Customer loyalty and retention have been the pronounced ultimate goals of marketing efforts at times, when salespeople were touring a country from one customer to another and when customers had used to visit a store once or twice before they finally made up their mind and purchased a product. In the virtual world, customers easily switch from one supplier to another. No more customers are bound through a multitude of business and non-business relationships to their local store. In fact, many local stores have turned into internet outlets and hunt for new physically dispersed clients. Customer loyalty has been now a different cattle of fish – no more are marketers talking solely about straight or modified repurchase, positive references, customer lifetime value, or share of the wallet.
Unlike in the domain of economics, where sticky wages have been discussed for several decades, marketing stickiness has been a more recent buzzword and entered the professional lexicon recently. Marketing efforts, campaigns, brands, product and services dare to stick with their audiences like glue. Long after audience has been exposed to the advertising, the core campaign message shall pop up on their mind. Stickiness can refer to how long customers spend at a website, in a store, or are engaged with a product. Marketing stickiness has become an established measure for online communications. Website stickiness is reported as the amount of time in a given period visitors spend at a site or network (e.g. number of minutes per month), in terms of page visits or views (number of visits or page views per moth). For social media or online gaming industry, stickiness is a ratio of daily active users to monthly active users.
If stickiness is a target for website providers, they may implement two rather distinct tactics contingent on their overall aim. Websites may strive to minimize the bounce rate by offering to users several pages to click around and maximizing the number of pages people visit, i.e. engaging them with the website and its various sub-pages. Such an approach can be commonly found with online stores which come up with additional alternative, cross-sell or up-sell options. Alternatively, the aim of some pages (such as search engines, news, blogs) is to keep viewers on the main page for as long as possible and motivate them to come back often for updates.
For offline environments, the measures of stickiness are the metrics for customer retention and loyalty, expanded by the data on regular store visits and the length of customer interactions. Successful offline sticky marketing emphasizes the need to meet clients where they are, to be personal in communication and leverage the current marketing efforts. Sticky marketing does not necessarily require new things, resources or actions, it is the surprising return to non-offensive long-term marketing efforts, relationship building and the focus on positive word-of-mouth.
Sticky marketing shall motivate customers to stay in touch for longer and shall make an offering memorable. To be engaged it requires being approachable, genuine and interactive. People stay engaged if their relationship with the provider seems be honest, believable and bring mutual benefit. Sticky marketing is a beneficial group hug.
Résumé
O marketingové lepkavosti: Jak motivovat zákazníka chtít víc
Marketingová lepkavost (stickiness) či sticky marketing jsou relativními novými pojmy marketingové teorie a praxe, které však vycházejí z přístupů k udržení a loajalitě zákazníků. Lepkavost je měřena především délkou zákaznické interakce s podnikem, značkou či obchodní nabídkou. Lepkavý marketing má za cíl stimulovat zájem zákazníka, který se následně odráží ve větší zapamatovatelnosti obchodní nabídky, silnější vazbě k nabízejícímu a v častější motivaci se vrátit za novou nabídkou. Lepkavý marketing není jednorázovou akcí, ale déletrvajícím úsilím o vytváření silnějších vazeb v roztěkané online době.
