CONNECTIONS: Comment - Relationships are the new battle field for brands in Asia

If Marketing 101 was about the four Ps, then Marketing 202 is about the four Ps plus 1 R and 1 T. The R stands for Relationships and the T stands for Technology.

R for Relationships: you probably recognise this letter from today's leading buzzword 'CRM'. Sometime last year, CRM overtook 'e-business' as the buzzword of the new millennium. Much like 'e-business', CRM is a transitional term, something to call a collection of activities while it's relatively new, until these activities become a natural part of how we conduct business.

Creating long-term profitable relationships with your key customers is all the rage today, everyone is talking about it, but few are doing it very well. The fundamental problem with the R in CRM is the way companies define the term relationship.

Many marketers believe they have a relationship with you because they have your name, phone number, email address and profession. What a bunch of rubbish. Relationships cannot be defined by how the company views them; instead they must be defined by how the customer defines them. If you fool yourself into believing you have an enduring relationship with a customer, when you really do not, you will find this out very quickly the next time your competitor offers a similar product or service for 10 per cent less. Relationship is one of the key ingredients of Marketing 202. Relationships are the new battlefield that companies will fight each other on and the traditional metric of market share will take a back seat.

Why? For the simple reason that it typically costs between five and 10 times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

T for Technology: it is nothing new but we must start to recognise technology as one of the essential ingredients in today's marketing mix.

Technology allows marketers to do what was impossible just a few years ago ... ie have 'one-to-one' relationships with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of their customers. The use of relational databases, personalisation and content management software, web self-service and campaign automation allows companies to maintain relevant and timely two-way communications with their customers.

Technology brings a level of cost-efficiency and targeting that would have been impossible five years ago. It is important to note that technology also benefits your customers and provides them a degree of consumer power they never had before; it works both ways. Customers now have finger tip access to competitive pricing, product knowledge and testimonials of actual buyers.

So Marketing 202 has been born and is still in its infancy. But are you ready for it?