It is well known in marketing that it is much more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep your existing customer.  Examine everything that your business does and ensure that it focuses on the customers and their needs. Really understand what they want and follow this up. Make sure that the product is delivered on time, it is what they wanted, it lives up to expectation. Focus on building the relationship, customers will tell others and that is so much more powerful that your promotions.

The marketing lesson is to really get under the skin of your customers and build that relationship. So how to do it?

Understand their needs, make the most of any customer interaction, use customer service teams to find out as much as possible about the need and how well your business is meeting that need.

Ask your customer to compare you and your competitors.

Build a benchmark of good performance.  Such as delivery in 5 days or call back in 24 hours. Opportunity to up grade, learn more, build your own are all examples of how businesses have adapted and changed.

If we look at examples of really good customer service and then examine the performance of the business. You would not be surprised to learn that companies that score well on customer service are keeping customers, up selling to them and performing better.

Recent winners of awards are First Direct that scored highest in the banking sector in a survey conducted bySatmetrix. First Direct scored 42% satisfaction compared with an industry norm of -4%.

Virgin and Sky scored well in the ISP business. Still in mobiles O2 did the business. Apple iPhone was miles ahead of the industry with a score of 67% compared to the industry average of  18%. This is a really good example of marketing practice

Customer service is so much more than dealing with complaints. It offers business the chance to really understand their customers, analyse their needs, build new products or services. It will also reduce costs and focus on making the business more effective.

So deliver and build the level of customer service. Do what you promise and make sure you know what to promise

The challenge for all car companies is to meet the challenge of the environmental pressures. This is costly and incurs a high level of risk. Good marketing practice suggests that reduction of risk is key.  Therefore this alliance has a number of really positive potential benefits.

This will build scale and offer huge opportunities for the future. Marketing practice suggests that this in difficult to implement in terms of brand. It will help the partners to increase competitiveness given the costs of innovation. This will push volume and generate lower costs.

“If you have scale but you don’t make scale work for you through sharing platforms and sharing engines and making smart decisions locally, geographically, scale is just complexity and confusion,” Ghosn the CEO of Nissan told a news conference in Brussels.

The brand of Mercedes needs to maintain quality and the use of Renault engines could confuse the market. So the alliance will need careful managment to avoid the problems Daimler encountered when it merged with Chrysler, which ended in 2007

Immediacy is the big change and also the need to offer information. Eurostar has used Twitter as a marketing tool. Yet during the break down in the tunnel it avoided giving feedback via social media. This frustrated consumers who needed to know what is happening.

The way Virgin dealt with a train crash in 2007 is seen as best marketing practice. Get straight to the issue, confront the problem, be direct and sort the fall out. This is where Toyota suffered. They did not deal with the problem as a whole, it was a drip drip drip approach. Avoiding the issue never solves anything. They are fast becoming the way not to manage the crisis.

Steps for Using Social Media in Crisis

Be direct, clarify the extent of the problem

Confront the issues

Offer a solution

Take responsibility for communication. Social media really works very quickly so make it work for you. Or consumers will use social media against you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyL3_z7n6js

www.brandforensics.co.uk

Enjoy

Focus on the long term and where you want the brand to be positioned in the future. Focus on that be careful about short term tactics of price reductions. That can cause long term problems as it devalues the brand and alienates loyal customers

 Maintain the investment in marketing. In tough times the brands that continue to develop as the ones that are stronger and take  market share from  weaker rivals

 Be real and do not try to be too funny, too cool. If your business is about offering serious advice you must be seen as credible and avoid the temptation to go for gimmicky promotions. That will devalue the brand and decrease your ability to extend into new areas in the future

 Branding is about so much more than advertising. Build the brand from inside out. Focus on fabulous service and that comes from the employees. Everything your business does builds the brand, delivery and response to customers is key

Don’t just promise, prove that buying from your business will solve a problem for your customer. Make it simple and show the value added to the customer. Do not under deliver and over promise that is the fastest way to alienate customer and devalue the brand

A few simple steps will help you to perform really well. The secret is in the preparation. Try to take each topic eg marketing tools, marketing communications etc. Then focus on each of the concepts such as the product life cycle, pricing and so on.

Usually revision shows that you can recall seeing the product life cycle the last time you looked at your notes. You know the stages and what happens in each. For many students revision stops there, that is the mistake.

Look for some really good examples of how that works in business. So if you work part time you can use that business. E.g if you work in a supermarket, follow that business. They have a huge range of products so you can chose. You might take say chocolate or white goods or books or insurance. If you have a particular interest such as music or snow boarding use that as your example. Once you apply the concept such as the life cycle to a real business it shows understanding. Also means that you are not trying to remember lots of stuff as that is hard to do. By applying it is so much easier.

Then you can examine how well that business is managing its new products or how well it builds the brand.

Hope that helps

The idea was that by my explaining the concepts it helped to clarify the points. That is what tutors do. My question was what else could I do to help. That was to offer the short case studies to give examples. Students tend to work on their own businesses but liked the idea of seeing other ideas to give inspiration.  Then the idea of the video was born. That was to be able to see the explanation when they are at home.

Setting up the blog has taught me a great deal. So thanks to Yaro Starak for giving the idea of WordPress. The techie side was a real challenge for me and without Joel the Blogtech Guy I would have abandoned ship.

2009 saw the start of the blog. For 2010 the aim is to build and offer more in terms of courses and the opportunity to learn more about marketing if you are working in the business already. Or perhaps you just have an interest and want to explore ideas. If you have any ideas or things you would like to see, simply post up a comment and let me know

So just a thanks to all of my readers and hopefully 2010 will be a good year for marketing

Next is a good illustration of marketing practice and shows how on and off line marketing can be integrated successfully. The trend spotters who suggested that the high street was dead coulod be in for a surprise if more on line businesses opt for a collection option. The possibility of a number of on line businesses such as Amazon, Dixons, and Woolworths merging for collection purposes.  You can collect your Pick and Mix along with your DVDs