Simplicity

Simplicity in marketing is argued to be one of the main factors for capturing customer attention, retention, loyalty, and positive word of mouth.

In saturated markets today with many brands and many offerings that compete for getting more customers, companies tend to provide information that is sometimes is regarded as overwhelming. Customers are constantly bombarded with marketing messages that infuse them to make certain purchasing decisions.

Yet one of the fundamental lessons in marketing is for a product or service to be different and distinguishable from other market offerings. Hence some companies are leveraging on the information overload that customers are experiencing and try to alter their marketing programs to basic and simple interactions.

This lead to concepts such as the “4 Rs” of Simplicity Marketing:

• Replace: developing and positioning fewer products rather than multiple ones (combining a shampoo and a hair conditioner into one product).
• Repackage: bringing together products or services that were available from many sources and suppliers into one offering.
• Reposition: promoting the product or service basing on its simplicity, ease of use, and guarantee of functionality.
• Replenish: making the product or service easily attainable by the customer all the time.

Recent studies also show that customers are more likely to make a purchase, repurchase, and recommend the product to their friends, when the company simplifies the decision making process. This can be achieved by providing customers with reliable information about a product and help them in efficiently weighing their purchase alternatives.

What brought me to writing this post is an interesting article on the new loyalty program by Wyndham Hotel Group which is “revolutionary in its simplicity”. The group made it simple for their customers to acquire reward points with no blackout dates and which could be spent on getting what they want most: a free night.