Consumer is still the king!

For all the advertising, brand promises and marketing budgets, if the marketers don't get their fundamentals right, their beloved brands are bound to get screwed in the long run. What marketers fail to understand is that just by spending zillions of dollars on advertising won't get them near to their targets. All the marketing efforts go in vain if the end consumer is not satisfied.

Few days back, I saw Aegon Religare Pension Plan's latest TV commercial. For all the clutter and undifferentiated offerings in the category, the brand actually took a very fresh and innovative approach. I immediately SMSed the customer care to get in touch with me, so impactful was the communication. Fifteen days down, nobody called me. The bubble got burst and I decided not to engage with the brand anymore.

A marketers' interaction with the consumer can be divided into three stages: Pre-Sale, Sale, Post-Sale. Unfortunately, the entire marketing thrust is on Pre-Sale and Sale and the Post -sale period is completely or partially ignored. Probably, the concept of Customer Lifetime value is not an exciting proposition for them. Just a lil bit of 'Hi-Hello' with the consumer after receiving the cheque from him could go a long way. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is much higher than the cost of a new customer acquired through referral by an existing customer.