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Customer Marketing Methods
By: Rick Coelho
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As an expert in customer relationship marketing, I can assure you that it is much more difficult than most people think. Customer marketing, in most people's opinions, is a pretty simple matter. As a consumer, you assume that a company sends out either a flyer, postcard, or a broadsheet almost indiscriminately.
They may use radio marketing, television marketing, or anything else. From the consumer's perspective, it may be all the same, but from a business prospective, all of these are radically different approaches. Consumer marketing must be carefully targeted towards the image that the company wants to portray and the clientele that it wishes to attract.
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For example, there is a good reason why Auto service centers, doctors offices, and even clothing stores often send out postcards for customer marketing. When you send out a business postcard, you play off of the perception of an intimate relationship between you and the customer. This type of customer marketing is extremely effective because it encourages brand loyalty. Although the consumers, of course, know that it is not a custom-made postcard, it still seems thoughtful. Some companies take customer marketing so far that they send out happy holiday cards to many of their loyal consumers around Christmas.
One of my favorite customer service marketing strategies is to send out targeted advertisements to consumers. This is such an effective form of customer marketing because consumers always appreciate it when you are in tune with their own interests. You can even try to educate about the products while you advertise them, speaking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. Usually, people assume that you do not want to ever speak badly of your own products, but sometimes it has its advantages. A few negative details thrown into a customer marketing report can give the customer the perception that you are unusually honest and concerned with the welfare of the consumer.
Of course, this is not the only type of custom marketing that companies routinely engage in. As a matter of fact, the job of marketing consultants is to come up with new and more innovative strategies to market products to their clients. Techniques such as guerrilla marketing and word-of-mouth have revolutionized the marketing industry in the last decade, and customer marketing continues to evolve because of that kind of bright thinking. Not only does it help companies to make more money, but it also helps consumers to receive a product or service more carefully tailored to their own interests.