What is it?  Overall, there is a new role of Marketing.  The marketing function needs to be the innovation steward, perform true portfolio management, be the exploiter of new technology and digital networks, manage the “collaboration hub”  and constantly identify what customers can’t live without.  The core of marketing strategy is defining the strategy and operational model for all of these new roles.  The starting point is determining who your customers are; analyzing them; segmenting them; interacting with them across all channels; customizing their experience and then creating more value for them.  The end result should be increased wallet share capture, high retention, happy customers who purchase goods at the optimal price point and strong brand loyalty

Why do it? Many companies have over 30% of “customers” who are value destroyers.  In addition, attrition of the “value creating” customers in some companies can be as large as 60%.  Many companies don’t even realize they have customer leakage. It costs 5-10 times more to win back a customer who has left than to retain them. Strong brand positioning can earn up to 5 percentage points in total shareholder return.  Most companies fail to capture ~25% of growth because they do not realize total brand equity. Finally, pricing strategies are the cause of up to 20% gross margin leakage in many companieso      

What does RHT Consulting offer?

• Digital strategy management: With all things digital these days, if a company doesn’t actively manage their presence, it will be managed for them. The alternative, well executed digital strategies that generates 50-80% higher conversions.  This offering analyzes the current state of how companies are using social networking channels, multi-media and multi-channel.  The goal is to create a seamless customer experience for different customer segments, increase conversion rates and provide differentiated value to the each target segments.  The end deliverables of this offering include: the digital strategy, roadmap, business case and operational model for managing digital activities
• Customer insight, loyalty and experience management: Customers needs are more than ever, unspoken.  These latent needs are unknown to competitors and therefore provide a great platform to differentiate.  Customer insight should be derived from both explicit needs as well as latent needs.  Actionable customer insight is derived from direct customer engagement as well as data from strong integrated analytics.  When all data is gathered and translated, a new value proposition is generated along with loyalty “control points” and the target 360 degree customer experience blueprint.  The end deliverables include: the new value proposition, the target experience with loyalty “control points”, the roadmap to deliver this as well as key metrics to measure and manage loyalty “control points”
• Brand strategy and architecture: A brand is timeless and enduring.  It resides in the consumer’s mind and give meaning to products/services offered by a company. Brands can often be a company’s most valuable intangible asset that leads to tangible results if well-architected and protected.   Creating a strong brand requires superior customer insight to ensure relevancy, consistency and deliver on a promise.  RHT Consulting works with clients to identify the role their brand plays in the ecosystem (emotional, functional and market); the architecture of their brands; the positioning; how they should deploy the brand as well as what the appropriate marketing platform should be for the brand. Key deliverables include a brand role and positioning statement; brand architecture; marketing roadmap and business case
• Pricing optimization: The key issues underlying price are around: how prices are set; their variance based on volume; and what can be and can’t be charged for products, services and/or solutions.  Most importantly, what is the optimal price to achieve maximum operating income for the value being provided.    There are various pricing strategies from strategic pricing to cost based as well as market pricing.  Based on the type of pricing strategy being developed, different factors need to be considered.  For example, strategic pricing must: discounts, incentives, subsidies, fair market value, cost, etc. Pricing optimization requires several activites: developing the strategy; identifying the appropriate metrics; governing and modeling prices.  RHT Consulting provides thought leadership and strategy development across the pricing lifecycle, from the development of the strategy; optimizing the process; creating a governance model as well as defining the performance management around optimal pricing
• Marketing efficiency and effectiveness:  The marketing function has constant pressure to improve the operating income return on a dollar of marketing spend.  Many metrics exist around the success of marketing efforts, for example: 41% of ideas don’t make it to market; 90% of products/solutions launched,  fail.  Many times 80% of the issues in marketing are outside of the core marketing function.  RHT Consulting offers a deep dive diagnostic of the marketing business model with a proprietary business model analysis framework.  The deliverables include: roadmap, business case and an ongoing operational marketing blueprint with associated metrics