Everything You Need To Know About Client Management

Consumer or Client habits evolve, so marketing strategies must adapt to these new paradigms. Now, how can we get to know our customers? What role does market research play? 

In the following article we give you the keys to discover the basic fundamentals that every marketing strategy must take into account to focus its efforts on customers, and not so much on products and services. 

Market Research As Step 0 Of Any Strategy

Although there are many expert voices that theorize about marketing and everything that involves this area, it must be clear that marketing is a discipline that helps the company to sell . It is important to be clear about this final objective, since it is useless to create colorful actions, if then in practice it does not help to make the company more competitive.

Market research is the first step in any marketing strategy . It is crucial to know the market situation, your behavior and that of your competitors. This tool allows you to design the most executive policies of the marketing plan from a strategic vision. Thus, it is a critical and essential mechanism with which to obtain relevant information to minimize the possibility of error. 

This tool always accompanies the marketing director, so it is important that it be known and used on a recurring basis . Depending on the objectives pursued, be they quantitative or qualitative, we will have to know and, if possible, master statistical or sociological and psychological concepts . In addition, this discipline allows us to know well who the customer is in order to know how the product, service or solution can satisfy their needs, explicit or, much more interesting, latent.

Types Of Information Sources

There are two types of information sources related to market research:

• Primary : it is one in which the company itself organizes or orders the investigation, asks what it does not know and obtains the results that give an answer to these initial hypotheses. 
• Secondary : consists of the compilation of all the information that already exists published by third parties, in physical or digital format. We would be surprised at the amount of information on our sectors that is published. You just have to be patient to find it, analyze it and separate the wheat from the chaff.

This application of market intelligence and customer analysis falls within the strategic function of marketing . These actions make it possible to detect the needs (pain points) of consumers and, based on the information obtained, the actions are adjusted to satisfy them. If you do market research well, you can create a value proposition around the information obtained and get the client to choose our company over the competition. 

Who Is Our Client? Differences Between B2B, B2C And B2B2C

The to – business business (B2B) marketing is focused on selling to other businesses. The sales processes are longer and more complex since the sale is more rational than emotional (in B2B, people do not buy as when they do in their private perspective, they usually do it after having analyzed many more variables). In B2B, marketing strategies will often focus on reducing risk (or the perception of risk) in order to gain customer trust. 

Unlike B2B, business to consumer (B2C) focuses on the mass consumer market. In this case, the end user is interacted with, so the campaigns tend to be more emotional, impactful and creative, seeking a much more immediate, sometimes impulsive action.

Finally, business to business to consumer (B2B2C) is the sum of the two previous types of marketing. In B2B2C the paradigm is complicated, since our actions must seduce intermediate companies so that they can attract end users to buy our product or service. 

Knowledge Of The Client And The Value Proposition As A Differentiating Aspect

The traditional structure of the marketing plan is based on the description of the market and the competition, the definition of the customer and their needs, and the creation of value propositions for each of these buyer personas.

Now more than ever, Marketing departments must define their buyer persona from the analysis of their needs. 

The traditional method of segmentation by sociodemographic data has proven insufficient. Knowing what the client really needs will not only make us rethink our product and service strategy, but it will also be the first step in developing the messages that make them prefer our brand to that of the competition . That is, the value proposition.

Also Read : Customer Journey Map