58 4.6 Customer Relationships
Learning Objectives
- Describe how businesses use buyer personas to better understand the target customer
- Define customer relationship management
- Explain how the development and maintenance of customer relationships are an essential part of an organization’s marketing strategy
If you are getting the impression that an organization’s planning around marketing strategy, tactics, and objectives is very complex, you are perceptive. There are a lot of variables for companies to consider, align, and track, and occasionally an important part of the planning process gets overlooked: the customer. In this last section, we’ll return to the customer and explain why customer relationships are such a crucial part of the marketing strategy and plan.
Let’s pause for a moment and put the customer into our discussion of market growth opportunities. We discussed the market for high-end skin-care products for older Americans. Imagine the woman who might buy a Proctor & Gamble antiwrinkle cream. She is standing in front of a shelf of products and chooses Proctor & Gamble’s cream. Who is she? Why is she there? What is her story? Our customer is hoping to stop the aging process and it is a personal, vulnerable moment. She doesn’t care about the SWOT analysis or the size of the market. She wants to find a product that “understands” what she needs and helps her.
In this section you’ll see how marketers address such issues and keep the customer at the center of the planning process in a very personal way.
Learning Activities
- Reading: Customer-Relationship Strategies
- Video: Harley Davidson Customer Relationships