How to Create Alignment Between Your ICP and Go-to-Market Strategy

Nicolas Deswarte , CMO of Thiga, shares insights on aligning Ideal Customer Profiles with go-to-market strategies. He emphasizes weekly customer engagement to ensure marketing, sales, and customer success efforts resonate with real needs. He also shares his insights that drives alignment, campaign effectiveness, and clarity in organizational communication.

"The people in the company who are facing customers should know the learnings from your customers and apply them immediately. That’s also how we feed the brand with those product learnings, settings, and marketing insights." - Nicolas Deswarte

Nicolas Deswarte emphasizes the value of connecting Ideal Customer Profiles with go-to-market strategies through regular customer engagement. This method strengthens team collaboration, especially between sales and marketing, while boosting campaign impact. By representing market insights, marketing leaders inspire trust and shape strategic decisions.

“How to Create Alignment Between Your ICP and Go-to-Market Strategy”

This article is based on a podcast interview with Nicolas Deswarte, CMO at Thiga

Ongoing Customer Engagement: A Strategic Priority

Customer engagement is an ongoing, dynamic process, not just a task for onboarding or transitioning into a role. Nicolas emphasized that he makes it a priority to speak with a customer at least once a week. This regular interaction forms the foundation of a customer-centric approach, ensuring marketing strategies directly address evolving needs and pain points revealed through these conversations.

As Nicolas described, immersion in the customer experience allows CMOs to extract meaningful insights into their routines and challenges. Regular dialogue grounds marketing in real-world customer experiences, ensuring authentic messaging resonates with its audience. Continuous insights also keep strategies flexible, enabling marketers to adapt to shifting trends and emerging needs quickly.

Enhancing Cross-Departmental Alignment Through Shared Learnings

Nicolas emphasizes the importance of breaking down silos across sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams by promoting shared learning. Weekly customer dialogues provide insights that help departments align their messaging and vocabulary, ensuring a consistent brand image. Nicolas advocates for a unified approach, focusing on shared goals, personas, and market understanding to drive cohesive business efforts.

Monthly all-hands meetings, where Nicolas shares actionable insights from customer interactions, reinforce this alignment. His "five bullet points" approach simplifies complex ideas into practical steps, enabling teams to integrate insights into daily operations. This strategy empowers employees to deliver consistent messaging, strengthening the brand’s credibility and fostering client trust.

The Strategic Role of Marketing as the Voice of the Market

In executive settings, consistent dialogue with the market equips CMOs like Nicolas with the authority to drive strategic conversations. By embracing the "voice of the market," Nicolas underscores how informed marketing leaders shape high-level decisions with validated, customer-backed messaging. This approach secures marketing leaders a seat at the table and builds trust in their strategic guidance.

Nicolas shared his practice of anchoring major decisions in customer feedback, bringing tangible insights to executive discussions to align strategies with market needs. By bridging the gap between the market’s pulse and company objectives, this method strengthens confidence in decision-making, ensures alignment with genuine customer priorities, and reinforces the value of marketing as a critical driver of organizational success.

Conclusion

A customer-first mindset is essential for business growth. By consistently engaging with customers, CMOs can develop a deep understanding that informs marketing strategies, enhances collaboration across departments, and strengthens leadership. This approach ties success to an evolving knowledge of customer needs and preferences.

Nicolas Deswarte’s insights emphasize that businesses thrive when they prioritize meaningful customer relationships, not just transactions. A customer-first culture creates adaptability and ensures long-term success in a dynamic market. Organizations must actively seek customer insights, making them a foundation for strategic decisions, fostering alignment, and driving sustained growth.

This article is sourced from the C-Suite Sales & Marketing Perspectives podcast, hosted by Steven MacDonald, CEO of ContentStrategies.