CUSTOMER MAANGE MORE SPEED

The consumer wants everything now and if you want his loyalty, you need to cope up with his demands. Take for example the purchase behavior of customers. Gone are the days when he would wait for the shop to open and buy. Today, he wants to buy whenever he pleases (thanks to e-commerce) and add to that the fact that he wants his shopping delivered at the soonest. While shopping online, a delivery period of two to three days was acceptable some time back. Now, he wants same-day-delivery. Soon, he would want everything delivered at his doorstep as fast as a pizza.

The consumer of today not just shops any time of the day, but is texting and messaging his friends at all hours. Soon, he would want to text and receive texts from companies. A recent survey by Corvisa (a cloud communications provider) found that 77% of consumers were okay with getting text messages from companies and in fact liked it if the companies texted them about things like fraud alerts, payment reminders, sales, discounts, promos etc. If you as a marketer can use this tool to engage with your customer, there is no better way to build a long lasting relationship. He texts you like he would a friend and you text him back – that is the speed of communication you should be prepared for. Gone is the concept of ‘contact during office hours only’. If you want to retain your market share, you need to behave just like your customer wants you to or else some other young brand will replace you. Speedy deliveries, speedy text responses will see your profits speeding up!

CUSTOMER MAANGE MORE CONNECTION

Marketing is no more a ‘one-to-many’ style of communication; rather, it’s now all about one-to-one. From being a monologue – where the marketers spoke and the consumers listened – now, it’s a dialogue. The consumer speaks and the marketer is expected to listen and respond if he wants to build a long lasting relationship. Not just that, the customer also likes to be spoken to about things he enjoys. Hence the rise of ‘programmatic advertising’. One ad, however brilliant, will not work any more. Soon, marketers would be expected to customize and make multiple advertisements to suit the tastes of different types of customers, and technology is making it possible to do this. Programmatic buying identifies users and groups them according to the sites they browse and then offers them advertisements and promotional materials of products and services that match their habits and tastes. There is growing evidence that consumers are getting bored and irritated with advertisements that don’t interest them. With the help of technology, now marketers can identify the choices of the target consumers and place their ads in front of only those who are interested in that particular product or service. Brands like Nike, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Kia Automobiles are using programmatic buying to micro-target their audience and send them ads customized to suit their tastes and build better connections with them.