SME Marketing: Redefining Customers

Customer, important! Management Master Peter Drucker said, enterprise existence reason is creation. Customer We put customers in enterprises. Operate The judgment of absolute height is almost every one. Marketing The "Bible" is familiar to managers. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are often synonymous with headaches. Although we struggle to develop customers and satisfy customers' demands, they often make us feel overwhelmed and overwhelmed.

Why are the problems of customers constantly emerging and enterprises struggling to cope with them?

Why are customers always strong and enterprises always weak?

Why do we always make endless concessions to our customers at the expense of reasonable profits?

Why are customers losing again and again, but businesses are powerless?

...

Where are the problems? How are we going to deal with them and fundamentally solve them?

In fact, the root of the above chaos is still in the business, not the customers. This is the premise of understanding problems. Under the current social and market environment in China, many common sense marketing theories are taken for granted. It is inevitable that such problems and doubts are unavoidable at the operational level. The definition and management of the enterprises is undoubtedly a serious disaster area from theory to practice. Under the condition that there is no clear definition of the target customers and the resources can not be allocated rationally, enterprises will certainly be stretched and tired before the customers. Therefore, redefining the customers is the urgent matter for the SMEs to get a breakthrough in marketing.

First, customers are different:

Not all buyers can create value for enterprises. Only when some buyers have certain commonalities and enterprises can innovate products or services based on this commonality, continuously satisfy or guide their needs, and then realize their business value through their buying behavior, this part of buyers will be established in the enterprise's customer status. We call them the target customers, and the other part corresponding to them is called non target customers. The generalized customer concept is of little practical value to enterprises. Only with the basic attributes of "part, commonness and value creation", can enterprises' strategy and marketing be targeted, and competitive advantage and sustainable development can be adhered to.

Two, why do many small and medium enterprises need to redefine their customers?

A large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in China are in the stage of transformation and development. At this stage, enterprises have three characteristics: first, the successful experience of the past has been seriously failed, and the transformation is imperative; two, the business base is still relatively thin, the market competitiveness is weak, and the innovation capability is insufficient; three, the customer base is expanding gradually, but the scale is uneven, and the customer management ability of the enterprise has become a short board, which is beginning to fail. Based on this, enterprises need to re understand the definition and management of customers, and find a way out early so as to adapt to the changing trend of the market and the survival and development needs of enterprises.

1, the premise and development of market economy determine the necessity of redefining customers:

Limited resources are the basic prerequisite for the existence of market economy and the operation of enterprises. The increasing prominence of customer status is constantly testing the resources integration and distribution capabilities of enterprises, especially in the three aspects of capital, time and human resources. It requires enterprises to carry out effective concentration and reasonable allocation, with a view to gaining the concentrated competitive strength and quickly grasping the competitive advantage of market opportunities and specialization ability. From the perspective of market development, when the market is in the seller's state or opportunity state, we can not know who the customers are, because at this time, the enterprises have more discourse power. With the arrival of the buyer's market and the gradual formation of the niche market pattern, the customers will take the absolute advantage of discourse. Competition will become the inevitable market premise of the enterprises, and the contention for the market is to compete for the customers. If the enterprise does not even know which customers are competing for it, it will inevitably fall into a state of confusion.

It is noteworthy that this situation is widespread or even spread among many small and medium-sized enterprises. For these SMEs, it is not only necessary to redefine the customers, but also the situation is quite urgent.

2, redefining customers is the need for enterprises to condense internal forces and advance.

　　戰略缺失是當前中國大部分中小企業的典型病癥之一，這使得企業既很難凝聚內力，持續發展也困難重重，它們都與沒有清晰界定客戶息息相關，具體涉及到以下三個層面，一是在價值觀上——當我們只把企業當成賺錢機器時，客戶當然是能抓一個算一個(盡管從相對長的時間段來看企業多半不會賺到錢)，如此非正向的價值觀也必然在企業的行為方式中明確顯現出來，造成內部和外部對企業立身的理由存疑，內部反應即無法凝聚人心、留住優秀人才，外部反應則是逐漸失去合作者與客戶的信賴，使企業未來的路越走越窄;二是目標與執行上——不明確企業為哪部分客戶服務，目標就是生硬與空洞的數字，就難以將企業目標與員工目標有效統一，也就不會根據目標客戶的決策因素形成有效的營銷流程，進而造成職能不清、責任不明、執行乏力等諸多管理難題;三是 In the corporate culture, without the definition of a clear target customer group, it is very difficult to form a customer centered corporate culture. Even though we often talk about customer centered, it is often just a false slogan or propaganda gimmick. In essence, it is either centered on the boss or centered on personal interests. Such negligence can not only have a substantive significance for the marketing process of enterprises, but also set up multiple obstacles to the construction of corporate culture, so that corporate culture can not play an effective role in promoting the development of enterprises. Therefore, a clear definition of customers is the need for enterprises to unite their ideas and objectives in order to condense internal forces, and it is also the prerequisite to establish effective marketing management processes for healthy development, and action is imperative.

Three, how do SMEs redefine their customers?

Small and medium enterprises need to conduct self-test before redefining their customers in order to define the direction and content. Specifically, we should answer the following questions: do we have clear target customers? Can these customers be quantified? Can we clearly describe the characteristics of customers? Do we know the customer's decision making process? Do we know the key points of customers' concerns? Are our resources concentrated on these customers? Can we provide unique values at the key points of customer concerns? Then we will start to redefine the customers in the framework of these answers.

It is true that it is difficult for small and medium enterprises to have a clear understanding of market segmentation. However, enterprises will inevitably be restricted by the narrow understanding of the relative scale of the existing market. However, it is a simple and direct way to investigate and sort out the existing customers. The key point is to find commonness and create value. We should select the customers according to their own advantages and competitive conditions, find out the reasons and key factors that these customers choose our products or services, lock them in common, and then extend them to the value level of the enterprises and customers, thereby formulating the goals of customer development and management, and allocating resources, formulating strategies and even marketing strategies according to the objectives, laying a solid foundation for the enterprises to truly transit from sales guidance to market orientation. 1, the definition of target customers based on market segmentation and competition: defining customers first

The definition of customers: the confusion of customer definition and management in small and medium enterprises is largely due to the neglect of the definition of the final customers, especially in some manufacturing enterprises. Too much attention to channel customers often makes us narrow minded and unable to find the fulcrum of enterprises in the effective customer value chain. Therefore, we define customers as the starting point for the final customers to create the key values, in-depth study of their purchasing decision-making process and decision-making key points, and build and adjust the marketing process based on this, and extend to the location and selection of channel customers or even suppliers, so that the definition of target customers runs through all aspects of the enterprise value chain, so as to produce linkage internal improvement and external enhancement of market effect. 2, to the end

3, giving up: giving up is a difficult choice for many small and medium enterprises, but it needs to be clear that this kind of abandonment is not stagnation or retrogression, but progress. Without giving up, there will be no centralized and effective utilization of resources. There will be no sustained source of profits and subsequent development of enterprises. Therefore, enterprises should, in combination with the actual situation, give up non target customers in stages and step by step, set up a gradual improvement threshold, retain valuable customers and increase their value, and eliminate worthless customers, so that enterprises can completely break through the bottleneck of current customer management.

In addition, in the process of giving up, enterprises should pay attention to avoiding the wrong situation of classifying and selecting customers according to the scale. The target customers are not the same as big customers. The matching of resources and strength between the enterprises and the target customers is more important. The result of getting into big customers is the misunderstanding of key customers, which often leads us back to the origin of confusion and makes every effort to redefine the customers become useless.

Redefining customers is one of the key elements for SMEs to get a breakthrough in marketing. Customers must be targeted customers. This is the inevitable choice for small and medium-sized enterprises to effectively gather resources and achieve the goal of replicable and successful development through common grasp of target customers. With a clear definition of target customers, we will get rid of many customer development and management problems, and form a positive interaction relationship between enterprises and customers, which will play a positive role in promoting the operation and development of enterprises.

The concept of market segmentation and target customers is the foundation of marketing. Although it has become a common knowledge of many marketers and business operators and managers, the reality we face is still quite worrying. This article is a breakthrough for China's small and medium enterprises.