Marketing for impact

COP26 was a reminder that busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and many oth­er organ­i­sa­tions today are fac­ing a cru­cial moment for trans­for­ma­tion at the lead­er­ship lev­el. Share­hold­er cap­i­tal­ism is com­ing to an end and although this his­toric eco­nom­ic mod­el is far from being for­mal­ly replaced by stake­hold­er cap­i­tal­ism, it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that one can’t exist with­out the oth­er.

Most busi­ness­es now acknowl­edge that sim­ply offer­ing supe­ri­or prod­ucts and ser­vices is not enough to secure the loy­al­ty of cus­tomers. If they are to build brands under­pinned by trust and trans­paren­cy, they must align with caus­es their cus­tomers care about. They must bal­ance prod­uct and pur­pose with­out being pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al.

Take the envi­ron­ment as an exam­ple. In a recent Sales­force State of Com­merce report, more than 50% of lead­ers said that trust, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, equal­i­ty and employ­ee well­be­ing are essen­tial to them. This is a clear indi­ca­tion that great lead­er­ship is stretch­ing far beyond deliv­er­ing growth and prof­it alone.

“At Sales­force, we con­sid­er the envi­ron­ment to be a key stake­hold­er,” says Sal­ly Nowroozi, CX evan­ge­list at Sales­force. “Our envi­ron­men­tal pro­gramme focus­es on the glob­al jour­ney to net-zero emis­sions, mobil­is­ing the glob­al effort to see an addi­tion­al 1 tril­lion trees on Earth, and pro­tect­ing and revi­tal­is­ing our oceans. Last year we also launched the Sales­force Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Cloud to sup­port oth­er organ­i­sa­tions with a car­bon-account­ing prod­uct for busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments to help track and man­age their green­house gas emis­sions.

“We believe busi­ness­es are the great­est plat­forms for change. How­ev­er, we have seen across sec­tors that trust­ed enter­pris­es are those that not only do the right thing but also tell a sto­ry that res­onates with cus­tomers. They use tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions such as cus­tomer data plat­form, per­son­al­i­sa­tion and mar­ket­ing automa­tion to deliv­er mes­sages to their com­mu­ni­ties that are rel­e­vant and time­ly. The urgency for a holis­tic dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and the trans­for­ma­tion of com­pa­ny cul­ture, has nev­er been more press­ing.”

To be tru­ly in sync with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve and able to tell a sto­ry that res­onates, brands need a sharp focus on data ana­lyt­ics and mea­sure­ment, but inform­ing smarter deci­sions in this way is one of the hard­est parts. Mar­keters use an aver­age of 13 dif­fer­ent plat­forms in their tech stack to adver­tise, engage cus­tomers, deliv­er web and mobile expe­ri­ences, dri­ve con­ver­sa­tions and more. Data is siloed across dif­fer­ent sys­tems, for­mats and reports, often leav­ing mar­keters try­ing to man­u­al­ly col­lect, con­nect and analyse it to under­stand cus­tomers.

For this rea­son, mar­ket­ing lead­ers must think care­ful­ly about the bias­es engrained in how data is gath­ered, analysed and acti­vat­ed. It’s clear the nature of how deci­sions are made and imple­ment­ed has rad­i­cal­ly changed, so how brands use tech­nol­o­gy must change too. The right tech­nol­o­gy offers mar­keters the time and band­width to cap­i­talise on chang­ing cus­tomer demands, socioe­co­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties, both in terms of effi­cien­cy and growth.

“Cus­tomer data is only as good as the action it informs,” says Nowroozi. “See­ing the humans behind num­bers can be hard work but when a mar­ket­ing team is empa­thet­ic and adapt­able they can take on this chal­lenge. We’ve already seen many of our cus­tomers do this, with busi­ness­es ral­ly­ing and com­ing togeth­er to find solu­tions and doing it in record time. Hav­ing a data-dri­ven and inclu­sive approach is impor­tant here. Under­stand­ing data can effec­tive­ly help sup­port the shifts required in mar­ket­ing strate­gies and cre­ate com­pelling con­tent that reach­es people’s head and heart.”

We know that no mat­ter how they inter­act with a brand, cus­tomers ulti­mate­ly want to be known and under­stood, not as the buy­er of a spe­cif­ic prod­uct or ser­vice but as a per­son with a unique and evolv­ing set of needs. Eight out of 10 cus­tomers told a Sales­force study that a company’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is just as impor­tant as its prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Busi­ness­es can offer more con­tex­tu­al­ly aware, per­son­alised ser­vices by build­ing a 360-degree view of every cus­tomer with data. This can be achieved through the vast num­ber of data points avail­able that chart every engage­ment they have had with a brand. Access to these cus­tomer insights, often pow­ered by AI, allows mar­keters to cre­ate a more con­nect­ed and enriched cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Per­son­al­i­sa­tion also encour­ages cus­tomers to view brands and their employ­ees as trust­ed advi­sors, achiev­ing fur­ther trust through brand loy­al­ty and advo­ca­cy.

On the day the Covid cri­sis trig­gered an exten­sive ban on all US flights last year, a Sales­force expert task­force met with KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines to help alle­vi­ate the imme­di­ate pres­sure on its cus­tomer ser­vice func­tion. In the months fol­low­ing the restric­tions, KLM ran train­ing ses­sions to upskill col­leagues, quick­ly scal­ing the cus­tomer sup­port capac­i­ty from around 350 agents to more than 1,000 across the com­pa­ny. Thanks to its unique cus­tomer-cen­tric cul­ture, the air­line dealt with the cri­sis by build­ing more resilience into its sys­tems and peo­ple.

“At KLM we val­ue our cus­tomers and we val­ue each oth­er, so we pulled togeth­er and even had cab­in crew and pilots han­dling cas­es when they weren’t fly­ing,” says Wij­nand de Groot, vice-pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing at KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines. “Although the amount of enquiries increased ten­fold, the data gath­ered across dig­i­tal chan­nels also became an impor­tant source of truth for the man­age­ment in the first weeks of the cri­sis. With a ded­i­cat­ed team pulling reports and dash­boards dai­ly we could make smarter busi­ness deci­sions based on the top­ics that were trend­ing.”

The pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of all areas of soci­ety and we’re not going back. Suc­cess­ful lead­ers will con­tin­ue to rely heav­i­ly on data in their deci­sion-mak­ing, lean­ing on a company’s biggest assets — cus­tomer trust and an empow­ered work­force — to keep build­ing the brands we love.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it salesforce.com/uk/form/state-of-marketing

Pro­mot­ed by Sales­force