Today's Marketing: The more Complex, the more Personal
Human civilization is advancing and developing along with increasingly complex problems. For business people and marketers, this can be a golden opportunity.
Formerly in Indonesia, especially before the reform era, marketing activities have not become a matter of concern in business. Proximity to the authorities and monopoly rights in one region or many regions becomes a necessity in doing business. On the other hand, where consumers can not do much because the product alternatives are still small and the vocal attitude is still a taboo thing.
Now, the landscape of the business and marketing world is far different. Marketing sciences are a necessity for business people, brand managers, and marketers so that consumers remain attached to them, consume their products regularly, and provide positive contagious sap.
The basic science of marketing alias marketing such as Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning or Geography, Demography, Psychography is a thing that must be understood. Then, when Philip Kotler in 1960 introduced the concept of 4P (Product, Price, Place, Promotion - Products, Prices, Places, Promotions) into the world of marketing, understanding and implementing marketing science became deeper.
But the population continues to grow, the problem continues to disappear and grow alternately and increasingly complex along with innovations created by humans, among others, indicated by technological advances. Because of new findings such as motorized vehicles, combustion fumes can cause problems such as eye irritation. This is a high-value problem.
Through the science of marketing, it is known that even though customers can be categorized as 'homogeneous' but actually still different. This difference can be seen when the homogeneous customer group is surveyed with a very sharp analysis tool. For example, eye irritation problems that cannot be seen simply because of motor vehicle fumes, but can also arise due to other human technology findings, such as computers and smartphones.
Then the compulsory marketing strategy to go forward and develop looks for answers to the problems of customers that are increasingly complex, while being able to meet their increasingly personal needs. When we can carry out and carry out marketing analysis, among other things in the form of very sharp analysis of consumer problems, the company has actually taken the initial steps of ultra personal marketing.
Of course so that the company can still live and develop, the targeted segmentation of consumers must have value in order to cover costs and provide added value from the total expenditure that has been spent by the company to solve customer problems. Ultra personal marketing can also be called one-to-one marketing that is truly oriented to the dimensions of the customer, not the product dimension.
Ultra Personal Marketing
The author previously published an article discussing Marketing 5i (Don Peppers and Martha Rogers). General understanding if we are marketing 5i begins with conventional marketing understanding.
Marketing 5i application to meet customer needs
Identification. In the identification process, we must know our customer's profile more than just points in demographics, such as name, address, or telephone number. We also need to know the aspects of customer psychography, such as driving habits, telephone usage habits, to whom he is used to gathering.
Through this collection of information, we can map customer problems more sharply and measurably. Identification is the first and crucial step in running a consumer-based business. Running a consumer-based business means trying to find out their problems as completely as possible from various points of view, 360 degrees.
For example, a beauty product manager must know that the segment is not just a middle-class woman, but also knows the community to segment the beauty problems faced.
Individualization. After we have succeeded in making a customer profile as detailed as possible along with the problems faced, the following steps need to be done to personalize the approach taken by the brand manager or company to the customers.
The company must be able to communicate the added value and benefits of the product to the customer even though he is in a collection of a segment with high quantity. The purpose of this personalization is to obtain, maintain, and grow customer loyalty in the long term towards the company.
An example of the application of individualization is the application of age group-based price discounts that are applied to a restaurant network. The older the age of a customer, the higher the price discount can be obtained. That also has not calculated other facilities that can still be obtained by consumers.
Interaction. After we carry out the steps of identification and individualization, we must do the third step, namely interaction. We have successfully identified customers from demographic to psychographic profiles. We already know their problems and even segment problems from our customers. Of course we need to carry out routine communication so that knowledge about consumers and their problems is constantly updated.
As our knowledge of consumers and their problems continues to be updated, we have tried to continue to improve brand value in the eyes of customers and customer value in the eyes of the company as brand manager. The media used to maintain interaction with consumers can also be through online channels and in the field.
A simple example of this interaction is asking about customer feedback and complaints after they have enjoyed a meal at a restaurant.
Integration. 360 degree largon jargon with the step of integrating relationships with customers. The reason is that all corporate communications actions towards each customer, both commercial and non-commercial, must be based on the company's knowledge of its customers and of course, must be agreed by the customers.
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