FEATURE BCM Agency


Knowing your customer’s mind


Miriam Drahmane is CEO of Bedfordshire-based BCM Agency, a B2B marketing agency specialising in cognitive marketing communications. She talks here about the importance of infl uencing emotions in the customer purchasing decision process.


Marketing seems so difficult for many businesses right now. Why? We’re witnessing a huge shift in the way businesses need to engage with customers. It’s no longer enough to have tacit knowledge of customers’ rational


buying behaviours. Instead, there needs to be data-driven insight into customers’ emotions, because business buying decisions are driven to a large extent by non-rational thought. But this shift is a big ask. Data has become problematic owing to


GDPR, and because furlough and redundancies have erased many customer contacts. Many businesses don’t have the data, analysis and marketing capabilities in-house, and need help.


What should business marketing departments be focusing on currently? Businesses face an avalanche of marketing activity buzzwords and often try to do everything at once, tactically. It’s far more eff ective to collaborate on strategy with a trusted adviser, and use those fi ndings to inform what you do, when, in what order, for what outcomes. T is way, businesses spend budget and eff ort on results - not reactivity.


So how should marketing agencies deliver in such a challenging climate? How do they need to work? It’s all about finding an edge that results in a demonstrable competitive advantage for the client. Cognitive marketing, for example, analyses


data to understand buyers’ emotional triggers, and to communicate the client’s value proposition in a way that pulls those triggers. T ink laser-targeted, rather than scattergun! But simplicity and agility are also key, so the focus


should be on a simple, one-page plan that can be easily changed and adapted as new opportunities


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ALL THINGS BUSINESS


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