In today’s marketing environment, you not only need to figure out how to reach your customers, but also how to build real relationships with them – and, ultimately, how to turn them into advocates for your products and services. In other words, reaching your customers is not enough, and the best relationship-building marketing will only fall on deaf ears if you are not communicating using the right means.
That’s why I call Reach and Relating the power communications combo. So, let’s dive into both:
If you feel like you’re talking to your market and no one is listening or you just don’t “get” your market – let’s grab a cup of coffee and talk!
Reaching Your Customers: Channels
Channels are the means through which an organization communicates and reaches its customer segments to deliver its value proposition. Channels are also customer touch points that play an important role in the customer experience. An organization can own the channel as it does with channels such as its in-house sales force or website, and it can also employ channels owned by others. These are called indirect channels and they are owned by all types of entities, including distributors, partner-owned websites and third-party websites (like LinkedIn for example).
Finding the right channel or mix of channels is critical not only for reaching customers, but also for driving home your value proposition.
Working with clients on strategy and go-to-market challenges often results in a discussion about their channels, typically focused around whether or not the organization is creating a great customer experience and maximizing revenues in each of its selected channels. We begin by looking at how well the organization is doing at each phase of the customer experience in order to find gaps and to identify opportunities where adjustments in the customer experience might improve revenue:
Channel Case Study: Breaking Into the U.S. Market
I’m currently working with a business based in Europe that wants to sell its product in the US market. We’ve been spending lots of time devising an effective go-to-market strategy, including the best channel strategy.
After careful consideration, the company decided to employ a mix of direct and partner channels. They will own the awareness, evaluation and purchase phases directly, and they’re looking to leverage established, US partner channels to deliver the value proposition and provide after-sales support.
Why are they making this decision?
As a new entrant to the market, they feel that a high-touch, direct approach will be the best way to build comfort, familiarity and encourage prospects to take action. They also realize that this customer interaction is important for helping them understand the differences between US and European customers and how the product is used, as well as help them improve the product in future versions.
The company will have its own website and in-house sales force that, together, will build awareness and sell directly to customers. Additional sales and marketing resources will be used to tell the product’s story, and the company intends to highlight customer case studies to help prospects evaluate the offering.
While my client knows that using partners to provide distribution and after-sales support might lower their margins initially, they also realize that a smooth execution is worth the price as the company works to gain it footing in the US market.
Influencing Your Customers’ Experience: Customer Relationships
A company needs to be clear about the type of relationship it wants to establish with its customers. The type of relationship will be driven by motivation. For example:
Are you trying to acquire customers, retain customers or boost sales?
Each of these motivations will require different strategies to deliver an exceptional customer experience and grow the relationship.
I recently worked with a newly formed company that is developing a mobile app for dating. At this early phase, the company is driven by an aggressive acquisition strategy involving lots of marketing and giving the app away for free.
They know they have to enroll a critical mass of users in their first market to be successful and they are leveraging a self-service model where there is no direct relationship with the customer. Instead, the company provides all the necessary means for customers to help themselves and quickly start using the app.
Once they reach their customer acquisition goals, their motivation and, therefore, the type of customer relationship they want will change. Specifically, they’ll be working on customer retention and on increasing the average revenue per user, which both require some level of direct interaction with the customer.
Two service models that will work for the goals of customer retention and increasing average revenue per user are automated services and co-creation.
The automated services model mixes self-service with automated processes. By having customers create a profile on the dating app, the company can recognize individual users and learn about their characteristics and preferences. This allows the company to customize offers, content and other dating profiles.
In a co-creation service model, users of the dating app can work with the company to co-create value for users. Users can write reviews and help suggest future enhancements and innovations. This model is great at helping companies create offerings that users really want while also making customers feel involved and valued.
Clearly, the interconnectedness of channels and customer relationships is deeper than many companies initially realize. It’s not until they begin to analyze their current channels, think about what their customers need at each phase and consider customer relationships in terms of motivation that the most effective channel and relationship decisions can be made.
