Relationship marketing is more effective when you understand and balance the two perspectives that are always in play in commercial relationships. Marketers need to understand their best customers‘ needs, their interest cycle, and how and why they use their products and the competition’s products, to adjust relationship marketing activities to be their most effective.
Have you walked in your best customers’ shoes: experienced your business processes through their eyes?
Keep in mind your view of the purchase process is totally different from the customer’s view. If you accept the truth of this, you can use relationship marketing to create mutually profitable and long-lasting relationships with your best customers.
The Company’s View
The company’s view of the purchase process, for even the most customer-centric companies, is typically linear and static. It reflects the operations of the company and the time of the year. Companies obtain raw material, manufacture products or services, distribute them through sales channels and customers purchase what the company is selling, either directly or indirectly, at a competitive price. Marketing activity is driven by the calendar and /or the budget. The company is at the center of the universe and the customer is at the end of the process.
The Customers View
The customer’s view is both broad, they see the entire competitive landscape, and specific, they’re focused on their specific needs.
“The car is getting old. We’re spending more on repairs than a car payment would cost. Time to think about a replacement.”
Once the customer has recognized they have a need, they begin prospecting for a solution. Their interest lifts and they become aware of category marketing.
“I wonder why the car companies have suddenly started advertising?”
As they move down the purchase funnel they begin to determine a consideration set, a small group of products, usually two to three, from which they will make their final purchase decision.
Use a reveal strategy to manage the information customers are looking for at each stage in the interest cycle. As their requirements get more specific, as they get closer to making a purchase, they become more interested in the specific benefits your product offers relative to their needs and to the competitive offers. And, as customers get deeper in the purchase funnel, your message should become more specific as well. This is where specific, benefit driven relationship marketing will have the most impact. Warm and fuzzy brand messages won’t cut it at this stage.
Hip Shots
- Taylor marketing activity to recognize the different need states and interest levels experienced by your best customers. Mass marketing should be focused on maintaining the brands position and general presence in the marketplace.
- When customers raise their hand, when they begin prospecting, be there with compelling benefit-oriented relationship marketing. This could be in store, on your web site, or wherever your best customers will be looking for the information they need to make a purchase decision.
- The closer they get to a purchase decision the more concern they and you should have over price and offer. But, if you have done your job well earlier in the purchase process, you will be less dependent on price and offer to make the sale.
- Once the purchase has been made, make the effort to form a connection with your best customers. Reinforce your benefits. Assure them they have made a good decision. Show them that you value their patronage. Say thank you.
- As their need and its related interest level declines fall back on mass marketing and, for your very best customers, use loyalty marketing to sustain your position and give you a step ahead when needs change and they begin prospecting again.
Follow me on Twitter
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
If companies are linear, I can’t imagine a more linear customer process than a purchase funnel.
Cars excluded, few customer decisions truly fit into the purchase funnel process, moving linearly from awareness to preference. It assumes rationality, which people are surely not.
Matt Daniels´s last blog post..Is Design Thinking bullshit?
Thanks for the comment Matt.
In my experience consumers are more rationale than we give them credit for, especially as they get close to making a purchase decision, but the larger point is to tailor your message so it’s appropriate for where the consumer is in the purchase process regardless of how they got there. Even if some consumers skip steps, instead of putting toothpaste on their shopping list, Prospecting, they put Crest or Colgate, Consideration, their level of interest is now heightened and they are open to practical, benefit-oriented messages that will inform their decision. They are more likely to see a TV ad and are more likely to take note of Point of Sale (POS) information. Taking this approach rather than repeating the mass marketing message at POS or on the web site will be more efficient.