How Well Do You Understand Your Customer?

We’re hap­py to announce that Michelle LeGros has joined our agency as a strate­gic part­ner. With deep insights lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence at com­pa­nies includ­ing U.S. Bank, The Toro Com­pa­ny and most recent­ly 13 years as Vice Pres­i­dent of Con­sumer Insights at Unit­ed­Health Group, Michelle is an insights leader who brings strate­gic and prac­ti­cal insights solu­tions to help orga­ni­za­tions answer key busi­ness questions.

We sat down with Michelle to talk about her decades of expe­ri­ence study­ing peo­ple and trans­lat­ing their needs and wants into prac­ti­cal busi­ness strate­gies, and what her exper­tise means for Bell­mont Part­ners clients:

You’ve worked for the past 25 years build­ing val­ue-added research strate­gies and insights across mul­ti­ple indus­tries, from health­care and finan­cial ser­vices to con­sumer prod­ucts and man­u­fac­tur­ing. What do all those sec­tors have in common?

Suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­grams are root­ed in a strong under­stand­ing of your cus­tomers, prospects and influ­encers, no mat­ter the indus­try. It’s essen­tial to have insight into the lives of the peo­ple you are try­ing to reach. What are their chal­lenges, what frus­trates them, what do they need to know, where do they find joy? When you get inside the heads of your tar­gets, you can effec­tive­ly connect.

I have spent my career help­ing mar­keters and inno­va­tors under­stand their cus­tomers, prospects and influ­encers. Ask­ing the right ques­tions, chal­leng­ing assump­tions and find­ing busi­ness impli­ca­tions of this pow­er­ful knowl­edge are all impor­tant parts of the process – regard­less of the prod­uct or ser­vice you provide.

We could talk about this for hours, but how can com­pa­nies ben­e­fit from that under­stand­ing – how can orga­ni­za­tions put those insights into action, espe­cial­ly as part of their mar­ket­ing and pub­lic rela­tions efforts?

Some­times this means lever­ag­ing insights that already exist in your orga­ni­za­tion. Frankly, most orga­ni­za­tions are chal­lenged with broad­ly shar­ing insights. Through dis­cov­ery ses­sions and insight audits, the Bell­mont Part­ners team helps clients make impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies that inspire impact­ful communications.

Oth­er times, your orga­ni­za­tion doesn’t have the deep knowl­edge you need. We have years of expe­ri­ence uti­liz­ing a vari­ety of qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive tech­niques to help you get clos­er to your tar­get audi­ence. Through a very strate­gic process, we help clients under­stand what they real­ly need to know and how to get that knowl­edge in order to devel­op suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions initiatives.

Thanks, Michelle – and wel­come to the team!

I am thrilled to join the Bell­mont Part­ners team as a strate­gic part­ner focused on bring­ing action­able insights to busi­ness­es. The BP team has long used insights as a foun­da­tion of their pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing pro­grams. I am excit­ed to con­tin­ue this focus as we all help orga­ni­za­tions in Min­neso­ta and across the coun­try suc­cess­ful­ly con­nect with tar­get audiences.