CustomEyes Research

Customer Marketing

angus — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:48:26 +0000

Customer Marketing

It seems odd that we are often tempted to look beyond our boundaries before we have really discovered what lies around us. We have no idea what makes the oceans tick yet we are hurling ourselves at the moon and beyond.

Without wanting to sound a little bit Radio 4 Thought for The Day….marketing is a little like space exploration you know….

Huge sums are spent projecting brands into the market with all forms of advertising from TV to email to door drops. No expense is spared in creating brand awareness so that your product or service is top of mind with consumers.Huge teams of marketing professionals with titles to die for and letters after their names that take up a page are hard at work to create campaigns and methods of delivery that keep the brand evolving and growing.

This is of course all part of the marketing mix and the sexy part of the equation.The less exciting part but as vital are the oceans of customers that reside back on planet brand and understanding what makes them tick.

The business would be nothing without these customers and it is vital to find out what sort of customers you have before embarking on finding new ones. Knowing what you already have should give you important information in what to look for in new customers.

Customer profiling enables you to keep a check on the balance between those customers that are actively promoting your brand and those that are not.

Customeyes have identified three broad categories.

Generators – Customers that are your best friends and tell their friends just how good you are. These will make sure that new customers get to try your brand and will be the first to embrace new products and be tremendously loyal. The accepted truth that it is cheaper to hold onto good customers than attract new ones rings true.Certainly new customers that can become Generators is where the attention should be placed.If marketing budgets could be optimised to deliver higher proportions of likely Generators then marketing costs would fall and marketing as a function would be less likely to be a casualty of downturns.

Upsetting the Generators is a costly exercise.No one should ever forget the Coke experience of not paying attention to your loyal followers and assuming that the company knows best.Companies make brands but customers own them…

Acceptors – these are your middle ground customers who just bounce along without any direct influence on the outside world.

They are in themselves hugely important as they represent the constant in your sales, the Steady Eddy’s who will bring in the revenue.Satisified as they might be is OK in the short term but long term a conversion excercise is needed.

This middle ground is subject to flux and potentially disruption.Acceptors are on the whole by their nature less likely to do anything dramatic but are increasingly susceptible to acting irrationally.

A new player in your market may temp these laid back spenders with cheaper alternatives.Slick marketing may turn their heads and before you know it they are off to join the middle ranks of another brand portfolio.

Acceptors are dangerous and need to be managed and enticed into the Generator camp for their own safety…. There is the chance of course that they join the last customer camp…

Resistors - Customers that you can rely on not to be helpful.These will not actively spread good news about your brand and will suck in resources that will be needed to defend against their negativity.

Bad news always seems to travel faster than goood news and if several negative issues are circulating at the same time then it can cause problems.This is not to say that this group is actively trying to de stabalise your positive marketing intentions.The reality is that they are fickle and will jump ship faster than Acceptors as they are generally more price sensisitive.

More resources are spent to keep these customers happy especially when they complain or engage in returning product that would be considered good.

Resistors generally increase your cost to serve as they demand more attention both during a transaction and after.Trying to upgrade a Resistor to Acceptor and on to Generator may well be counter productive in terms of resource allocation and it may be better to let them go rather than divert resource.

Chase the new customer but do so with a full understanding of what you want and long term keep checking…

Your customer service experience

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:10:44 +0000

We would love to hear about your good and bad customer experiences… spill the beans!

Persistence

angus — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:27:45 +0000

Persistence will beat Resistance

Wales in their Six Nations victory over Scotland today showed that persistence is everything.Despite what seemed a certain win for Scotland the dogged determination to win prevailed for the Welsh.

The desire to succeed is a powerful driver and if you have the “expect it to get it” attitude then you will have a higher chance of success than some one who lacks that self belief.Once you have attained a winning attitude then achiever fever takes over and what once seemed impossible becomes almost second nature.

Classic Marketing Mistake

angus — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:22:22 +0000

It is nearly 25 years since Coca Cola decided to give the world New Coke and a text book example of how not to do marketing by ignoring loyal customers.

Background

In 1985 Coca Cola unveiled New Coke on the world. This was a new sweeter recipe that was to replace the “secret formula” that had been around for a mere 99 years.The words “the best just got better” were uttered during the unveiling. It was the start of something special for Coca Cola, unfortunately it was not a positive experience to begin with….

The reaction of consumers was a lesson in how companies meddle with their brands at their peril. Despite all the market research that had been undertaken the company had failed to engage with their customers directly. Research indicated that the sweeter formula was preferred to the existing flavour.

The company failed to grasp that brands should always be viewed through the eyes of customers. Companies may own their brands but they need permission to change or tinker with them.

Customer Reaction

Within 78 days after a barrage of letters and phone calls the original formula returned branded as Coke Classic.

Customers had reacted with such intensity of feeling that it had shocked Coca Cola. The brand was and is such an integral part of American culture that its removal caused almost panic amongst consumers.What took nearly a hundred years to build was almost lost in the blink of an eye.The closet example of such brand destruction in UK terms has to be the famous Ratner speech.Overnight a respected chain of jewelers had its reputation and stock value reduced to next to nothing.

Outcome and Lessons

Coke had panicked at the the thought of Pepsi stealing a march on them. Pepsi was running the taste challenge commercials which showed that consumers preferred their sweeter product. New Coke was the response that went so wrong.

Disaster turned to triumph as sales of the Coke Classic went through the roof. Customer loyalty was reinforced and the brand remains to this day one of the most valuable in the world.

The lessons of this are clear. Brands generate a strong emotional bond that is a vital strand in success.If any part of the complex interdependency of emotions, value and price is changed then the brand ceases to be the brand.

Consumers expect the relationship to be such that any changes are run past them first…All companies must at all times make sure that they seek regular feedback from the people buying their product or service.Customers react to lack of communication by spending their money with someone who will listen to their views.That someone will always be one of your competitors…

Business Builder – Our New Service

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:56:40 +0000

“Listen to your Customers before someone else does” is something that we are passionate about, it forms the basis of what we do. We provide a cost-effective research service that enable clients to do exactly that.

Business is about customers, getting them and then building profitable relationships with them. These customers could be from your competition so it is essential to listen to all customers, yours and rivals.

Intelligent business decisions should be based on sound business intelligence – your own customers and the feed back from your competitive environment. The current economic climate makes it even more important to keep getting feed back on how your brand is performing. Every business is a brand and every brand has to stay in tip-top condition to be able to respond to changing market conditions. By gathering feedback from your existing customers and from your competitive set you are giving your brand an effective market place work out.

Every New Year brings personal resolutions to get fit, stay in shape and improve overall health. Make 2010 the year that this is extended to your business as well.

It is well established that the best sales force is always going to be your current customers who, in an ideal world, should be recommending your company to everyone they know. Too many customers defect to other suppliers because of perceived indifference to their needs.

How many times have you heard the phrase, “if only you’d asked me what was wrong” when it comes to hearing a customer moved their spending to one of your competitors? It seems strange that companies don’t find out why customers defect, especially when some of those customers may have been long term ones.

Questions=Answers=Relationships =Profit=more business = Profit

You could of course conduct that research yourself and get some good results. You might consider using the services of an independent, objective and experienced company that will be able to help build and carry out a cost-effective research framework.

The obvious benefits are that often customers feel that they should flatter by saying the right thing if approached directly by the client.Rarely is the real picture of a business relationship portrayed and rarely will a customer even begin to suggest what could be changed or what improvements would have kept them spending with you.

Lost customers will often not even want to engage in a discussion as to why they left and you will never get the full picture of what factors contributed to the departure.A third party is often seen as independent are more likely to be given chapter and verse on what is good and bad.There is no embarrassment in telling the truth to third parties .Often a good chat leads to suggestions of other services or products not previously considered that could be extremely profitable.

Competitive Framework

Customer Insight is important but only a part of what our Business Builder Service seeks to deliver.

Your competition is a vital source of market intelligence on where the market is and where it is going and more importantly where your company brand is sitting.

Customer feedback often informs the short-term, competitive monitoring is the long view allowing you to plan and allocate resources to potential new sectors before they become established. A joint programme that looks at both current customers and the competitive framework lets you neatly cover both bases.

Business Builder is a cost-effective service that helps companies to make sure that their brand is in the best possible shape to trade profitably.

Business Builder makes sure that current customers, lost customers and customers from the competitive set are contacted giving you a comprehensive picture of your market place. Flexibility is the main point of this service, any, some or all of the competitive framework can be covered depending upon client needs.

Benefits of the service include -

Prevent customer defection
Regain business from Lost Customers
Early warning mechanism so that issues don’t become problems
Potential New Product or service intelligence
Market environment assessment to make sure that you know what your competitors are doing and where the market might be heading.

Please contact us at info@customeyes-research.co.uk with any questions and to ask how we might be able to help your brand and company. We will be glad to talk with you about the particulars of the service.

Please call Angus Grady on 0845 688 5272.