• by Jess Nelson , December 14, 2016

Customer satisfaction nearly triples when a brand’s marketing places the consumer’s needs above their own business goals, according to a MarketingSherpa report released Monday.

Customers are 269% more likely to be satisfied with a company if they believe that the brand’s marketing makes their needs a priority, according to an online poll of 2,400 American consumers.

Half of respondents were questioned about a brand’s marketing that they were highly satisfied with, while the other half were asked to respond to a brand’s marketing that they were incredibly dissatisfied with. MarketingSherpa’s final report then compared the responses of the two groups, and analyzed trends by age group. MarketingSherpa is a subsidiary of the MECLABS Institute, a research organization based in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Customers that believe a brand places their needs above their own are also more likely to engage with the company via marketing content. Half of all satisfied customers asserted that they often or always engage with the email marketing campaigns sent from the brand they are happy with, while just 23% of unsatisfied customers asserted they would subscribe receive emails from a brand. 

Six out of ten highly satisfied customers believe that a brand’s marketing was “often” or “always” placing their needs ahead of its own business goals. On the opposite end of the spectrum, only 16.1% of highly unsatisfied customers asserted the same opinion.

MarketingSherpa’s study suggests that customer-first marketing correlates to increased sales, as 92% of satisfied customers indicated that they would likely continue to purchase from a brand that they felt put their own needs first. Only 29.4% of unsatisfied customers expressed the same view, and that number dips to just 8% when analyzing highly unsatisfied customers.

"In this era of data-driven marketing and intense customer targeting, the survey results clearly indicate that brands should think beyond just aiming at their customer, and instead use that data to elevate the customer,” states Daniel Burstein, senior director of editorial content, MarketingSherpa. “We call this customer-first marketing. If the customer is the king or queen, shouldn't they come first?"