Establish productive dialogue through focus groups.
"Well-run focus groups engage and enfranchise your customers in the ongoing success of your business," Harris says. "They enable rich dialogues on critical subjects with people who most often have the best information. And they send a strong signal to your customers that you're interested in their success as well as your own."
Harris offers six tips for creating effective focus groups: 1) Make them part of a customer-care strategy that includes executive visits, sales promotions and special events. 2) Establish clear objectives and well-defined outcomes. 3) Ask yourself why customers would want to invest valuable time and resources in meeting with you, and what tangible benefits they'll receive. 4) Choose participants who will understand the focus group's objectives. 5) Funnel the group's best ideas into your planning process, giving customers a stronger stake in your success. 6) Publish results and invite future feedback.
Develop a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.
"After two years of deep slumber, the CRM market is about to reawaken," Shaw says. Some organizations thought all they had to do was "install the software, train their staff and--presto--they would be able to cut costs and create happier customers," he says. Business leaders should consider CRM a strategy, not a technology, Shaw says.
Shaw offers four tips for launching CRM programs: 1) Realize that organizational change should precede planning and implementation of CRM software. 2) Don't underestimate the importance of data quality and transferability--how to get reliable data in and out of CRM systems so you can make better decisions. 3) Set achievable goals around specific measures such as share of total purchases, spending velocity, intention to reorder, openness toward new product offers, willingness to refer prospects, and satisfaction with past purchases and service. 4) Know what matters to your most valuable customers. Rank those issues, then determine if your performance is meeting expectations.
Avoid partnering pitfalls.
"Partnerships, alliances, strategic networks--whatever you call them, they're nothing more than two companies coming together to find ways to leverage each other's products or services," Schaff says. "The goal typically centers on finding additional revenue streams and new market entry points. Very rarely is the word 'partner' taken for what it really means, which is someone who shares your business values, ethics, visions, and objectives."
Schaff offers three tips for analyzing potential marketing partners: 1) Identify your own strengths and weaknesses, paying attention to areas in which resources are lacking (or could be in the future) due to market trends and shifts in supply and demand. It takes corporate-wide support to make partnerships work. 2) Review current and past partners, and stay focused on a manageable number of partners that have defined roles. 3) Avoid working with friends and family members just because they're easy partnerships to form. Select partners based on criteria such as market reputation, financial stability and longevity, cultural cohesiveness and similarity, strategic offerings, and connections with key people.
Select a defined position.
"I've sat through numerous positioning exercises, where people delineate the inherent qualities of their products, then try to determine which positions they can adopt based on those qualities," Fischler says. "That's like drilling a round hole and then searching for a peg that fits it. The marketplace defines the positions. You try to win one of them."
Fischler shares insight into deriving a strong positioning strategy: He recently analyzed a product category he previously knew little about--Athlete's foot remedies. Online consumer reviews revealed four market positions--speed of healing, effectiveness, price and scope of use. Fischler found the three market leaders went after the first two, creating a muddled marketplace. "Scope of use caught my eye," he says. He toyed with tactical ideas, including a print ad showing a runner pushing a jogging stroller with a baby inside. The headline was, "Fungaway Cures What Both These Athletes Have." The key is understanding the positions that market has defined, then figuring out which you can "assume and defend," Fischler says.
Fine-tune your value proposition.
"Marketers have an obligation not only to help create unique value propositions for each applicable segment, but also to make sure their company's customers understand the value that has been delivered to them," Perla says. Value often is defined differently by individuals within the same firm, he says, so businesses need consistent and proactive processes for understanding the attributes customers value most.
Perla suggests two actions to help offer (and prove) value: 1) Develop a process to keep in touch with clients, making sure there's continuous dialogue about what customers value about your firm. 2) Given the data gathered from the first action, create a tight link between the customer's marketing and sales departments and offer solutions that are valued by both.
