Research by Skout reveals that three in five B2B sales and marketing pros say it is easier to build good relationships with existing customers

MACCLESFIELD, England , March 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- More than half of brand marketing decision makers in the UK (63%) feel that it is easy for their organisation to build good relationships with existing customers. However, when enhancing these relationships, different risks arise at each stage of the customer journey, according to research from Skout, the B2B marketing comms agency.

When asked about the risks to building top business relationships, B2B marketers still highlight factors such as ineffective targeting, failure to engage with customers at the right points or lack of differentiation as their main issues, as stated in a survey carried out by Sapio Research with over 200 decision makers in sales and marketing managerial positions.

The research also points out that despite B2B marketers being aware of the importance of building and maintaining relationships with existing customers, only some have executed strategic activities to better understand their audiences. Only half perform customer surveys, and just a third implement any kind of research, such as customer journey mapping (39%), audience analysis (36%) or CRM/data cleansing (33%).

Rob Skinner, MD of Skout, says: "The research shows that marketers are falling short in nurturing customers at each stage of their lifecycle. While not every customer is worth a fling, marketers need to profile their audiences carefully to ensure that they're investing in long term, exclusive, mutually beneficial marriages of convenience and are not two timed."   

The customer journey: reasons for divorce

The customer journey allows organisations to visualise the complete lifecycle of a customer from the awareness to the advocacy stage.

At the first stage of the journey, when making potential customers aware of their business, the report reveals the main challenges lie in creating engaging propositions and sending the brand message to the right people. When asked about the risks of building up top relationships in the awareness stage, 34% of respondents say that the biggest threat is marketing activities not being effective in targeting the right audience.

For the consideration stage, engaging customers at the right time and being too salesy are important factors to consider. 27% mentioned failure to contact and engage with prospects at crucial points as the main risk, followed by selling too hard too early in the process (26%) and delivering insufficient insight (24%).

Differentiation and a top customer experience are pivotal when tackling the purchase stage. Regarding threads that endanger the connection with the audience, respondents considered the lack of competitive insight to differentiate (27%) and a lack of effective customer onboarding (26%) as risks to developing a great relationship.

When focusing on getting customers to buy again during the retention stage, gaining and tracking feedback are the most critical factors. Marketers think that failure to gain customer feedback or act upon it (36%) and poor customer service and account management (24%) jeopardise relationships.

Finally, at the crucial stage of converting your customers into brand advocates, the research reveals that 33% of respondents feel that not having a dedicated advocate programme is the top relationship risk in the loyalty stage, followed by failure to monitor engagement and spot advocates with 28%. However, a quarter of marketers consider relationships too short-term to develop advocacy.

Read the full report at: www.skoutpr.com/resources/the-b2b-business-relationship-report/

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