© 1996 Microsoft Corporation
Sidebar: Four Approaches to
One-to-One Marketing
For years, mass-marketing has dominated the business playing
field. Businesses aimed for maximum share of the market, taking
advantage of economies of scale by manufacturing and selling
large quantities. Large companies with the necessary
infrastructure and resources ruled. In this system, products are
developed and then customers found.
But new technology is beginning to change this, making it
possible for small businesses to form one-to-one relationships
with customers and take advantage of customers’ desires for
individual service. Now, selling more goods to fewer people is
possible and more profitable. The emphasis is on building
customers - something most small businesses have always done
better.
Using
technology to build customers
It is technology, according to Martha Rogers, co-author of The
One-To-One Future: Building Relationships One Customer At a Time,
that is changing how companies market and equalize the playing
field. "Technology makes it possible to do things that just
a few years ago were not economically feasible. That is, it gives
you the ability to build individual customer databases, not just
lists of people," she says. Using computers, "any
company now has the ability to quickly pull up detailed
information on customers." And she adds, the Internet makes
it possible for customers to talk back, which is another way for
businesses to collect valuable customer information.
Individual databases allow companies to have more
"intelligent conversations" with customers and to treat
each customer differently. Ultimately, this leads to customizing
products or services to each customer, Roger says, which cements
a one-to-one relationship between the business and the customer.
This makes customer service the main competitive factor and
allows small business to compete advantageously.
"Make
each customer more profitable"
According to Rogers, small businesses are in a better position to
build one-to-one relationships than large companies. "Small
businesses have ways of beating out giants that they never had
before. It no longer matters how many customers I have, it
matters how well I know this customer. Because big companies have
depended for so long on economies of scale, it’s very hard
for them to break through to build the economies of scope that
will matter to the large or small one- to-one enterprise."
To take advantage of this opportunity, small businesses must find
a way to take advantage of new, affordable technology. "The
question to ask," Roger says, "is not so much ‘How
can I use the World Wide Web to make a product more
profitable?’ The question to ask is ’How can I use the
World Wide Web, or any interactive tool, to make each customer
more profitable?’"
The Internet is one of the first tools you should consider using,
according to Rogers, because it meets the main criteria for
making one-to-one relationships work: a good design interface.
"For a tool to be effective, it must make it easy to give
and receive information and have a perfect memory," said
Rogers. "The telephone has good two-way communication, but
poor memory. The radio or television has only a one-way
interface. But the web has a dynamic interface and perfect
memory."
Rogers thinks the future is bright for small businesses that can
capitalize on the new technology. "When people ask me if
there is too much hype about the web and Internet I tell them I
agree with George Gilder: I don’t think there’s enough
hype about them. We haven’t even begun to scratch the
surface of how much they’re going to change
everything."
| Four Approaches to One-to-One
Marketing Here are four steps a small business can take to build one-to-one relationships according Martha Rogers, co-author with Don Peppers of The One-To-One Future and soon to be released Enterprise One-To-One: Tools to Compete in the Interactive Age.
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