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Buyer Personas: An Interview with Jim Kraus, President, Buyer Persona Institute
Customer First Thinking
Buyer Personas have become a standard part of the marketing toolkit for creating customer empathy. But where they can go wrong is failing to reveal why customers make the decisions they do, according to persona design authority Jim Kraus.
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Cultural Intelligence: An Interview with Anastasia Karklina Gabriel, Senior Insights Lead at Reddit and Cultural Theorist
Customer First Thinking
These days it can be risky for brands to take a stand on social issues or promote inclusiveness. But if marketers are able to honestly depict the diversity of society in their brand communications, their message has a far greater chance of being heard, according to cultural theorist Anastasia Karklina Gabriel.
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Customer Equity: An Interview with Allison Hartsoe, AI Value Creation Consultant and Author
Customer First Thinking
Companies still tend to over-invest in the acquisition of new customers while paying scant attention to relationships with existing customers. The solution to correcting that imbalance, argues value creation expert Allison Hartsoe, is knowing the collective lifetime value of all customers, known as customer equity.
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Transforming the Customer Experience: An Interview with Jon Picoult, Founder and Principal, Watermark Consulting
Customer First Thinking
CX quality has declined in recent years as companies struggle to keep up with the expectations of customers. But the main reason, according to renowned CX expert Jon Picoult, is that they settle for mediocrity when they should be aspiring to make the experience more distinctive and memorable.
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Social Media Marketing: An Interview with Andrew Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer, Volterra
Customer First Thinking
For all its flaws, social media has become the preferred way for people to stay connected with each other. Yet for too long marketers have failed to take it seriously. The time has come, says social media expert Andrew Jenkins, for marketers to give it the respect it deserves.
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Brand Health: An Interview with Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor and Associate Director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
Customer First Thinking
Brand tracking studies are a standard research tool for marketers who need to understand how people feel about their brand. The problem with them, according to brand health expert Jenni Romaniuk, is that they don’t tell marketers what they really need to know to grow their brand.
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Content Marketing Strategy: An Interview with Robert Rose, Founder, The Content Advisory
Customer First Thinking
Content glut has suffocated the chances of discovery for most marketers. The only way for content marketing to succeed, according to renowned content strategist Robert Rose, is to transform content operations teams into specialized publishing units closely attuned to audience interests and needs.
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Marketing Science: An Interview with Koen Pauwels, Vice Dean of Research, Northeastern University
Customer First Thinking
Marketing today has grown far too complex for decisions to hinge on loose assumptions and guesswork. A more disciplined and fact-based approach is needed, supported by rigorous performance analysis, testing and forecasting, according to Koen Pauwels, one of the world’s leading marketing scientists.
info_outlineIn a post-cookie world marketing will need to give up campaign-building in favour of delivering a more dynamic and real-time omnichannel customer experience. But the quality of that experience will hinge on harnessing first-party data to drive more personalized interactions. And that will require a single view of customer tightly connected to a next generation engagement platform, according to SalesForce’s Marty Kihn.