Today is the first day of the B2B Marketing Exchange (#B2BMX) conference in Scottsdale. It’s a great event for connecting with influential speakers and thought leaders in content marketing, demand generation and sales enablement.

More than 800 B2B marketers are expected to attend the 50 sessions. And Scottsdale is a great escape from the snow on the East Coast!

Two of the hot topics of 2017 are content marketing and focusing on the customer experience. Top-of-the funnel branding campaigns and educational content asset campaigns are consuming much of the typical marketing executive’s focus, as is making B2B brands look more like B2C brands. But they’re just part of the overall customer experience.

Human relationships still play a greater role in shaping the customer experience and creating loyal customers.

But, in today’s marketplace, that requires having a focused sales team and integrated processes between the marketing and sales departments that deliver the right content and messages to the right prospects at the right time.

While it sounds simple, it’s not easy.

Many B2B sales teams struggle to stay focused. Marketing automation and sales enablement solutions create complexity and can have steep learning curves. Some marketers struggle to create meaningful content. Some sales reps shun the marketing department’s content and systems and create their own, and abandon leads generated by the marketing team to close their own.

While these significant challenges are beyond the scope of this post, there is one simple tactic that you can use to improve your customer experience:

Spend more time talking with your customers and prospects

Attend sales calls. Pick up the phone and talk with prospects. Meet with customers. Follow up with lost customers. Learn about what they’re focusing on today (and not what they were focusing on when you created your buyer persona a year ago). Use this information to update your buyer personas, add to your content calendar and strengthen your customer retention program.

As a marketer, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of digital content, software and processes. But the more you truly know about your buyers, the more likely you are to create a stronger customer experience.

Here are a few plans that can help:

• Improve and Grow the Customer Relationships You Already Have
• Perform Qualitative Market Research
• Design an Entire Selling Process