What is a regular customer?

Hello everyone. I am Hayashi, the representative of Monosus.

This is already the eighth installment of the Open Marketing series.
I'm writing so frantically that I'm feeling depressed about the end of the month.
As I have continued writing, what I have been speaking intuitively up until now has been systematized and organized, and it has felt like I am tracing the trajectory of my work.

Well, last time we moved on to the repeat area and talked about the disadvantages of separating the acquisition and retention areas, which is a pitfall born out of modern marketing theory.
Among them, the most important point is:
I explained that the key is to think about how to prevent customers from dropping out, rather than encouraging them to return .

The idea of repeating a transaction includes the approach of considering the first transaction and subsequent transactions separately.
This is a huge loss in marketing activities.

Also, at the first transaction,
The customer wanted the product,
I didn't come to become your customer.
I also told them that they needed to convert these customers into their own customers .

In this, the eighth installment, I would like to talk about how to convert first-time customers into your own customers.

Change your behavior, not your feelings

The first thing I want to talk about here is,
The goal here is to make the customer realize, "I have become a customer of this company," but it is impossible to directly control what is going on in the customer's mind.

Even though it is difficult to control your own mind and emotions,
If you think about it for a moment, it becomes clear that it is difficult to directly control what is going on in the minds of other people, especially large numbers of customers.

But here I use the word directly .
In other words, I believe it is possible to control it to a certain extent, if not directly, then indirectly .

There is a Buddhist term called "shinjin ichinyo" (body and mind are one) .
It means that the body and the mind are one.
(It can also be written as "mind and body are one," but I interpret it as "body and mind are one.")
I have never studied Buddhism or religion, so I cannot give a technical explanation,
When I learned this word, it instantly solved the problem that had been bothering me.

In my own interpretation, Buddhism involves repeated training with the ultimate goal of attaining enlightenment, but enlightenment is a state of mind, not of the body.

However, it is difficult to train the mind directly.
To do this, they must get up early in the morning, wear the right clothes, eat the right meals,
Cleaning, sitting in meditation, etc.
Correct every action of the day.

Since action involves movement, it belongs to the body.

In other words, by correcting the actions of the body,
By training your mind and repeating it,
Ultimately, I believe it is possible to reach a state of enlightenment.

For this reason, I have decided to make the concept of Shin-Kin-Ichi-Nyo more easily applicable to marketing.
I see actions and emotions as one and the same .

You can experience this for yourself right away.

For example, when something sad happens and tears come to your eyes,
Try forcing yourself to smile in front of a mirror.

Unless you are extremely sad, the tears should stop immediately.
And your sadness should subside a little.

You probably won't feel like laughing at all,
Give it a try, even if you think it might work.

I'm sure there are many other phenomena that you all already know about without even having to try them.

A depressed person looks down and hunches.
A person who is full of joy and confidence looks up and holds his/her chest out.

If you are reminiscing on past memories, look to the upper left.
If you're imagining the future, look to the top right.

This is also widely practiced in the world of sports.
While sports performance is heavily influenced by technique, physical strength, and physical condition, it is the mental aspect that ultimately determines victory or defeat when competing.

Top pros who know this can motivate themselves and
On the other hand, I always have routines and lifestyle habits to prevent my motivation from dropping.
A figure skater decides which song to listen to before a competition.
A marathon runner decides what to eat before the race.
For example, baseball players have a routine when they step up to bat.
The examples are endless.

Thus, emotions and behavior are highly interconnected,
They influence each other as if they were one.

It's nearly impossible to directly change someone's emotional state so that they think, "I've become a customer of this company."

However, as long as you can get them to take the same action as if they thought, "I've become a customer of this company,"
It is possible to create change within.
At the very least, it will definitely increase the chances of getting them into the desired psychological state.

Why the first trade is important

The important thing at this time is, as I mentioned last time,
The key point is that the first transaction is your biggest and only chance to turn a customer into a regular customer .

This is because customers are most motivated before and after their first transaction .

High motivation, to be more specific,
This means that the product or service has a high mind share .

When you want a new watch, when you want a new camera,
When you want a new car, when you want a new cell phone...
At times like these, people allocate a lot of their mind share to the purchase.

On the other hand, mind share declines as time passes since the purchase.

Generally speaking, the higher the purchase price and the lower the purchase frequency, the longer it takes for the mind share to decline.
The lower the purchase price and the higher the purchase frequency, the more quickly mind share tends to decline.

For example, when buying a house, which is a once in a lifetime purchase, you will probably think of it as a new build for at least a year.
When it comes to everyday purchases like toothbrushes, we tend to lose interest in them once we've used them.

Another factor is that the person may have a special mind share to begin with (such as a high mind share for toothbrushes, although this is highly unlikely).
I won't go into detail here as it would deviate from today's topic.

Either way, once mind share drops,
It will be very difficult to gain mindshare again.

Furthermore, even if you implement measures for customers whose mind share has declined, you can expect little effect.
Because they are no longer interested in your product or service.

When mind share is high, implementing measures to encourage customers to behave like regular customers is
It is your lifeline to success.

What are the common behaviors of regular customers?

So what are the characteristics of a loyal customer?
The most obvious use is in analyzing regular customers.
It is an indicator of RFM analysis.

What is RFM analysis?

• Recency (time since last purchase)
• Frequency
• Monetary (amount used)

It is a method of analysis based on the following three elements:
Regular customers are characterized by high values for these three indicators.

However, in analyzing various projects,
Regular customers, or even top customers, are
They found that high purchasing frequency was the most important characteristic .

If the purchase frequency is high, it is more likely that a purchase will occur soon.
The amount you spend will also increase proportionately.

I think many companies tend to consider customers who spend the most to be their top customers.

There is some truth in this, but
There are a few things you're missing.

it is,

• In reality, there are many customers who spend a lot of money on their first purchase and never come back.
• For products and services that are highly popular, if the cost increases too much, customers' wallets will not be able to keep up and they will tend to drop out.

These are some points:

The former is easy to understand, but the latter requires a bit of explanation.

For example, your monthly disposable income is 30,000 yen (you can also think of this as pocket money).
A male customer uses a service with a transaction price of 10,000 yen per transaction.
This is the case when you start using the service about once a week.
Even if you allocate all of your disposable income to it, it won't be enough,
Naturally, I'll be leaving early.

The same goes for downgrading or canceling your plan to reduce costs if your cell phone bill is too high for your disposable income.

In other words, they will be unable to pay and will have to quit.

In this way, if we focus too much on measures aimed at increasing spending,
In fact, you need to be careful as this could drive customers into a corner and encourage them to abandon your service.

My conclusion was that
A loyal customer is someone who purchases frequently .

So, really, quite simply.
If you can get your customers to buy more frequently,
This means that it can make people feel like, "I am a customer of this company."

This may seem too simple, but
It is necessary to implement measures to achieve this before and after the first transaction.
In order to actually increase purchasing frequency, careful strategy design and execution are required.

I was planning to talk about the specifics of the measures this time, but
This explanation has become quite long, so next time I will talk about specific measures.

See you next month!