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In a recession, marketing budgets are often the first to get slashed. For many that means cutting programs, cutting spending and cutting staff in order to make it through the economic downturn. But marketing in a recession isn't about marketing less, it's about marketing better and smarter. In this issue of Customer Connection, I want share with you techniques for marketing more efficiently and effectively, particularly on a tight budget.
How to Build Customer Loyalty in a Recession
While it may seem counter-intuitive on the surface, the simple fact is that strong companies use a recession to take advantage of weaker competitors. How do they do it? They stay true to their core values and optimize the customer experience. When faced with new budget constraints, they focus their resources on proactively engaging existing customers, cross selling to current customers, and encouraging former customers to buy again. Bruce Temkin, with Forrester studied nearly 5,000 consumers and examined the correlation between how customers rated a firm's customer experience and two measures of loyalty: 1) their willingness to buy another product from the firm, and 2) their reluctance to switch business away from the firm. His analysis covered 112 firms across nine industries. Here are three takeaways from the research you can use to make sure you company stays in a position to capitalize on the business up-turn that lies somewhere ahead.Continue to champion the differentiated customer experience. Forrester's Research shows that there is a correlation between customer loyalty and a firm's customer experience. Make sure that your senior management is making budget cuts, and changes that will not make a significant impact on the customer experience. Prioritize your moments of truth. There are several critical times during a customer's relationship where a decision is made - by the customer - to continue or discontinue interacting with a company. This may be the first bill, a customer service call, a retail experience, a Web site...any event that helps clarify the relationship with a particular brand, product, or service. We call these "moments of truth" and how a marketer interacts with the customers can significantly increase (or decrease) the long-term viability of that relationship. With less money to spend on wide-ranging customer experience efforts, it's even more important to pick the right moments of truth to meet customer expectations. "Switching intentions can swing 18%. When it comes to the consumers' reluctance to shift business to a competitor, those in the top quartile of the CxPi were 6.8% higher than the industry averages, while firms in the bottom were 11.2% below the average, noted Bill Band, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.Identify and protect your most valuable customers. Find ways to improve the customer experience and increase business with your "best" customers. In addition, leverage buying history, and knowledge about customers to re-connect, stay in touch, and demonstrate the value that the brand brings through the products and services. Band recommends, "You may want to increase spending in some areas and make up for it by entirely cutting off other areas. It is crucial to deliver the best experiences for your most important customers, even if it means lower priority segments may have to suffer."Overall the research concluded that in an economic downturn, firms need to keep customer experience momentum and chart a course toward Experience-Based Differentiation.