The Marketing Bureau

The Key to Relationship Marketing
By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness Magazine"Marketing Maestro" Archive.
First published July 2008

For reasons that I have never quite managed to nail, the concepts of business & marketing seem to be tough to inculcate into the hearts and minds of business leaders. In fact, it was both maddeningly infuriating as well as scary to encounter a group of MBAs  with whom I worked with recently who were totally unable, to a man (all male group) to accurately articulate either of the business or marketing concepts.

This column is not a detailed look at either of those concepts but, in brief, here are both concepts:

The Business Concept

Someone wants something. Someone else is willing and able to provide it. A negotiable currency is agreed and that currency is used to ensure that the buyer acquires what they want and the seller earns more than it costs to provide it. The balance is called Profit. No MBA required.

The Marketing Concept

The customer is the only place the money comes from. Period.

I have taken some liberties with these definitions in the interests of brevity but the concepts do not suffer for that.
Neither of these concepts have changed over time and neither are going to change.

So it makes a certain sense for businesses of every size shape and sophistication to design their businesses, from the ground up, around these two utterly complimentary and inextricably linked concepts. To do anything else is, well, just plain dopey.

The encouraging news is that some businesses are clearly beginning to get this stuff and are making their first faltering steps toward orientating their businesses towards the marketplace or the customer. At the very least, they seem to be starting to understand that customers are the only place the money comes from and that, rather than mugging customers with short term one-off hits (“Have I got a deal for you”) they can develop and nurture long term relationships with customers which will ensure that more money will come from the same customers, time after time after time.

But (and it’s a big but) a truly market orientated business must come to grips with some fundamental changes in the expectations of customers if they are to develop and nurture sustainable and mutually profitable relationships. Or, put more simply, adopt and apply the business & marketing concepts.
Indeed, close examination of both customer attitudinal trends as well as performance data from market oriented business offers a powerful insight into what being “market orientated” really means to business and customer alike.

Almost a decade ago, this was articulated so much more eloquently that I could ever manage so I am not going to try.

Rather, I will share with you how Mohanbir Sawhney and Philip Kotler (Chapter 17, Marketing in the Age of Information Democracy, Kellogg on Marketing, Iacobucci, Dawn and Kotler, Philip - John Wiley & Sons, SKU:0471054046 - © 1999-2001, Adobe Systems Incorporated) introduced and articulated the concept of a Customer Bill of Rights.

“As marketers shift their mindset from treating customers as prey to customers as citizens, they will be well served to acknowledge and respect some fundamental customer rights and expectations. The following Customer Bill of Rights summarizes the vastly changed expectations of customers in the age of Information Democracy. Violating these fundamental rights, while tempting and even profitable in the short run, will be disastrous in the long run:

•   Right to know: Customers will expect full information about the firm’s products and services. This will include price, quality, and service information, and will also include comparisons with competitors.

•   Right to expect silence: Customers will expect marketers to seek permission before they are contacted about an offer. Advertising and direct marketing will be on an invitation-only basis. And conversely, customers will expect to be able to revoke this invitation, and not be bothered in the future.

•   Right to vote: Customers will expect to have a voice in the creation of products and services, and in the post-sales support policies. They will expect marketers to solicit and act upon customer feedback.

•   Right to anonymity: Customers will expect marketers to explicitly state the purpose of collecting personal profile information, and the intended uses of the information. And they will expect marketers to respect these privacy rules.

•   Right to be remembered: Customers will expect marketers to remember all the information they have ever provided to the firm. And they will expect every employee in the firm to have access to this information in all future dealings with customers.

•   Right to share payoffs: Direct marketers will be expected to offer incentives to customers to share information. They will also be expected to share in the profits that marketers make from reselling customer information.

•   Right to expect accountability: Customers will expect marketers who own the customer relationship to be accountable for the performance of all their partners and complementors. Handing off customers to a partner will not absolve marketers from being accountable for the actions of their partners.”

I really couldn’t have put it better myself.

But the big question is this:

How many “compliance ticks” would your customers give you against the above Bill of Rights?

Brian H Meredith