Reframe The Marketplace: The Total Market Approach to Reaching the New Majority

Chapter 9Step Four: Designing the Right Customer Experience

This book began with marketing, just as my career did. And it is to marketing that we need to return now. We discussed audits, structures, and market assessment, and now we circle back to the customer. As you saw in the last chapter, Toyota rules when it comes to Total Market success. Honda does a damn good job, too. Those two companies account for four of the top 10 new cars sold in the U.S. Hispanic market. How have those two companies achieved such brand equity in the Total Market?

There is no one factor. It's a combination of reputation, product, quality, price, location, and customer experience. We'll deal with that last factor here because it affects all f the others and because it's the one most sensitive to Total Market thinking. (I should mention that location is a Total Market factor as well, but the solution is laughably simple: Make sure your product is available where New Majority customers live and shop. Got that? Good.)

Over the last 10 years, technology, mobile, and social media tools have made it easier than ever to connect to consumers on a one-to-one basis. Books—hell, libraries—have been written about this, and I'll not add to the deluge. But if you don't have a good grasp of customer relationship management (CRM) and digital engagement, spend a little time reading up. The key thing to understand for our purposes here is that brands and business did not progress at the same speed that New Majority ...