How to build your brand from the customer’s point of view
According to a study by Econsulting and Adobe, 78% of participants in a large behavioral survey in Europe try to differentiate their business through the UX: Customer Experience. Gone are the days of linear needs analysis to determine the rational purchasing approach. With the added bonus of the new power of the consumer who holds the information even before consulting his future supplier. What a revolution!
How to capture, then, this elusive prospect who resembles the love described by the Carmen: “You think you hold him, he avoids you…you think you avoid him, he holds you! ” Carmen was talking about love, but the parallel with Client seems particularly judicious. The digital revolution has changed all the relational behaviors between the actors of a purchase, to the point that knowing the customer experience becomes an ardent obligation. Proof of this is the success of the “Customer Experience Departments” that are beginning to take root in many companies.
A new marketing mix: from 4P to 4C
Which marketing manager, which communication manager, which marketing student has not conscientiously learned the famous 4P Price, Product, Place, Promotion. A salutary initiative that has enabled generations of leaders to successfully implement communication strategies and launch many products – especially during the Glorious Thirties, until the day when the client no longer reacts to collective stimuli and demands to exist as a single consumer, to the despair of marketers forced to revise their copy.
Any marketing plan is today part of another concept: the 4Cs
- Product becomes Consumer: desire precedes need. Hence the importance of people who behave according to emotional and rational typologies. It is up to you to define and characterize them with approaches where affect is often imposed instead of the objective argument.
- Price becomes Cost: the purchase price disappears in favor of the applied usage and replacement cost. Thus a new concept is born: the cost of the solution and not the product itself.
- Promotion becomes Communication: more particularly communication is expressed through exchange, especially if you adopt Inbound Marketing, or how to make customers come to you instead of picking them up
- Place becomes Channel or “Touching points”: distribution previously vertical, from the manufacturer to the consumer via a distribution chain, diversifies or even dematerializes via the Internet. Consequence: the circuits become more complex, even mobile. Producers are facing new distribution methods that are cheerfully trampling on the certainties of yesteryear.
Today, nobody can remain on old patterns. More than ever, new marketing must be inspired by these 4Cs: Consumer, Cost, Communication, and Channel, placing the customer and his contact points at the center of any strategy.
The customer journey: from digital travel to brand promotion
As indicated above, the analysis of the Persona’s behaviour is accompanied by a detailed search for his Touching Points or Points of Contact with the obsession “to find the right man in the right place”. Indeed, the new marketing approach no longer consists in bringing the customer to pre-established places, but on the contrary in finding him where he is! Hence the need to “follow” your prospect or customer in his search for information, to capture his desire to know more.
Today, the Digital Consumer Journey often conditions the client’s initiatory journey. Indeed, its first movement consists in carrying itself on Internet to immerse itself in its research.
Do not forget that his journey often follows random paths where the need for information is accompanied by the pleasure of the unexpected. So it all begins with the burning obligation: to attract!
Attract: the first step that counts and costs
How to attract the surfer who twirls on his computer and who discovers by serendipity your site? The dilemma is all there! Lure it into your net so it can continue its journey on your site. A tip: apply a real bait branding strategy that will gradually turn him from an inattentive suspect to a potential customer.
These baits, different according to the level of desire of the Internet user, determine the future of the relationship between the prospect and the company. So do not hesitate to have a range of bait with an ambition: to promote the development of the Internet user and enrich him intellectually and professionally.
In conclusion, the usual antiphon but so topical: the customer must be at the centre of any marketing and communication strategy and beyond any commercial strategy. Because as Sam Walton, Walmart’s boss, put it so well: “The only boss is the customer. He can fire everyone, from the manager to the employee, by doing one simple thing: spending his money elsewhere.