The Only 5 Words that matter in Marketing Vocabulary.

1. Steal consumers: We live in a “world no longer marked by a shortage of goods but by a shortage of customers”. To have new customers for your product you have to steal them from your direct competition, or you take the money they would have spend with other businesses (indirect competition for the household available money).

We use steal, because you need to use some advertising tricks or marketing persuasion to induce new customers to switch from competition to you, or to alter their spending habits to include a new product in their portfolio.

Anytime you’ve attracted a new customer, you’ve taken it from competition. It should not be called “stealing”, but it’s hard for the competition.

2. Rent consumers: There are 3 ways to rent customers:

• Huge discount to alter consumers reaction  or Trial products, or trial period,
• Over promising advertising to motivate new unsavvy customers to try
• New and short lived products: it’s a customers-rent-based-business strategy that thrive on introducing intentionally short lived products and play on the attractiveness of new product to make small or huge profit.

Rent-customers-marketing strategy is usually motivated by quick earnings scenarios. Many businesses use it to push their products in order to close some financial gap in their business plan.

Not all your rent customers will become loyal nor will be satisfied with your product or service, but rent customers is a marketing  strategy worth consideration, for example when you have to go out of business and close the shop.

3. Keep consumers: it’s the most critical function of marketing in the new economy. It’s not easy. To keep customers you need to keep in touch with them in a meaningful way. It’s this “meaningful way” that’s the most difficult for marketers.

Most companies don’t know what to do with their customers once the transaction is done. The only thing they know to keep in touch with their customers  is to spam them with selfish advertising, new offers, sales, etc. These are not meaningful ways to keep in contact with your customers. Linkcrafter relationship marketing solutions are dedicated to helping you build long lasting customers loyalty.

4. Befriend customers: 5% increase in the number of your business friends or advocates will increase 25% to 95% your profits.  And, the Law of the few in marketing states that 90% of your present customers are brought to you by 10% of your contacts (customers, prospects, friends or strangers) who like you. These people are your  Natural advocates. They are your Friends.

Befriending customers and strangers is the only competitive advantage you could build over competition in the new economy, because the new economy is based on advocacy.

For example, a Mckinsey marketing study found that 2/3 of US economy is now based on advocacy: Friends telling friends what is hot and what is not. Only 14% of people trust advertising, 69% are interesting in advertising blocking technologies, and 78% of consumers trust one to one recommendation from friends.

5. Loose consumers: On March 1996, Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal found that on average, U. S. corporations now lose half their customers in five years. With the powerful emergence of Internet these last 12 years, we can say with confidence that today, most companies lose half their customers in less than 2 years. Not because they don’t innovate, not because they don’t have great product or service, not because they didn’t try to keep their customers with sophisticated CRM systems or loyalty programs.

In most cases, Customers defection is not related to your company product or service quality. A company with a good product or service could see his customers defect in drove. Customers don’t defect because they are not satisfied with your service or product. So, Don’t take customers defection personally, because it is not related to you, but to the overwhelming fact that, today 98% of businesses are commodity businesses. There is not so much in product  characteristics or service innovation that really distinguish them from each other. They are all exchangeable without any loss in value proposition or value for money.

Business success or failure in the new economy Shoud be considered as a “relative success” or a “relative failure”.  You just need to try again.