CMO Council: ‘Customer Affinity’ New Measure of B2B Marketing Effectiveness

Despite an increased focus on customer engagement, most B2B technology companies continue to fall far short of meeting customer expectations and commitments, according to the results of a new research initiative by the Chief Marketing Officers Council, MarketingCharts reports.

Most technology vendors badly overestimate their effectiveness in addressing customer needs, while a majority of customers feel ignored and trapped in vendor relationships that are marred by broken promises, according to the research.

The “Profitability from Customer Affinity” study, which points to disconnects between vendors and customers, argues for a new measure of marketing performance, called customer affinity, which incorporates critical elements of the customer lifecycle experience.

The report coincides with the CMO Council’s release of the first annual Customer Affinity Index of IT brands, led this year by Network Appliance, followed by Juniper Networks, InterSystems and Polycom (see Index of top 75 IT brands ranked by IT buyers).

Some 99 percent of customers surveyed said they would either scale back or terminate relationships with vendors who fail to build customer trust. Moreover, less than 7 percent of customers said their vendors are extremely well-aligned with their needs.

The survey’s findings indicate that customer affinity - not brand awareness - is the most accurate predictor of customers’ purchasing intentions and decisions, the CMO Council found:

• Customers say brand awareness and existing relationships - often thought to be leading factors in purchasing decisions - have little bearing on their decision to do business with a vendor or channel partner.
• Instead, customer decisions are influenced by competence, quality service and support, and a sense of true commitment from vendors (see chart of various factors’ importance in vendor evaluation) -yet vendors continue to direct budget toward initiatives that are ineffective at building customer affinity, the study argues.

“Marketing has a critical responsibility to define and build customer-centric businesses,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “Based on the findings of this study, we have a long way to go. To be more successful, marketers should adopt new performance measurements, like Customer Affinity, that are actually tied to the customer experience. We believe traditional brand metrics, taken by themselves, may actually reinforce ineffective behavior and practices.”

A host of additional findings from the study are available via MarketingCharts.