Evidence of a Changing Customer Landscape

In our 2007 annual state of the market report, market awareness was the second top rated sales and marketing priority (at 43%); yet in this year’s report only 29% of respondents thought that this was a top priority. Interestingly, in the same time period, market leadership as a doubled in importance (from 12% to 24%). While customer acquisition remains the top-rated (43%) sales and marketing priority, there are clearly significant changes underway in the customer landscape.

For nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents, competitive pressures remain the top factor in marketing decisions; however, a third (34%) of respondents are concerned about changes in buying behavior and proliferation of customer touch-points (31%).  On the sales side of the customer relationship, the majority of respondents (68%) were concerned about increasing the customer’s knowledge, yet at the same time were challenged by the proliferation of customer/product information (38%).   In short, marketing is struggling to control the flow of information to and from the customer, yet sales believe that customers are not getting enough of the right information.   To address these growing concerns, survey respondents predominately believed that sales and marketing technologies investments should be remain targeted toward CRM (44%) and reporting/analytics initiatives (32%).  However, our research (as well as other’s) also shows that there is a growing interest (particularly with marketing leaders) in the use of Web 2.0 (i.e. blogs, wikis, social networking) to enhance the customer experience. In fact, a quarter (26%) of surveyed marketing leaders believed that these initiatives should be a top technology focus.

However, I believe that this fragmentation of channels and proliferation of customer touchpoints is confusing to customers, and as a result sales and marketing leaders are beginning to struggle in their traditional roles. In this environment, brand awareness does not necessarily translate into market leadership.  In the coming year, sales and marketing leaders must stop acting independently and align departmental priorities to identify and develop a meaningful and truly differentiated customer experience.