Internet Marketing: Addressing Your Customers Changing Needs
Posted Under: Internet Marketing Information
Addressing your customers changing needs is one of the underlying tenets of successful Internet marketing.
In order to achieve real success, you need to provide your customers with something that they actually want in a timely manner.
This tenet sounds simple and it is, however many marketers fail to fully understand that almost all of their customers are willing to try out new things either because they are naturally curious or because they have been influenced by others to do so.
The net effect is that customers are constantly ready and willing to explore other products and that customer retention is often fleeting.
Superficially, understanding and addressing your customers changing needs appears to be a simple concept.
In reality and for several reasons, it is extremely difficult for most Internet marketers to master.
Determining what a customer really wants and then addressing your customer’s changing needs is one of the most difficult tasks that marketers face.
Often, the lack of research skills prevents marketers from correctly identifying what customers want but more often than not, it is the customers themselves who are not quite sure what they want until they have it in their hands.
For this reason, customers are not always all that clear about the information they provide to Internet marketers.
Even when an organization understands and can identify what their customers really want, they may still not have the ability to address their customer’s needs.
For example; your customers may be trending towards a new technology that existing management may not have the talent or the ability to adequately provide.
Or, because of ignorance of a new technology, your organization may lack the technical expertise needed to provide trending customers with new products or services they are looking to acquire.
The products and services that organizations have been accustomed to providing their customer base can often be substantially different from what trending customers actually want.
Despite the issues that organizations are faced with as they try to identify and respond to their customers’ needs, those that are able to address their customer’s changing needs and do it well are likely to reap substantial benefits.
The convenience store retailer 7-Eleven provides a good example of how addressing your customers changing needs and responding to them can place your organization over your competition.
7-Eleven’s Indonesian franchise correctly identified that Indonesians under 30 years of age who were heavy users of social media required someplace for them to get together with other like minded individuals.
By identifying the needs of this group and providing a gathering place for them to collaborate, 7-Eleven adjusted their business model and included new products and services to address their customer’s changing needs.
The end result was a retail experience that compared to what customers in the United States and other countries have in their local 7-Eleven stores, is considerably foreign to them.
However, their business model adjustment spurred 7-Eleven’s Indonesian store expansion to rates faster than their top competitiors; Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds.
Addressing your customers changing needs and providing them with something they want in a timely fashion is not only one of the underlying tenets of successful Internet marketing but also the key to achieving real success for your organization.
