Practical guides
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Practical guides
Using customer marketing
Building customer understanding delivers significant business advantage
Is your business hitting its profit forecast?
Do you want to:
- Improve your sales per customer?
- Communicate with your customers more effectively?
- Keep customers for longer?
Developing a marketing strategy based on customer understanding not only enables you to achieve these goals, but is one of the most cost effective ways to build a successful business.
Why?
It costs 5-10 times more to attract versus retain a customer. Only 4% of dissatisfied customers complain, but 85% will stay if their problem is solved fast and efficiently.
What's the return on investment?
Business success can be very tangible as this chart demonstrates; loyal customers are profitable - they buy more, cost less to look after, are easier to retain, stay longer, and they recommend others.
What are the key elements?
Most importantly, it is to consider the overall customer experience through their eyes from beginning to end, and, in doing so, making each customer feel that you have their interests in mind.
Secondly to match communications to where customers are in their decision making:
- Aware
- Prefer
- Purchase
- Receive
- Use
- Support
- Retain
CRM what is it really?
CRM is most often associated with database packages designed to capture and manage customer data - as such it is best described as a tool. Customer relationship marketing is a specific approach to marketing, which is focused on learning about a customer and communicating with them based on that information - a marketing tactic. Customer relationship management is an overall business approach which puts the customer at the heart of your business with all business processed based on that - a business strategy.
So there are 3 potential stages to a customer based business model.
1 - Install a simple CRM system
Use a CRM databased system to automate the storage and management of customer data.
2 - Gather and use customer data
Gather customer data from day 1 of the relationship and use this information to build a customer profile.
Establish regular communications with all customers.
Use every customer interaction to gather feedback and continue building the profile.
Make communications relevant to the decision making stage.
3 - Develop business processes that are customer focused
Make sure that what you are doing in each area of your business is matched to the customer needs rather than to your business:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Pre/Post Sales Support
- Delivery
- Accounts
- Product Development
For example: The call to chase payment would be better used as a post-sales call because, if everything is OK, the customer will pay, but not if there are outstanding issues.
What this would mean for your business?
Increasing the Lifetime Value of the Customer means more sales per customer with existing customers staying longer at reduced costs and with increased profitability.