PREPARING AN INTEGRATED MARKETING PLAN AND PROGRAM- marketing 3

PREPARING AN INTEGRATED MARKETING PLAN AND PROGRAM

The company’s marketing strategy outlines which customers the company will serve and how it will create value for these customers. Next, the marketer develops an integrated marketing program that will actually deliver the intended value to target customers. The marketing program consists of the firm’s marketing mix, the set of marketing tools the firm uses to implement its marketing strategy. The marketing mix tools are classified into the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. The firm blends all of these marketing mix tools into a comprehensive integrated marketing program that communicates and delivers the intended value to chosen customers.

BUILDING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

Customer Relationship Management: Customer relationship management is perhaps the most important concept of modern marketing. Customer relationship management is the overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relation¬ships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction. It deals with all aspects of acquiring, keeping, and growing customers.

Relationship Building Blocks: Customer Value and Satisfaction
The key to building lasting customer relationships is to create superior customer value and satisfaction.

Customer Value
Customer-perceived value is the customer’s evaluation of the difference between all the benefits and all the costs of a market offering relative to those of competing offers. Customers often do not judge values and costs “accurately” or “objectively.” Instead, customers act on perceived value.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction depends on the product’s perceived performance relative to a buyer’s expectations. If the product’s performance falls short of expectations, the customer is dissatisfied. If performance matches expectations, the customer is satisfied. If performance exceeds expectations, the customer is highly satisfied or delighted. Although the customer-centered firm seeks to deliver high customer satisfaction relative to competitors, it does not attempt to maximize customer satisfaction. A company can always increase customer satisfaction by lowering its price or increasing its services. But this may result in lower profits. The purpose of marketing is to generate customer value profitably.

Customer Relationship Levels and Tools

Companies can build customer relationships at many levels. At one extreme, a company with many low-margin customers may seek to develop basic relationships with them. At the other extreme, in markets with few customers and high margins, sellers want to create full partnerships with customers. Many companies offer frequency marketing programs that reward customers who buy frequently or in large amounts.

The Changing Nature of Customer Relationships
Yesterday’s big companies focused on mass marketing to all customers at arm’s length. Today’s companies are building deeper, more direct, and more lasting relationships with carefully selected customers.
Relating with More Carefully Selected Customers
Called selective relationship management, many companies now use customer profitability analysis to weed out losing customers and to target winning ones for pampering.
Relating More Deeply and Interactively
Today’s marketers are incorporating interactive approaches that help build targeted, two-way customer relationships.

Two-Way Customer Relationships: New technologies have profoundly changed the way people relate to one another. This changing communications environment also affects how companies and brands relate to customers. Increasingly, marketers are using new communications approaches in building closer customer relationships. Consumers have more information about brands than ever before. The marketing world is now embracing customer-managed relationships. Companies can no longer rely on marketing by intrusion. Companies must practice marketing by attraction—creating market offerings and messages that involve consumers rather than interrupt them.

Consumer-generated marketing: has become a significant marketing force. Here, consumers themselves are playing a bigger role in shaping their own brand experiences and those of others.