Customer Strategy in the B2B Membership Sector
Membership organisations are an important part of the B2B commercial landscape, offering many kinds of benefits to members including enhanced networking opportunities, industry insights, learning resources, events & seminars, and the potential for advocacy and representation. Customer Attuned co-founder and consultant Peter Lavers discusses the role of Customer Strategy in the B2B Membership Sector.
B2B membership organisations are facing similar customer management challenges to the wider B2B community, including member / customer retention, engagement, acquisition, adapting to changing needs & expectations, and navigating the digital landscape. By “B2B”, I’m referring to bodies whose members are primarily companies rather than individuals.
Additionally, they are increasingly under pressure to introduce or extend commercial services to members (and non-members) in order to remain economically viable, demonstrate value and maintain brand identity.
These opportunities and pressures can result in counter-cultural tensions and commercial capability gaps if not managed well.
Why a Customer Strategy?
The world continues to change fast. Disruption is now the norm and forecasting has never been more of a challenge. Consolidation in many sectors has resulted in fewer, larger customers. Digital is top of many companies’ agendas, and Analytics has emerged as a vital capability (including AI).
In parallel with market and technological developments, B2B members and customers are ever-more empowered, trust is easy to lose but difficult to recover, and ‘customer experience’ (CX) has an increasingly high corporate priority. However, strategies, budgets and measures have traditionally been oriented around products and channels, which has often resulted in a CX that isn’t “joined up”, and trust being compromised rather than cherished.
Our conclusion from these opportunities, challenges and developments is that B2B organisations need a specific strategy to win and keep customers beyond the traditional “four Ps” (now seven!) with customer centric rather than product focused strategic objectives.
The good news is that recent channel and technological advancements have made trust-building and cost-effective member / customer management more viable than ever before.
A Proven Approach to Build Your B2B Customer Strategy
Customer Attuned has created a tried and tested approach to customer strategy development.
We have distilled all the theory into a pragmatic approach of 12 “building blocks” that answer three fundamental business questions:
- What’s the purpose of the customer strategy? Are we all agreed about what it means (e.g. customer vs. member) and its explicit objectives?
- What insight do we need to fulfil this purpose? Do we segment customers appropriately and have we mapped the experience?
- Action. What propositions and capabilities do we need to implement the strategy?
You can read more about our unique approach and the 12 building blocks of a Customer Strategy. And, if you would like a discussion about creating or strengthening your organisation’s customer strategy, whether in the B2B membership sector or otherwise, or would like to view some case studies, please get in touch.
- Customer Strategy in the B2B Membership Sector - May 27, 2025
- Build a B2B Customer Strategy - May 20, 2025
- Should you implement NPS in B2B? - January 22, 2025
