User-Centric Marketing – Review 2/12

This week’s article is on User-Centric Marketing, a part of Growth Marketing from CXL Institute https://cxl.com/. In last week’s article, I wrote on "growth marketing approach to business growth https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/growth-marketing-approach-business-olawale-adeniyi/.

Remember the use case for this series? ?ABCash is a fintech company that provides p2p cash and loan services to consumers through mobile, web, and ussd channels. Paulina is the name of our growth marketer, leading the growth department of ABCash.

Why user-centric marketing?

The rate of digital has changed our relationship with customers. The world has evolved and will keep evolving so also is marketing. Digital comes with an unprecedented amount of data that needs to fundamentally change how we approach marketing.

How has digital influenced consumer behavior?

Digital means consumers now have an unprecedented level of choice, users are forced to narrow down their choice and may end up dismissing an option for the slightest reason.

At the same time, attention span is low, desire for customization is high, and search for solutions at the point of need is rampant. Therefore, companies need to understand the users and provide solutions at the point of need to stay competitive.

Although digital has amplified word-of-mouth so that good products acquire users with no or limited marketing budget, the company also suffers the risk of reputation damage as customers can use the same medium to complain.

Based on this understanding, marketing approach needs to move from traditional to digital. Kindly note that some businesses may not have their users online. And that is fine. However, if your users are growing adopters of digital media, you might want to find your way to the channels they use.

For instance, Facebook is fantastic for B2C marketing, Instagram is more suitable for B2C e-commerce businesses, and LinkedIn for B2B businesses. There are just 3 channels out of the myriad options available to you as a business owner or professional.

Digital has equally, given companies (startups) who do not have big muscles and the budget of the big players the opportunity to compete adequately on a level playing field. With this, a small player has access to channels, audacity, and the opportunity to fight for market share. Therefore, the risk of disruption stays high.

What does user-centric marketing use?

Data: user-centered marketing is data-driven

Cross-discipline: User research and user experience design contributes to user-centered marketing

Digital tool: this is important to better understand the user and user journey and help design your marketing strategy around them.

Experimentation: a user-centered design validates the campaign, ideas on every implementation stage to maximize their effectiveness.

The User-Centered Marketing Process

1.??????Understanding the audience

2.??????Top-task analysis

3.??????Involving the User

4.??????Redesigning your Marketing Strategy

5.??????Refine your Strategy Post Launch

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Understanding the Audience

The process starts with understanding the user. The more you understand the user, the better you can persuade them. The most common way people have tried to understand users is through demographics: age, marital status, sex, location. Although this is good, it is not optimal. A better way is a combination of demographical information plus knowing what they are trying to achieve, their goals, what they think, feel, say, and do. Your understanding of the audience must be up to date, and by asking the right questions.

A tool to use is empathy mapping. An empathy tool is a tool to aid/improve a better understanding of customers.?

Version 2

A use case based on the ABCash Customer Profile

“Ada is a young professional working at a design firm and has a side gig of his own. He has clients in about 5 countries and provides services to different companies in similar markets. However, he desires a faster payment to receive his professional fees and also pays some of the people he contracts. He was introduced to ABCash via a friend and has been using the services since then to receive payment and at the same time, pay other contractors of his own.”

This is how your improved persona should look?

Top Task Analysis

This is a term coined by Gerry McGovern. Top task is used to identify what tasks users most want to complete on a website, so those tasks can be prioritized.

A growth manager can use it to understand users, know the questions that need addressing, and which matter the most. Some questions are more important and relevant than others. How are you able to differentiate between relevant-pressing questions and nice to have questions? We run a survey called a top task analysis.

-?????????Bring together a team, especially the customer-facing teams

-?????????Brainstorm every question, and objections users might have

-?????????Take the questions, and group similar ones – (remove the ones that are too specific)

-?????????Simplify the group questions into simple statements, phrases, or words

-?????????Run a questionnaire

-?????????Ask users to rate the list of questions by 1 – 5 with 5 being the highest, based on what is most important to them

-?????????From this survey, take out the top tasks

-?????????Focus on the top tasks and use those to form advertising, communication, and website messages.

With top tasks, if we focus on the right questions, our conversion will go up.

Involving the User

It is important for the team to involve the user in key processes. We first need to meet the audience in person. This will enable us to know them, and get unique insights. Paulina, the growth marketer at ABCash was able to set up a meeting with Ada, to visit him in his house. On getting to his home, she saw game mementos all plastered on his wall. It is recommended for an organization to meet with its users on a regular basis either physically or via online channels.

From this experience, the user understanding has improved and can inform the marketing message. Other means of involving the users are in

-?????????Campaign design: get users to participate in the design process of the company

-?????????User feedback: you can get this through an indirect form but highly effective. Ask users to write a love letter to the company and a breakup letter. With this, you understand what they like about the company and what they also dislike.

-?????????Website design and messaging: get users to test the prototype, allow them to show you how the website should be arranged, and use that to redesign the information architecture.

It may seem we are yielding control to the users, but this process will allow you to learn much more about the users than the users about us.

Redesigning your Marketing Strategy

The next step is to design the marketing strategy based on what we have learned from the users. Here, you want to use the keywords they used to describe the company in the marketing message. From the top task analysis, the information architecture will reflect the users’ preferences.

Refine your Strategy Post Launch

Digital platforms help you monitor performance and refine it to optimize for performance.

During the monitoring phase, if you identify any problem, you can use A/B testing to try out other methods to reoptimize your campaigns.

?In conclusion, user-centered marketing help improve conversion because by having a good understanding of the users, we are able to better persuade them.?