Retention and Relationships : Marketing Thoughts by Michael Greenberg

Here’s an excerpt from my latest article for Chief Marketer.  The article in its entirety is here.

Quick, list the objective for the next marketing dollar you spend. Is it quantifiable and time-bound? Is it something other than “increase revenue”? I talk to dozens of companies about improving their business through relationship marketing and find that developing clear financial and marketing objectives is the most productive step in the discussion.

Read more.

There’s a fascinating study going around from the CMO Council that looks at how marketers are interacting with their customers.  To summarize, they’re not.

49% named CRM or database systems as their main information source on customers.  75% don’t have advisory boards or online communities.  30% don’t develop their own customer segmentation.  Plus, there are plenty of other insights on the CMO Council website.

From my perspective, every marketer should talk or listen to customers every week.  Whether that means walking onto a sales floor as a retailer, reading customer satisfaction survey responses, listening in to a call center, or participating in weekly account manager conference calls, keeping up to date on customer needs, concerns, and input is crucial.  Qualitative input helps balance the tendency to rely solely on quantitative input, which many of us practitioners have tended to fall back on.

There is an outstanding discussion between Vinton Cerf and Esther Dyson at wsj.com that is definitely worth reading.

The fascinating part is their discussion of attention.  If there truly is an emerging shift in how individuals value themselves (Adults define themselves by what they own and wear, Kids by who pays attention to them), there are staggering changes to the concept of brands and brand relationships on the horizon.

It’s not difficult to envision a world 20 years from now where individual expression is everything, and conformity is nothing.  Functional and performance brands will still thrive, but attitudinal brands will become niche-oriented to survive.

The relationships that brands have with their customers will become even more important, since holding on to core customers will be an absolute requirement for survival.