Marketing is from Mars — Customers are from Venus

The rift between sales and marketing is so ingrained in our psyches that you may have read that title as “Sales is from Mars. Marketing is from Venus.” This is also true. In fact, there is a very good article on that very topic.

But I’d like to call our attention to another rift that is written about less but perhaps is more profound… the gap between marketing teams and the very customers they seek to attract.

You’re not serious, right?

I think of marketers as the customer champions in the company — the group most likely to know about and advocate for external customers to those inside the company. You probably share that view.

But I have to admit that I was not aware of a gap between marketers and customers until I had been a marketer for many years. And I did not become aware of it when I was in a direct marketing role… it came only after I conducted dozens of studies on the customer journey.

The Separation between Customers and Marketers

Here’s the difference I noticed…

Customers talked about the buying process as something they went through in order to get to a solution. Their focus, of course, was on experiencing the solution… not going through the process of selecting a vendor to implement one.

But to marketers, the buying process is EVERYTHING we focus on! For example, marketers think about leading prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom… which hopefully ends in a purchase. (Even if some marketers don’t follow a funnel orientation, they still focus on bringing the journey to a sales close).

In other words, marketers are all about “thrill of the hunt”, while customers are focused on the enduring relationship that develops and matures after the selection process.

Hmm. Does that remind you of any other relationships?

Let me tell you a story

This sounds a lot like a story in our new book, Personas with Punch. One of the six stories of personas that made a difference is a large but damaged medical technology brand went from worst to first in industry ratings by applying insights that came from the post-purchase experience.

In this case, the company applied lessons from a small competitor who we noticed was performing exceptionally well and getting rave reviews — but not during the purchase process. It was the onboarding process that created an exceptional customer experience… and these new customers were evangelizing colleagues at other hospitals about it! Despite the small budget of this tiny competitor, they were generating millions in additional publicity from the most trusted influencer in the purchase process — professional peers.

Lesson Learned

Fortunately, the marketers managing the damaged brand learned the lesson from their competitor (a very efficient change management technique) and changed their onboarding process. The result was they went from worst to first… AND they started charging for a process they previously gave away for free!

For more details and five other inspiring stories, pick the book up at Amazon or email me to get a free ebook.

Marketing as CX

As true B2B marketers, we need to focus on delivering experiences throughout the entire customer experience, from initial touch through to product adoption to customer advocacy.

If we don’t, or our sales funnel will turn into a leaky bucket plagued by

• churning customers,
• tepid case studies,
• weak brand reputation, and
• lack of sales momentum.

Indeed, a recent article in Harvard Business Review makes the point that the most successful brands focus on delivering value for their users, not just their buyers.

Customer success is the responsibility, in part, of the marketing team that wants to move ahead and not just win new prospects to replace old, disloyal customers just to stay in place.

Marketing needs to be in the business of creating lasting customer marriages, not just courting prospects. What therapeutic words of wisdom do you have? Let me know your point of view.

About the Author | Wayne Cerullo

Wayne founded B2P Partners a dozen years ago to help B2B companies see past their products to their prospects with the vision of making B2B marketing more powerful by making it more personal. B2P has worked with mid-tier B2B growth firms as well as global leaders like Baxter, Citibank, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens, and Visa.