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.

Authority and Responsibility

Who is Superior?

 Once few friends were crossing a river in a boat and they all were wearing live saving kit. Lifesaving kit is the equipment which allow a person to keep afloat in the water.

While travelling, all of them spotted a hole in the boat and realized that the hole will allow to come water inside and then the boat will be sink. All knew that each of them has also seen the hole and thought, it is other person’s responsibility to take initiative to close the hole. As all of them felt that individually they are superior than other and what if the water comes inside the boat, they are wearing life saving kit which will keep them afloat and they will cross the river. And finally the boat sinked  and all were left with lifesaving kit. They all crossed river but they lost the boat. They did not realized it was boat which could have saved them every time they were crossing the river. All of them thought that they are big and it is the other person’s responsibility and why I should initiate?

Unfortunately they all were considering themselves superior than other one, they could not realise that the bigger person is boat which selfless helped them crossing the river whenever they need it with full responsibility.  One needs to be more responsible and as much as one is powerful or authority, he needs to  take initiative to resolve the issues.

Authority Always comes with Responsibility and one who initiates for resolution of any problem is considered as the right leader.

Market Segmentation

We all know Consumers are complex and to sell them, it is important to understand them well. Consumers buying behavior depends on various factors like their priorities, needs, interests and it is very difficult to understand them in a complete group.  Hence to target & cover the consumers effectively , the consumers/markets are divided into various subsets on the basis of common interests, needs, geography etc. This division helps companies to design and implement the strategies effectively and efficiently.

The process of dividing and defining large market or all consumers in the  subgroups or subsets is known as the Market Segmentation. In the process of segmentation, the consumers are divided into identifiable groups having common characteristics. The market or customers can be divided on the basis of following:

• Demographical features
• Geographical features
• Psychological features &
• Behavioral features

The groups identified under marketing segmentation should have following features:

• The group must be measurable and effectively sized
• Group must be clearly identifiable and segmentised
• It can be targeted with the promotional efforts
• It fits to the marketing mix
• It must be easily definable 

The subsets defined in the market segmentation process helps in defining the right marketing mix for the company. It helps in identifying the prospect opportunities to the companies & developing the correct promotional programs and making adjustments in the various selling strategies and tactics.

The market segmentation also helps in developing the product or solution for a particular subset. It helps in servicing the group better and correct selection of media and execution of media efforts. It helps companies in drafting distribution strategies, fixing the prices and thus better servicing to the consumers,

The customer segmentation has to be done very carefully. It not only assist in productive sales territory management but also in customer retention and thus increasing the customer life value.  

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Marketing Experimentation in Modern Marketing

Marketing Experimentation in Modern Marketing

Miranda is thinking to invest in Bilboard campaign for his bicycle b
rand Avendus. The national campaign cost is $ 50K. His company currently sales $60MN bicycles.  He is willing to invest in the campaign with an aim of net lift of 20% in revenues. There are many correlations and casual factors to achieve the desired objectives. The holiday seasons is approaching and the historically the Bicycle sales increases in school vacations.

Miranda decided to roll out the campaign on national level but the result was not as per the expectations and the sales dipped by 5%.So what went wrong? Why sales could not lift as per the expectation?

The campaign did not succeed because the competition BiMax launched a new range of bicycle based on Disney cartoons with added features in it. While the other competition Newbike offered an added inventory of head guard and water bottle with their Bicycles. The young customers who are crazy about cartoons preferred the BiMax over Avendus and the others opted for competition offer.

She did not make a marketing experiment and hence the results were not as what she expected. While implementing decision to rollout the campaign she could not discount the external factors. She failed due to lack of marketing intelligence, she did not had the right inputs on what competition is doing and planning. She could not anticipate the competition actions and the marketing campaigns were planned in isolation. This all happened because there was no marketing experimentation.

Marketing Decisions are complex because the outcome of any decision depends on several other variables; how competition will behave to your actions, the response of customers, season/force majeure and many others. The brand managers make mistake of making the decisions in isolation and hence could not succeed.  Marketing experimentation helps in overcoming these barriers and can benefit in achieving the organizational goals.

In Marketing Experimentation two groups are selected – Test Group and Control Group. These groups are small in number & representative identities of the complete market. The groups are selected on the basis of their proximity in term of geographical area, consumer sales and their behavior. The external factors are considered and then the experimentation is carried out.

The Test group is selected on advertisement/campaign/offer to be implemented on national level. The discounting factor for external factors is calculated and time frame is decided. The control group is selected on various vicinity. Post all this, Test market is exposed to the campaign or offer.

The results are measured and compared with control market and then the decisions are taken whether to implement the decision on national level or not?

The marketing experimentation work like a chemical laboratory where many experiments are done and the final solution is selected after testing many. For all modern brand managers it is must that before implementing any campaign offer the tests are conducted and the results of test are evaluated both on economic and viability scales and then the decisions are implemented.