The Four C’s of Marketing: 4 Guaranteed Ways to Create Loyal Customers

Last updated on January 24th, 2023 at 02:16 pm

In order to create a loyal customer base, businesses need to focus on more than just their brand and what they’re selling. It’s important to keep potential customers in the equation too. There are four key “C’s” of marketing that can help you do just that: consumer, cost, convenience, and communication.

Before, it was more common to hear about “the 4 P’s of marketing.” But in today’s marketing culture, that has already been considered outdated and ineffective.

When used correctly, the Four C’s can help businesses to better understand their customers and develop strategies that meet their needs.

The Four C’s are not a silver bullet, but they can be a valuable tool for any business that wants to improve its marketing strategies.

Let’s take a closer look at each one. 

How The 4 C’s of Marketing Became The Norm

Before the standardization of the four C’s of marketing, businesses used a different model to create marketing strategies. This model was called the four P’s of marketing. The four P’s of marketing are product, price, promotion, and place. However, in the marketing world today, this is now seen as old.

In 1990, Bob Lauterborn introduced the four C’s of marketing.

The four C’s of marketing were introduced to give a better alternative to the 4 P’s. The four P’s were formed to deconstruct the effective way of selling products, but that’s all it focuses on. This is where the Cs of marketing comes in to put the spotlight on the consumer rather than the product.

The four C’s of marketing are consumer, cost, convenience, and communication.

These Cs of marketing are considered to be a more effective framework because it focuses on the consumer more and the product less. By creating a consumer-centric approach, you can better understand what your consumer wants and create messaging that resonates with them.

When businesses successfully embrace these C’s of marketing into their business marketing mix, consumers feel more served and catered to as opposed to feeling like they’re simply just being sold a product—something that’s hard to highlight with the 4 P’s of marketing.

When it comes to marketing, the 4 C’s provide a more complete picture of how to win the warmth and loyalty of customers. This helps businesses create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

Now, let’s get to know what each of these C’s stands for and how they contribute to a business’s marketing strategy.

What Are The 4 C’s of Marketing?

There are a lot of other factors to learn when it comes to marketing, and the four C’s is definitely one of the most essential.

This acronym stands for Consumer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication, and it describes the main areas you need to focus on when creating a successful marketing campaign.

1. Consumer wants and needs

The first ‘C’ of the four Cs of marketing focuses on the business’s knowledge of its customers and how this knowledge can be leveraged to create a great customer experience.

Potential customers are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s important to focus on creating a great customer experience that provides potential customers with their wants and needs for a product or service.

This means understanding who your target audience is and what they’re looking for, and then delivering it in a way that exceeds their expectations. This area will eventually lead to either success or failure in marketing.

It’s also important to always be learning and evolving, as consumer needs and wants change over time. By staying focused on the customer experience, you can ensure that customers keep coming back – and that your business keeps growing.

2. Costing for a win-win situation

The second ‘C’ in this marketing mix highlights the need to offer competitive prices that are fair to both you and the consumer.

The total cost of a product or service includes the overall cost of materials, labor, ads like google ads, overhead, and other factors. If you want to stay in business, you need to make sure your prices are fair and cover all your costs.

However, you also don’t want to overcharge your target audience and risk losing their business. It’s a delicate balance, but it’s important to find the sweet spot where you can cover your costs and still offer fair prices. That way, everyone wins.

3. Convenience in buying

This third ‘C’ emphasizes the need to make it easy for customers to do business with you.

Convenience is important in business. After all, you don’t want your customers to have a hard time doing business with you. There are a few ways you can do this. And this involves many areas of your business. Especially the areas that affect the customer’s experience when they interact with your brand.

By offering convenience at every turn, you’ll make it easy for your customers to do business with you – which in turn will benefit your sales or online sales.

4. Communication

The fourth and last ‘C’ in this marketing mix says that if you want to win at marketing, you need to be clear and concise in your marketing messages, and listen to feedback from customers.

Good communication is essential to digital marketing and any successful business. Whether you’re marketing your products or services to customers, or simply interacting with your target audience online, it’s important to be clear and concise in how you communicate.

At the same time, it’s also important to listen to feedback from your consumers. After all, they may have valuable insights that you didn’t consider. By taking the time to communicate effectively and listen to feedback, you can improve your chances of success in business.

We just went over what the four C’s stand for and what each of them aims to do. But how do we put each into action in order to gain your customer’s trust and loyalty?

Tips on How to Use The 4 C’s of Marketing in Business

In order to create a successful marketing campaign, you need to understand how to put the four Cs of marketing into use.

In this section, we’ll go over how you can use each of the four Cs to create an effective marketing strategy for your business.

1. Understand who your target customers are and their wants/needs

Marketing is all about understanding your market and delivering on customer wants and customer needs. It’s not about you, it’s about them. When you put the customer first, everything else falls into place.

So how can you determine your target market’s wants and needs? Below are some tips:

• Research your target audience

Know your target customer inside and out. Find out how you can reach them offline and most especially online.

• Document everything you learn

Pay close attention to feedback and use it to improve your products/services. Whenever possible, keep and document every feedback or sentiment that you can collect from a potential customer.

• Study your competition

Most of the time, your competitors have the same target customers as you. When you keep your competitors close, you can gain insight into their strategies and learn about how they’re reaching their customer base.

2. Price your products wisely

When pricing a product, it is important to find a balance between what the consumers are willing to pay and the amount of profit that the company wants to make. Too high of a price may mean that consumers will not be interested in purchasing the product, while too low of a price may hurt your profit margin—especially if you run a small business.

A good way to find the right price is to do some market research and see what similar products are being sold for. Take note that pricing can also be fluid, so it’s critical that you know when and how much to adjust when there are changes in the market.

Below are questions that you can use as your starting point when pricing your offers:

• What is the market value for this product?

A good way to find the right price is to do some market research and see what similar products are being sold for.

• How much do you need to make to cover costs and turn a profit?

This is something you can achieve through research too. Find out what customers are willing to pay and up to what extent you can increase the price until customers start backing out.

• What are your competitors charging for a similar product?

No matter what niche you’re in, you’ll always have competition around you. And there’s a lot that you can take away from in terms of pricing by studying your competition.

3. It should be easy for everyone to buy from you

One way to gain and keep your target customer’s interest as a business is to make every part of the purchasing process stress-free for them. Whether they’re trying to buy from your brand or just trying to learn more about you online—make things easy!

Below are some ways for your business to champion convenience:

• Make sure your online store/website is easy to navigate

If your website is not optimized for user experience, your customers are going to have a hard time buying from you when they do shop online. Make sure that your website is not complicated and is easy to navigate.

• Use clear and concise product descriptions

Product descriptions should give your customers a peek at what your product/service has to offer. This should include basic information like size, weight, texture, durability, the components or ingredients of a product, and even ‘how-to’ guides.

• Display prices prominently

When people plan to buy something, of course, they want to know how much it’s going to cost them. To make things easy for your customers, always display prices somewhere easy to find.

• Offer customer support

Aside from designing a website that promotes a good customer experience, having customer support on stand-by will also help make the experience easy for your customers.

• Allow multiple payment methods

Some customers use cash, some bring cards, and some make use of apps to pay for the things that they buy. To offer convenience to your customers, you need to cater to all of these methods of payment.

4. Keep customers up to date on new products, sales, etc.

Businesses can improve their marketing communications by providing customers with valuable information anywhere possible. This could include information about new products, sales, and other important updates about the business or the market.

Here are some ways to boost marketing communications:

• Use social media platforms to share your brand’s story and mission

One social media platform to use is Instagram. Use Instagram’s stories or reels to create brand stories that are designed to connect with your market.

• Share interesting and engaging content that is relevant to your target audience

When you share topics with your audience, it doesn’t always have to be about your brand or offer. Keeping your audience in the loop about relevant issues related to your niche is one way businesses use social media for content marketing.

• Use hashtags to increase the reach of your posts

If you’re trying to communicate with your target market, of course, you want to reach a lot of them. Using hashtags that are relevant to your brand and industry strategically will help you do this.

• Respond to comments and queries in a timely manner

To improve how you communicate as a brand, be authentic when people interact with you online. By doing so, you’re showing them that you appreciate their patronage and are invested in building a lasting relationship.

In addition, providing customers with timely and relevant information will help to ensure that they remain engaged with the brand and its messaging.

FAQs

In Summary

The 4 C’s of marketing is a more customer-centric way of thinking about your marketing strategy that has emerged in recent years. It’s a new framework that’s considered better than its predecessor—the 4 P’s of marketing.

By focusing on the customer, their needs, and wants, businesses can create a more holistic and effective marketing mix that leads to increased sales and happy customers than they would by using the 4 P’s of marketing.