I will always remember my first marketing class in college when we learned about the 4 P’s – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Well, now there is a fifth P.
Before I go any further, as a customer service and experience expert, I believe that service and experience are all about marketing.
The first P stands for Product. It’s expected that the product will perform as intended. Next comes the experience. Is it appealing enough to encourage repeat visits? Is it impressive enough for customers to share with friends and family? If the answer is yes to both, then your customer service and experience become a powerful marketing tool.
The nice thing about creating an amazing service experience is that done well, the second P, price, becomes less important. Sure, you need to be competitive, but when there is value in the product and the experience, you take the emphasis off a low price.
The third P, Place, refers to location, whether it’s being nearby, where items are located in a store, or just a click away on a website. The fourth P, Promotion, is clear. But what if your customers were the ones promoting your brand? Word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing there is. This brings us to a fifth P, which helps create an experience that encourages people to share about you and your business.
The fifth P stand for Personalization. Personalization is a popular word these days. Companies who can personalize their experiences win over customers. I recently attended the Internet Retailers Conference and Expo (IRCE) in Chicago and listened to a number of keynote and breakout presenters talk about how personalization is becoming one of the major differentiators. So, let’s talk about what this really means.
Traditional personalization came from remembering past customers, using their name, building rapport and other personal, human-to-human, interactions. A good customer relationship management program (CRM) could help in certain sales and support situations. And today we have amazing technology that plays a part in personalization. Artificial Intelligence puts different types of customers into “personas,” grouping customers by common interests and buying patterns, which allows the company to target customers with extremely relevant promotions. Websites “welcome back” customers, reminding customers what they looked at and bought the last time they visited the site. Better technology has allowed a static website to become interactive and personal – as if you were coming back to a favorite sales person at a favorite store.
Another powerful personalization strategy is to do something after the sale is made. It can be a follow-up call or a thank you note. Anything that adds value to the relationship or the last interaction.
So, here is a little homework. Sit down with your team and discuss the concept of personalization. Then ask: What can we do to deliver a more personalized experience to our customers?