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Lean Marketing – Applied to Retail

Written by: Joe Dager

Article Overview: The old adage of retail marketing is getting people in your store and increasing the time spent in the store. That equals increased sales. Is it working? Can your retail marketing be more effective, efficient, and innovating, while focusing on understanding your customer’s needs and saving them time?

Lean Marketing – Applied to Retail

The old adage of retail marketing is getting people in your store and increasing the time spent in the store. That equals increased sales. Is it working? Can your retail marketing be more effective, efficient, and innovating, while focusing on understanding your customer’s needs and saving them time? If we keep these thoughts in mind, we would only produce materials of value to a customer and only give the material to the customer when he needs it versus a constant barrage of information.

Do you understand your customers buying process?
Does your marketing mirror that process?
Do you have specific marketing messages that your customer receives at critical points in that process?
If you did, would your marketing be more effective?

I always wondered, even before I started applying Lean Marketing Principles , why the marketing process rarely considered what stages a customer went through to buy their product or service. Customers usually have a fairly regimented way they purchase. Your sales people already probably know it. Now sit back and document that process, even create a a sales funnel or hour glass on this process. As you go through it step by step, pick critical points and review what you type of marketing materials or experience you would like them to have in their hand as they reach those points. Maybe even think about reaching them just right before they reach a critical point. If you do this, it will create an entire different way of looking at your marketing. From the customers point of view!

Your marketing must meet the customer’s needs at both a specific time and be delivered with the required message. The thousands of mundane and sophisticated things that marketers do to deliver a message are generally of little interest to customers. To view value from the eyes of the customer requires needless messages to be reduced. Having identified your ideal customer is to understand all the activities required to explain the benefits of a specific product and optimize the whole marketing process from the view of the customer.

Marketing is not an event - it is a process, and a mindset. A consistently high quality marketing effort cannot be produced by a faulty process. You must have products or services in place to meet your customer expectations. Look at each step and mirror your customer’s process and be able to pick your marketing reaction as quickly as you could turn a faucet. Wash your hands of a sloppy process and give the customer exactly what he wants, when he wants it and how he wants it. Balancing the process will soon become as easy as adjusting the water for the right temperature. But to do so, make sure you look in the mirror each step of the way.

Many marketers need to critically evaluate their processes to determine their effectiveness in bringing maximum value to customers. Today’s techniques are creating more efficient methods to deliver targeted messages in the particular manner that customers wish to receive. As stated earlier, lean marketing is a system focused on and driven by customers. Optimizing the value stream from their eyes and in an efficient process takes marketing to a level not experienced before. So you tell me, is your marketing giving you a sustainable advantage over your competition?

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Article Tags: customers needs, old adage, retail marketing



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