According to a research of 300+ marketers by Incite these are the key issues impacting them in 2013.
1. Customer centricity: This is all around getting close to the customer and understanding them better. This is all
about customers able to have a meaningful impact of business practices, strategy and goals. This is the most
significant impact on roles in 2013 across both B2B and B2C.
2. Multi-channel marketing/communications: Linked closely to the previous issue, multi-channel marketing
focuses on how to integrate multiple marketing/comms channels to ensure they work in concert for an impactful,
effective, and pervasive marketing campaign. A significant 22% picked this as top priority
3. Building unique customer experiences through more personalisation/segmentation/better consumer
insight: Striving towards providing your customers with a personalised, engaging and unique relationship with
your brand. Companies are beginning to do this through the increased segmentation made possible by social
media/big data profiling, and by the proliferation of marketing/communications channels and platforms. Evidently,
from the popularity of this option, it is a challenge that executives have not overcome completely. 10% picked this
as top priority.
4. Internal Collaboration: Focusing on more efficient internal collaboration between marketing and
communications, to ensure that the company speaks with a unified voice, shares insight and responds better to
consumers.7% picked this as top priority – which is significant in itself, but more so when one considers that 24%
of Communications execs said this was priority #1, and only 5% of marketers. More on that below.
The ideal espoused by Bob Thompson of Customer Think is of a ‘customer-inspired’ business, which
“Thinks deeply about what customers are trying to accomplish in their business and personal lives, and create new
ways to add value before they ask”.
Companies are asking how they can change their corporate culture to be more focused on the customer. How do we listen to our customers and how do we build delightful customer experiences?
Strategic Service Design 