Prepare to be customer-centric
Businesses must prepare now with a focus on customer-centric relevancy to survive the imminent recession. Obtaining and retaining customers is the crux of what marketing is about and the core to great marketing is relevancy. As a company tasked with ensuring our client’s brands remain relevant, we at Stanley St built a framework for identifying the building blocks and actions that need to take place.
Our pivot, prepare and position framework covers the critical need to pivot immediate services and systems in the short term, how to build internal agility that prepares companies for multiple future scenarios and finally, how to position the brand for the recession. Yes, the recession – it is definitely coming and the time to prepare is now.
Not all aspects of this framework will be applicable to smaller businesses but within it are some fundamentals we recommend all businesses prioritise.
Know your customers
Big businesses often talk about being customer-centric or putting the customer first. This shouldn’t be a revelation. It’s about building your company backwards from the customer – their needs, their feelings, their behaviours. Too often, businesses are a reflection of their internal dynamics; when that’s the case they can get easily caught out by changing customer needs. That’s the reason small and medium businesses need to get closer to their customers. They need to monitor customer sentiment in a way that helps them get a feel for changing perceptions and feelings around their business, their industry and even patterns of behaviour.
Big businesses have the luxury of investing in specialised customer-tracking research and monitoring tools but there are ways for smaller businesses to get on top of this requirement.
For small, local businesses to start building a better understanding of their customers Google is at the top of the list. Services such as Google My Business, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Surveys, Google Ads, Google Trends and Google Alerts provide powerful insights into how to better position your business for maximum relevance.
Mid-sized companies can choose to scale up to customer engagement tools such as Sprout Social or Hootsuite, which both do a great job for social media monitoring and tracking, as well as media management.
Reward loyalty
During a recession, it has been repeatedly proven that customer retention should be a company’s primary objective. Why? Because it costs less to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. So, before you think about how to get your message out to new prospects, make sure you have a robust way to reward loyalty.
Small companies can either create their own programme and work their customer network or opt to engage in third-party loyalty programmes designed for smaller businesses, such as Perkville. You can go for larger programmes like Fly Buys, but be very mindful of associated costs.
Another option is to look for partner networks that group likeminded businesses together to create ecosystems that are better at giving customers incentives than one business alone – think ‘‘Shop Local’’ initiatives.
While loyalty needs to rewarded, remember that happy customers form one of the most powerful media channels – word of mouth. This earned media may not reach the scale of paidfor media but makes up for it through the credibility of peer endorsement. Track your customers’ comments and reviews and do something about any negative ones. Think of it as your Uber driver score – you need to retain your five-star status. Your existing customer base is your most important weapon during these times. Treat them well, reward them, market to them first and use them as ambassadors.
Yes, the recession – it is definitely coming and the time to prepare is now.
Tell your brand story
When I first came to New Zealand, I was amazed at the proliferation of sales messages. I was told that New Zealanders love a bargain. Driving price advantage is fine. It works. To a point. What it doesn’t do is create a defendable point of difference.
A balance needs to be struck between short-term marketing tactics such as sales and longterm tactics such as differentiation. Small businesses need to use their marketing to tell their customers who they are, what they stand for and what makes them different. These are the elements of marketing that help build emotional relationships between a company and its customers and help customers separate your business from your competitors. This brand storytelling provides context to the value equation that customers are working through when thinking about choosing you, staying with you or endorsing you.
The next 18 months are going to be rough. We all need to make sure we use what we know to help every level of business survive. The three fundamental drivers to make sure you are on a strong platform that can ride out the storm are getting closer to your customers, rewarding them and telling them about yourself.
Stay safe, stay strong.