CUSTOMER EXCELLENCE
Marketing Reloaded !
By Carolyne Gathuru
2021 is being touted and tooted as the year of the 3 R ’ s . The Year of Recovery , The Year of Restoration and The Year of Rebuilding . Marketing thus needs to add a fourth R - The Year of Reloading .
# MarketingReloaded , would mean a shift from the traditional marketing as has been , with a focus on putting brand messages out for the customer to buy , to the altered view of marketing that focusses on developing lasting relationships with customers . This new outlook requires that customer relationships are cultivated and nurtured , and aims at having an extended positive customer lifetime value for each customer through loyalty and retention .
For marketing to have a strategic outlook , there needs to be more outward focus with the mantra ‘ what-more-can-wedo-for-our-customers , rather than whatmore-can-we-get-out-of-our-customers ’. The more value that is channeled towards customers , the more value that will be derived from them . For marketing to take on a customer relationship face requires that marketing efforts embrace a long term nurturing view , rather than a short term acquisition view . What then from the marketing arena needs to be reloaded ?
Marketing Technology
Marketing Tech - needs to transition from a purely information gathering drive , to a service delivery drive instead . The customer data rush , needs to be tinged with the flavor useful outputs rather than use of output .
The efforts to use customer data derived from their online behavior to garner their interests , preferences , use trends and frequency patterns , need to be geared towards better understanding the customer to serve them with a more personal touch . This needs to replace the current tendency to ‘ throw ’ online marketing material at them , in the hope that they will somehow pick up the cues and purchase whatever is on sale . With a relationship building mindset , the study of customer interests will assist in product optimization , process alignments , and strategic response to customer needs . Creating specific databases with customer details that uniquely identify them and has relevant information that will yield a personalized approach is the way to go .
Marketing needs to in conjunction with customer experience teams , work around customer profiling for success . This profiling exercise should be cognizant of the fact that biases may tend to emerge based on the stratification of customers on the basis of different structured parameters .
Those involved in the profiling exercise need to reload their mindsets with a customer experience mentality , to enable identification of unconscious biases that may spill over to the marketing efforts . There are heightened global sensitivities over biases of all sorts , and customer profiling - as a tool aided by marketing tech - efforts needs to lean in and steer clear .
For marketing to have a strategic outlook , there needs to be more outward focus with the mantra ‘ what-more-canwe-do-for-our-customers , rather than what-more-can-we-get-out-of-our-customers ’. The more value that is channeled towards customers , the more value that will be derived from them .
There also needs to be caution that customer privacy is maintained , and that the thin line between customer research and customer stalking is not crossed . The overall outcome of the online Know- Your-Customer Strategies must not yield the feeling from customers of being creeped out by just how much a brand seems to know about them , but by a feeling of pleasure that they are receiving personalized communication and services .
Marketers and Customer experience professionals need to be in full awareness
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