The single most important distinction we need to make in our target group for any brand is between prospects and customers. This is because these two groups play very different roles in our business creation program.

There are two broad strategic activities involved in increasing the market share of our brands. We have to keep getting more income. And we have to avoid losing the income we are already earning.

We will never increase our market share if we don’t continue to increase our revenue. We will also never increase our market share if we continue to lose more revenue than we are earning.

Each of these two strategic activities involves two functions:

There are two general ways to keep earning more income:

1. We need to convert more prospects into customers.

2. We need to get our existing customers to use our products or services more.

And there are two general ways to avoid losing the income you’re already earning:

3. We have to avoid disappointing customers’ experience with our products or services.

4. We have to avoid disappointing customers in all other experiences they may associate with our brand.

Of the four strategic functions, the first, converting more prospects into customers, is by far more difficult than the other three.

This is because this role involves overcoming two major barriers:

a) prospects have little or no interest in or relationship with our brand;

b) prospects are already involved in another activity that we will have to discontinue, typically using our competitor’s products or services.

This is the function that focuses on our prospects, the people who have the money that has not yet transmuted into our income and, therefore, are the most important target to increase the market share of our brand.

You have to get prospects to notice our brand, get interested in our brand, want our brand, prefer our brand over their competitors, and ultimately, of course, have to be made to buy our brand, which is when your money becomes our income and when prospects become our customers.

The remaining three strategic functions, increasing customer usage and avoiding disappointing customers with our products/services or in any other way, are relatively significantly easier. This is because all three involve dealing with people who, as existing customers, already have a relationship with us. As such, these three strategic functions imply a degree of receptivity towards us on the part of the people we are addressing. In fact, with today’s interactive media, we have an easier time knowing them individually by name, knowing where they live, how to reach them, and being familiar with their demographics of gender, age, education, lifestyle, and other habits; and their psychographics of values, interests, and other preferences.

Going back to the first strategic function, that of converting prospects into customers, we literally have to transform their existing disinterest in our brand into a relationship. This most difficult business challenge primarily involves the MarComm brand WHAT and HOW, advertising, sales promotions, merchandising, pricing, distribution, packaging, and other marketing and communications media and activities.

The brand is the most important of these because it is the conceptual essence of the entire business-building effort. Branding comprises the set of concepts and signals that have the challenge of overcoming the greatest barriers between us and the prospect: those of their disinterest and pre-existing preferences and habits. The disciplines and means of sales, advertising, sales promotions, distribution, pricing, merchandising and packaging, etc. then you have to deliver this essence of brand communication to the prospect so that they can break through the barriers of disinterest and past practice.

CRM, or customer relationship management, should cover all the HOW’s involved in maintaining and strengthening the relationship with the customer, once the brand has broken through and established the relationship.

In this, CRM must remain consistent with the essence of brand communications, which lives in the customer as a set of expectations and signals, which is the de facto brand. Just as the sales, marketing and communications functions mentioned above must deliver the brand across media and locations, CRM must deliver and stay true to the essence of the brand through all of its human interactions and other customer experiences. .

So each element of the functional relationship with the customer, the ease of opening the package, the ease of use of the product, the performance of the product, the elimination of packaging, the messages received by the customer, the experiences of the customer. with customer service personnel, with billing personnel, with credit control personnel, with collection personnel, with vehicles bearing our brand logo, everyone must not only avoid negative waste, but also be considered as brand communications and deliver all these means of activity. in ways that are consistent with the brand.

It should be noted that CRM can also indirectly contribute to increasing revenue and market share. This can be achieved by satisfying the essence of the brand in front of the customer so completely through the customer’s experiences that customers are delighted enough to make the effort to recommend it to other people who are also prospects.