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Customer Activation – Marketing with a Measurable Purpose

November 6, 2020

Customer Activation – Marketing with a Measurable Purpose

Being a marketing leader, you should know that a customer interacts with a brand at multiple touchpoints throughout their purchasing lifecycle. It’s the job of a marketer to ensure that this interaction has a positive impact each time, and the customer is redirected to the next stage. But, how do you measure the result of your combined efforts and its impact on each stage of a buyer’s journey. Well, customer activation comes into picture here.
“Customer activation means motivating customers to move to the next stage of their lifecycle faster than they would on their own.”
Or
“Customer activation refers to the act of motivating customers to fully realize the benefits of the product they are testing, hence increasing their overall engagement. The result could be generating a new customer or re-engaging an inactive one.”

But how do you activate your customers when there are millions?
The key here is to cultivate healthy relationships and work towards customer delight if you want to extract maximum value from them. Many of the marketers fail in customer activation by not delivering effective and relevant Emails.
So how do you get started with customer activation?

Know your customers
Engagement throughout a customer’s lifecycle is not only about the benefits you’re getting from your relationship with the customer, but also about the benefits and value you are providing to them. Get to know your customers, their preferences and what excites them to give them tailor-made offers and suggestions. Creating sustainable and engaging customer relationships is the top priority of most of the marketers.

Buyer persona creation
Buyer personas are your target customers. Based on the knowledge about your customer’s behaviours, preferences, demographics, needs, and geographic, you can create personalized campaigns for them to engage in a better way. To create buyer personas, ask questions to your current and potential customers, and client servicing persons who interact directly with your customers.

Identify digital behaviours
In today’s digital world, identifying the behaviour of customers is really easy now. You can keep a check on conversations going on over the internet, their feedback, and demographics. Almost every customer is active online these days, create a buyer persona and interact positively with them at every stage.

Map customer journey
After defining the customer personas, outline the stages of a buyer’s journey as a map. That way, you can develop multiple strategies to satisfy the customer at various stages of the map. Map out the stages based on the customer behaviours as they move through the lifecycle. Keep a check on the channels your customers switch to and the kind of information they want at each stage.

Move customers through the lifecycle faster
With the customer lifecycle and personas clearly defined at your disposal, you’re now in a position to craft personalized content and proposals that address your customer’s queries at each stage of the lifecycle. By providing them with the content they need, and type of offers they are looking for, you can trigger them to take action always.
If you are looking for an expert in getting the customer insights, or plan for customer activation, call on – 022-6699668 / 022-6699672.

Guide to a Successful Retail Account Management

October 31, 2020

Guide to a Successful Retail Account Management

A successful Retail Account is one where the relationship between a company that manufactures or supplies products and the retailers that stock them is managed seamlessly. The responsibility of which lies on the shoulders of the Retail Account Manager.
If your aim is to manage your retail accounts lucratively, you should follow these steps –

Alter to each client’s specific demands
You should know what your key accounts (the major retailers) need. The same strategy that works with your key accounts will not work with small independent retailers. If you are focusing on geography, then you should aim to increase profitability and sales across all your accounts rather than focusing on one.

Plan before all else
You should be aware of your revenue and profit targets rather than shooting arrows in the dark. Each account should have a defined target that you should be working towards. Even individual products should have specific targets within each account. Focus on the retail groups where you see an enormous scope of growth of existing products as well.

Relationship with the retailers
We don’t mean you should be friends with everyone, but you should definitely try building a rapport with your retailers. These are the people that could give you more sales and profits. As these might affect your stocks, delivery requirements, prices and discounts you should definitely try to be in the good books.

Internal Coordination
All your departments should be in sync, from sales administrators, customer service executives and managers of other departments such as logistics and accounting. This will ensure that your retailers will receive service of higher standards.

Business Development
You should never be satisfied with how good your account is doing at the given time. Always look for ways to increase the business. Create special incentive programs so that retailers increase their stock. Or create advertising and marketing campaigns that coincide with the retailers.

Do you feel that your retail accounts are underperforming? Are you unable to manage your retail accounts without a glitch? Then contact Idonneous Marketing Services, they provide solutions that would meet your needs. Call – 022-6699668 / 022-6699672.

Why Merchandising is a must in Modern Trade?

October 15, 2020

Why Merchandising is a must in Modern Trade?

Getting a product to the customer in today’s age of the internet is relatively easy. What is not easy is getting them to make a decision into buying your product. This is where merchandising plays an important role. Merchandising is the practice that helps the retailer sells its products. It is how effectively a product is displayed that compels a customer to buy that product.

Merchandising is a challenging task. It demands a lot of dedication and planning. Because your competitors also engage in merchandising, you have to continuously come up with something that attracts customers to your products over others.

Advantages of Merchandising

1. Appeals to the Customer
Effective Merchandising makes the experience of shopping for the customers easy. This makes them want to spend more. Merchandising also creates a loyal customer base. If you were able to create a pleasing shopping experience once, they would like to come back again for the same.

2. Improves Profitability
You can increase your business on your current customer base by Merchandising, as it enables repeat shopping by consumers. This increases not only your sales but also the footfall in-store. It also allows retailers to make better pricing decisions. Thus, growing business for the whole chain involved in selling your product.

3. Increases Employee Productivity
Merchandising helps you provide better customer service. Employees engaged in Merchandising gain experience in moulding customer opinions. They also understand the knowledge they now possess about the product adds to their value as an employee.

4. Increase Sales Floor Productivity
Not only it increases the sale but add more productivity to the floor by increasing the impulse and add-on purchase. Making the sales floor more attractive, organized and promote special buys. This makes merchandising a must-try tool in marketing.

Idonneous has mastered the craft of Merchandising. With many successful client stories and more being added every day, they are a leading name when it comes to Merchandising. To get your product in the limelight, contact Idonneous – 022-6699668 / 022-6699672.

Key to Digital Transformation in Product Lifecycle

October 9, 2020

Key to Digital Transformation in Product Lifecycle

For a long time, the Product Life Cycle has remained the same. It starts with the introduction, growth, maturity, and ends with the decline of the product. PLM was created to keep track of millions of parts of a product as a tool for manufacturing. Today, it has become oxygen for the survival of a product, not just in manufacturing but also in retail. But to exist in this super-competitive market, Digital Transformation is needed. Sticking to the same old cycle may just result in your product’s death.

With new and agile competition coming up every second, companies need to find ways to be faster and valuable to the customers with data-driven services. For this purpose, it is essential to create a digital strategy for PLM to gain in a sustainable manner. There are three key elements for digital transformation:

1. Data
Useful data is generated at every point of the product’s lifecycle. This data, when analyzed properly makes the product innovative and suitable for the market. This data should be shared across the company for improvement in production, better collaboration with suppliers, and to create value. Exponential development in sensors and data capture devices are a must invest tool, for a valuable digitized PLM creation.

2. Specified Teams
The data that is collected can only be put to its best use by the teams that will be analyzing it. So the second step should be to create multi-functioning teams in cloud management, data analysis etc. to get an idea whether the business has achieved what it needed to. And to also create new insight into what can be achieved further.

3. Data-driven platforms
As the business continues to grow, more and more data is being generated. As the volume increases, it becomes hard for on-site computing devices to handle them. For this purpose, High Performing Computing devices becomes necessary to deal with the enormous amount of data to accelerate the process of data tagging, generating new leads and integrating the data.

For companies starting out, the best way to implement this is by starting small, learning how data management and digital transformation creates more value for their product. Knowing what potential can be created by digital transformation is what Idonneous does the best and thus, has created the MIS Online Tool. To know more about this contact 022-6699668 / 022-6699672.

Distribution Channels: Ensure the success of your products

October 1, 2020

Distribution Channels:
Ensure the success of your products

Making sure your product reaches your desired customers is not an easy task. Gone are the days when one only needed to produce the product for it to sell. Today, one would need to plan where to put the product, or how to get the product to the consumers. For this purpose, Marketing companies use the tool they call Distribution Channels.

What is a Distribution Channel
A Distribution Channel is a set of steps that are taken for the product to reach in the hands of the final consumers. These steps may be offline, online, through some intermediaries, agents, or retailers.

To understand it with more clarity, imagine Colgate produced thousands of toothpaste and displayed it outside the production plant in hopes of selling it. Doesn’t make sense right? Now we know that Colgate is one of the largest brands selling toothpaste in India. The reason is that they employ multiple distribution channels at a time. Possessing the knowledge of where, how, and why to position their product so as to maximize its reach. Thus, making Distribution Channels one of the most rewarding tools if applied correctly.

How to build a distribution channel
The simplest way to create a distribution channel would be to answer a series of questions about your product and the targeted customer. These could be
1. Is your product a stand-alone product or needs supplementary service?
2. How can it improve the shopping experience?
3. What do your customers need?
4. Are your customers familiar with the type of product, or do they need to be educated or trained for its use?
5. What is the fastest positioning that meets your customers’ demands?
6. What should be the tone of the product?

These are only a few questions that could make sure that the channel you create makes the most impact. It is not always necessary that one product employs one Distribution Channel. There can be different Distribution channels running at the same time to reach maximum customers.

Idonneous Marketing Services has helped achieve scalable success for many products from the first moment by employing an efficient Distribution Channel every time.

To know how you could utilize most of your resources, call us at – 022-6699668 / 022-6699672

Beginners Guide to Field Marketing

September 25, 2020

Beginners Guide to Field Marketing

It is a common misconception that conducting events is what Field Marketing is all about. Instead, Field Marketing is a broad domain that involves working on-site to connect with the markets, be it customers or business. Therefore, it consists of all the marketing activities that include contacting the customers face to face.

Though Field Marketing seemingly looks easy, there is a lot of work that goes behind the doors. For those who are starting in Field Marketing, here is a step by step guide one must follow –

#1 Strategize
One is foolish for jumping into war without a strategy. The same goes for Field Marketing. Planning a campaign, reevaluating it, then going through it again might seem like a waste of time, but in the long run, it ensures that you make the least mistakes.

The questions that one must have answers to are: what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. You must be very clear on what the goals of the campaign are. So think, think again and again before you start. Ensure that you are clear on what goals you have set.

#2 Streamline
Imagine that what you planned does not conform to what you execute. And then the follow up you get is entirely disconnected to the other two. It is vital that you streamline all the internal stakeholders involved in one campaign. This means that there should be an alignment between sales, marketing, and other departments involved have the same definition of goals you have set.

#3 Communicate
Communication is the key! A bit cliche yet true. Communicate to people what you want to sell. Make a connection with the consumer with communication. This not only includes the what’s, why’s, and how’s but also where to connect. Imagine marketing whey protein in a book club, doesn’t make sense right? This is helpful as the narration of your campaign should change with the place you chose to market your product.

#4 Involve
Involve your Customers! They are your god, and when god show mercy, it rains. Use customers as advocates for your brand. Many times we forget to include follow-ups, from the customers, as a part of Field Marketing. Follow-ups may include asking them for verbal feedback or even filling up a feedback form. The easiest way to achieve this can be through customer advocacy programs.

#5 Measure
Remember the goals you had set? Now is the time to analyze the output you achieved against the goals you had set. This will help you learn whether the methods you have used have given you the result you wanted to accomplish. You will have an insight into what not to do in the future or fix any issues that came up or were reported by your on-site personnel.

Idonneous, a pioneer in Field Marketing, provides the best services and complete solution to increase your brand value. To know more, connect with us at- idonneous.com/contact

How Merchandising Programs Work

September 17, 2020

How Merchandising Programs Work

Have you come across beautifully arranged products in a retail store? And it tempted you to at least have a look at them! Well, that arrangement is called Merchandising which involves displaying products gracefully in order to make a sale.

Planning a right merchandising strategy depends on many factors like available space, product quality, the arrangement of spaces, and whether the merchandising is taking place online or an offline store.

Types of Merchandising

  • Product merchandising- Any promotional activity that relates to a product is referred to as product merchandising. It can take place in a digital store as well.
  • Retail merchandising- It refers to the promotional activities that apply in a physical retail store. Not only in a brick and mortar shop, but retail merchandising can also be seen in annual pop up events.
  • Visual merchandising- In the retail industry, Visual Merchandising is generally used to enhance and show the appearance of products and services being sold. The benefits are highlighted and include elements of lighting, space, attractive colour layouts, and designs.
  • Digital merchandising- It involves all the marketing and promotional activities that are needed to sell a product or service online. It may include site performance, email marketing initiatives and attractive digital displays.

Lighting in Merchandising
Just as in film production, different types of lighting is used to highlight characters, features of models and convey moods, lighting is also used in Merchandising to create an attractive display and influence customer to purchase the product.
Lighting can significantly be used to highlight certain colours of a product and its features. For example- Apple uses a clean white background to display and showcase their steel grey laptops. At the same time, a black background is used to convey the luxury of its products!

Idonneous Marketing Services works in providing innovative solutions in Merchandising. We are nationally known and have worked for many big brands. If you too want to explore this area for increasing direct sales at POS connect with us on – 022-6699668 / 72

Importance of Vendor Efficiency Programs

September 11, 2020

Importance of Vendor Efficiency Programs

Vendor Efficiency Program, sometimes also referred to as Supplier Efficiency Program is a process of observing and analyzing the performance, quality, and reliability of your vendors. Monitoring vendor efficiency allows your company to improve productivity and profits by reducing stock levels and inventory costs. A proper vendor efficiency program can also help in increasing customer satisfaction.

Being able to monitor all of the active vendors across the organization effectively is the real challenge. Doing so requires actual data about how the vendor is performing. Thanks to technology which helps to bridge the gap so that you can create a system that operates smoothly and also helps you in keeping an eye on how your vendors are affecting your business.

Vendor efficiency program is created with a series of key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs are agreed upon and outlined in advance between buyer and seller.
Some of the common KPIs include:

  • Payment terms
  • Prices
  • Quality of products
  • Frequency of price changes
  • Delivery lead times
  • Vendor financial stability
  • Competitiveness with other vendors
  • Communication lag times
  • Breakages
  • Under and over deliveries

When a company adopts a vendor efficiency program, they’ll find more than cost savings. Vendor efficiency program can generate strategies for the risk management by lowering overall risk exposure and improvement in terms of products and services. Streamlining administrative processes can save the company and the suppliers a company works with money. By identifying the root causes of problems to solve them quickly, it’s reasonable to expect higher levels of customer satisfaction.

When appropriately implemented, vendor efficiency program improves performance for both the purchaser and the supplier. By enhancing the quality, lead times, contract compliance, responsiveness, and other major KPIs, you’ll see higher profits and greater customers satisfaction.

Want to know how the vendor efficiency program can work for your company?
Call us on 022-6699668 / 022-6699672

Consumer Advocacy at Corporate Venues

September 7, 2020

Consumer Advocacy at Corporate Venues

Ever notice the person standing next to you in the supermarket aisle reading the ingredients off of a cereal box? Noticed, right? We all have seen people around us becoming more aware of what they are investing in or consuming. This is due to increasing attention being paid to what and how things are being produced. Think of how a company representative tells you that if you buy this call plan, you could save X amount more instead of what you initially planned on buying; this is Consumer Advocacy.

Consumer advocacy is when a person or group fights for the rights of a consumer rather than focusing on company revenue. The phenomenon started gaining popularity around the late 20th century, specifically the 1960s. Today Consumer Advocacy is in the spotlight as many corporate giants are going for the in-house Consumer Advocacy department.

The Capitalist economy that solely focused on the revenue generation is now fading out slowly, and being replaced by the Post Modern World which is an active society worried about the consequences of consumer culture on the earth and beyond. This can be seen when Corporate Social Responsibility is the go-to way all the brands advertise their products. It is being employed through changing Organizational culture to be more transparent and ethical, feedback loops, etc.

Consumer advocacy is considered during the planning of marketing, and it has a separate budget in many of the corporates. All the big companies want to invest in winning customers through experience.

Idonneous Marketing Services is known for running the consumer advocacy campaigns to connect with people and win their heart by suggesting them the right plans and products of a particular company. This helps in creating goodwill in the market. It also turns out to be a win-win situation for all.

If you too want to run a consumer advocacy campaign with us, call on – 022-6699668 / 72

WIPRO – Sales Expansion of brand Safewash

February 26, 2019

WIPRO – Sales Expansion of brand Safewash

Objective

Idonneous is responsible for managing Sales of safewash brand of Wipro across 31 MT Outlets in East& North.

Activity

This was a seasonal activity in winter months to promote the fabric softener brand called safewash. The promoters had to educate consumers on the usage and effectiveness of fabric Softener for woollen Clothes. This is the third year of this promotional programme.

Results

21% increase in market share across safewash category.

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