It may sound simplistic and naive, but it's nevertheless true that the most powerful marketing tool we own, is that of understanding. Without it, all our other tools are just expensive and irrelevant toys.
Understanding how your customers feel both logically and emotionally about your company, your products and services, your competitors and the world around them, is a vital pre-requisite of any marketing campaign. Without a clear understanding of where your customer is coming from it's impossible to develop an effective and convincing proposition. It's also important to refresh that knowledge on a regular basis. Attitudes and opinions don't stand still.
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Short term costs v longer term value
Most clients will admit that they don't know their customers as well as they would like and are happy to take the chance to learn more. However, when managers are under pressure and service charges are under close scrutiny, research can be seen as an expensive indulgence. As in any other industry, when the cost of marketing becomes more important than the value of marketing, then declining retail profits and declining asset value will surely follow. It takes a brave manager to invest in understanding, when retailers or senior management are screaming for more footfall. |
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Learning lessons
Why is it that retail and more particularly shopping centre marketers rarely learn lessons from their FMCG counterparts? A new fizzy drink, or a new vacuum cleaner would never be launched without extensive research with the consumer, yet multi-million pound shopping centres with significant marketing budgets are launched and run often without the most basic research, often on gut reaction and the personal likes and dislikes of the centre manager, or at best a marketing committee of half a dozen store managers. If improving retail profits and asset value are going to be taken seriously, head offices and shareholders need to be asking why the right research has not been put in place before making these crucial decisions. |
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