Retailing Mantra

Retail is a big word in today's consumer driven market. Big brands like walmart, Big Bazar, Reliance are some of the examples of the stronger and growing retail market. The brick and mortar trade contributes to a majority of GDP and for various brands. It is the present and the future.

This all makes Retail a big name, but retail is not about winning big battles. It is winning the small battles- the consumers and trade. Exploring the new avenues and creating a regular contact with the existing ones.

Retail is about winning the confidence of consumers and making them delighted through the products and services.

To make Retail successful for any brand it is must that all the analysis are done from Retail perspective: Market Analysis, customer analysis, internal manpower analysis, competition analysis, product offering analysis, existing distribution analysis and cost benefit analysis.

The brand needs to have a clear understanding of the market they are willing to enter. The customer who is king needs to be understood in detailed and accordingly the actions  are required which invoke him to purchase the product and make decisions.

Retail requires legs, the manpower is an important factor to make the retail successful. Retail is about creating big and small trade points for raching to customers and it require lot of leg work with patience. The employees need to be trained to channelise the retail chain and serve them.

A successful retail business requires clear understanding of customer expectations and their demands. The customer delight is the key to success in retail market. The happy customer experience is the secret of long run success in the market.

The retail requires correct product mix. The product offering needs to meet all the customer requirements and their expectations.

The brands also needs to establish a clear distribution channel for the successful retail business. In retail the products flow through the retail chain which involves CFA/Super Stockist/ Stockist/Distributor/Retailer . One need to have the understanding of the complete chain and the material needs to be available at all these points.

The cost benefit analysis, understanding business economies are required to chalk out the retail strategy.

Post all these actiosn, everything come down to creating a customer delight program and winning them.

Retail is the oldest form of business started with peddlers and evolving to super markets. But it still remains about winning small battles. Retail is exciting , Retail is energy, Retail is the RELATIONS!!

It all starts with a smile!

Yes it all starts with a smile! For any purchase the customer must be convinced with the features and benefits of the products. And that can be done best while explaining them with the smile. The day to day action tells that any one greeted with smile will be more receptive to your ideas and will listen out the you carefully. The smile shows the sales person is confident about its products and understand then well. 

It is not only salesman but all the faces of business require the smile while interacting with the customer, be it  internal or external.

People who speak with a smile is able to bring customers at ease and thus involving them in a smooth buying process and remains engage for long term in the business.

Sales person  looks  more convincing and confident while talking and smiling. with this he takes away all the worries and purchase inertia of customers.

So the first law of sales remains S for Sales, S for Smile.

Achieve your success understanding 5 Cs

The brands need to stick to one Strategy for a long time to make their brand recognised among consumers. Wether it is B2B or B2C one need to very  carefully  identify its goals and then chose the strategy. The Competition, Customers, Core Benefits, Communication and Consistency helps you to define your moments of strategy success

Competition  influence your strategy

The organisations need to identify their customers and the select a positioning for its products in market place. The competition needs to be identified and analysed along with their  product offering, positioning and promotional strategy. They needs to be studied and results out of that needs to be analysed. The competition  helps any brand in many ways to understand the market and then in drafting Marketing strategies.

Understand your Customers Better.

Along with competition the market for your product  needs to be identified and analysed.  The customer behaviour and journey needs to be understand.  Understanding the motivational factors behind their purchase helps to identify the cusyomers and their influencers and then drafting the product and branding strategies.

Understand  your  Product

The product understanding is equally important. One must know the core benefit of their products. How does the product will make a difference to the life of a customer? Is it a need driven product or the status symbol one, the understanding of core benefits of a product helps in better positioning of product and thus in defining  branding strategy.

What you want to communicate

If you are clear about the competition, customers, and core benefits of your products, you can easily define what you need to communicate. The communication must be developed keeping in mind these 3 actors. The messaging has to be defined according to the core benefits your product offering, keeping in mind your customers  and a bit different than competition. 

Consistency is the key to success

The messaging needs to be consistent on all vehicles and for a long term to register in the mind of customers. Once you have defined the messaging  you needs to be steadily communicating to your customers. The brand needs to identify the media vehicles to ride on to reach to customers. The principal for vehicle remains same the more you have fuel in it, more you will be able to travel to your target destination. You also needs to be consistent and keep the vehicle supported with all required maintenance. The synchronisation  in various media vehicles  help you to reach you're desired place quickly.

So combine  all your 5 Cs together  and then start you brand journey to reach your target fast.

Internet and Customer Journey.

Internet and Customer Journey.

Internet plays a vital role in customer journey and affects his purchase behavior in a significant way. The smart digital marketing manager will influence the behaviour by making effective utilisation of internet marketing. The consumer before buying seeks information about his purchase and look for suggestions from his close ones. Earlier before internet era, one use to rely on recommendation of his peers, advices from family and friends and use to seek the reviews from magazines. Since the inception of the internet the things are changed and people Google for every information.

The customer today has access to all the information he wants on internet. Companies are making their website content rich to share their product  features and benefits to their customers. The consumer visit the review based websites and compare the offers made to them and then decide the best buys.

A typical customer journey starts from either his needs or wants or desires but internet has the capabilities to make a customer feel the need of something which he actually doesn’t need. Purchase at Mantra or jabong.com is one such example where people buy the clothes derived from either discounts or presentation.

The offline customer, once he needs something shall speaks to his relatives, visit the stores and the evaluate the options and buy. In case of online consumer he just go to Google baba and make searches there and take helps of evaluating websites and make purchase. The process ends the participation of any individual other than buyer himself.

So how do one take advantage of internet marketing. Internet marketing is faster and agile than the offline. It reaches fast to consumers in various ways. You can follow the consumers through cookies. One can easily target his customers by following him through cookies stored on his computer or mobile.

The customer can be reached with Facebook or website page he visits. The internet marketing is economical as compared to offline hence it gives advantage for continuous hammering.

For an online customer his journey starts when he desires to buy something. Sometime this desires is induced to him by creatively nice designed advertisements and sometimes he actually has the need. Once the customer identifies his needs he start searching for solutions and in case of being an online customer he searches through various platforms including google, bing and other search engines. The search engine leads customers to various service providers or product supplier sites. At the time of search also, internet provide the opportunity to influence the customer through search ads or PPC.

Out of the results appeared the customer tends to visit the top ranked pages and browse through them. Once customer find his desired products he can visit the price and feature compare sites like Cardekho.com for cars or policy bazar.com for buying policies. The review websites influence the customer decision in a big way as they tend to put a comparative scenario for various products. One can easily advertise on review website and can attract the customers through his product USPs.

After going through the reviews the customer takes a conscious decision and make the purchase.

The whole customer journey gives ample opportunities to marketers to influence its customers and excite them about their offerings. Hence the digital marketing manager really need to act in most innovative and creative manner to  influence the customer throughout their buying journey.

My best learning on Customer Services and Experiences

My best learning on Customer Services and Experiences

I learnt my best customer complaint resolution experience at Tea stall.  While sipping the tea along with my friends, we  heard a person complaining to tea shop owner 'bhaiyya aaj aapki chai acchi  nahi bani hai’. We all were amused as it is the same in taste which we were having for so many years. Then why this person is complaining. To our utter surprise the shop owner acknowledged the problem and said yes there seems to be some problem and he will rectify it. Once the complaining customer left the stall we asked the tea shop owner “bhaiyya kya problem thee” and he smiled that there was no problem and the tea is same as it had been for many years. Then we enquired why did he agreed to complaint, to which he replied if we need to get the answer then we need to be there tomorrow same time when the complaining customer come again at shop to have his tea.

We all were eager to know about it and were keen to find the answer. Next day, thanks to our curiosity we reached at shop again and waited for the complaining customer to come. The customer came ordered his tea and started sipping that. Then The tea owner asked 'bhaiyya aaj to chai theek hai naa’. and the customer nodded in affirmation and said “haan aaj majedar hai”. We also ordered the tea and again experienced the same taste and quality which we had last night. The customer seemed quite satisfied from tea and left the store.

We again asked the  chai wala 'bhaiyya what is the difference between yesterday’s and today’s tea, as we could not find any difference. The tea vendor said that their is no difference. He said, he did not changed anything. We again asked him then how did the customer felt difference. To which he answered that this is the same tea he has been drinking for years . I could make out that yesterday he was not happy with something and hence could not enjoy the tea.  If i would have resisted to the complaint, customer could have more angry and then probably I would have lost the customer.

This taught me some very important lessons for handling the customer:

• Always hear the customer patiently
• Greet & Reply him with a smile
• Be Courteous always

Most of us before listening to customers we start making them understand about the problem, sometimes it is better to listen them patiently and then make them feel as you are always there to help them. Once we make him feel comfortable, he can really contribute a lot to our business via word of mouth communication. Hence while dealing with customers, we must also remember followings:

• Try to resolve the customer ASAP, immediately would be best.
• .One must be courteous, admit the problem and try to be helpful, all of above must have knowledge about product/services while guiding the customer
• Offer Quality Service 24X7
• You can always offer the customer for Free product training and support
• Exceed Customer Satisfaction through proactive support

If one can follow the above said rules, the customer experience will surely be great!

Digital Marketing; why it is so Important?

The pie share for digital spends in India is increasing day by day! Its speed, agility and audience engagement give it edge over rival conventional media vehicles. Each of the brand manager is working in their brain storming rooms to work out a digital strategy to gain the market share. The companies are spending  in huge numbers to increase their digital presence. In fact everyone is looking to maximize the brand equity through online presence via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram or Pinterest.

In one of the recent interview a senior official from coca cola mentioned that  the ROI on digital media is quite less as compared to the conventional media. However still they are transforming themselves to be a digitally communicating brand.

So what does it make companies to work on digital strategies? When out of 132 core population only  34% use internet then why do companies are intending to spend so heavily on the digital marketing. Why do a smart phone is exclusively launched through a website?

Why there are so many digital start ups? The answer is the speed with which people are converting to digital mode and it's engagement capabilities with customers.

As per an estimate in 2010 there were around 92 Mn people were connected to  internet and at the  end of  Year 2015  around 350 Mn people were connected to internet. It is expected that by 2020 , 730 mn people will be connected via internet. Hence the companies are preparing themselves to be at right place at right time.

No doubt digital is fast, things get viral in friction of a minute, and it has a wide engaging effect on audiences.

With conventional media it is a one way traffic. The brand communicate it's side of story and rely on word of mouth to move on. Or else it has to keep spending in huge amounts to gain the recognition in customer mind.

On the other hand the digital platforms tends to engage the audience by story telling. The companies encourage audience to like,share and talk about the brands. The companies like RedMi or Xiaomi used digital platforms extensively to sell their smart phones.  Companies have specialised teams to create posts and then using strategies to engage audiences. And no doubt the phones, sold exclusively in digital platforms were out of stock within the hours of it's launch.

Besides being fast and it's engaging features,  the digital platforms also ride on young Indian population. Today India is one of the youngest country and its youth are not scared of exploring new opportunities and adopting new technologies.

The digital marketing has definitely given an opportunity to marketer to reach to millions in one go and in a quantitative way. It helps in easy classification and segmentation of market and thus in making focused efforts. The consumers can be segmented and classified as per the requirements and then can be targeted. The effect can also be measured by quantifying the impression , clicks and post share.

The digital marketing helps in creating a fast effect on audiences by giving an opportunity to marketer to  repeat their messages at relatively low cost. The low cost helps marketer to fix their budgeting problems.

Although conventional means also helps in limiting your messages to a targeted geography but digital efforts can be ultra-geo targeted. Today you have possibilities to monitor the movement of your target and accordingly modify your message geography. By using beacons one can actually deliver a discount or mega sales message to customers when they are inside a market compound and can significantly influence their buying behavior.

No doubt digital marketing has edge over the conventional media and hence it is going to be future marketing. It would be an important vehicle to carry the brand stories and would be used by companies more as compared to their conventional media vehicles.

www.thinkmukesh.blogspot.com

REFERENCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/

How active are your customers?

How active are your customers:

For a sales manager it is important to know how many of their customers are active and how much efforts they should put in to make their customers active. One way to identify the activeness of customers is Recency.

Recency is the state of being recent. In sales actions means, when did the customer last time purchased from you. Recency helps in identifying the chances if customers will buy again from you? The customer who has bought material in recent time is more likely to buy from you again. The recency can be defined on the basis of the product consumption cycle. The product consumption cycle is the period in which a product will be consumed and the customer shall be again at store to buy. For example for a bread, it can be consumed in a day time & hence the consumption cycle would be a day while for a Salt packet it might be 30 days.

If the consumption cycle of a bread pack is one day then on the basis of recency the customers can be divided in following categories:

Active Customers are those who have bought the material in recent times and are most likely to buy again. For Bread pack those will be who has bought it yesterday.

Warm Customers who has bought material a little late than the recent past and will buy products on intermittent basis. For a bread pack, The customers who has bought in last 2 weeks will fall in the category

Cold Customers are those who have bought material some time back and would have shifted to competition, for a bread pack they might be someone who has bought a month back

Inactive Customers are those who have bought it long back and not thinking to buy again your products,  for Bread packet, someone who has not bought your products for last 2 months.

The Active Customers are likely to buy more often and regularly as compared to old customers and hence you might need more resources to keep them interested in your brand.

People who have not come back to your stores might have shifted to competition and need more efforts to bring back and hence require attractive sales pitch. While the cold customers are not happy with you and hence probably switched the brand and thus gives you a chance to introspect and analyse why did you lost them.

The Active customers require regular visit by sales team and need to be monitored & followed up with more promotion, while Inactive Customers can be touch based once in a while to know their interest in brand.  But if someone is very important and large customer and he has gone to cold or Inactive mode, then you need to put large amount of promotional efforts.

Hence while recency helps you to segmentise your market and help you in resource allocation, it also helps you to identify the important customers and track them.

The recency phenomenon can also be used to segment the market and for utilisation of your resources.