As a professional in client association merchandising, I can tell you that it is much more difficult than almost all people think. Customer marketing, in the majority of people's opinions, is a pretty straightforward matter. As a consumer, you assume that a business sends out either a flyer, card, or a broadsheet almost indiscriminately. They might use radio marketing, television marketing, or anything else. From the consumer's point of view, it might be all the same, but from a business viewpoint, all of these are extremely different approaches. Customer merchandising must be carefully targeted towards the niche and image that the company wants to portray and the client base that it wishes to attract.

For example, there is a decent reason why Auto service centers, doctors offices, and even small niche clothes stores often send out postcards for consumer marketing. When you send out a business card, you play off of the perception of an intimate association between you and the customer. This form of customer merchandising is incredibly effective because it motivates brand loyalty. Although the consumers, of course, know that it isn't a custom-made postcard, it still seems thoughtful. Some companies take customer merchandising so far that they send out glad holiday cards to many of their loyal customers around Christmas. The effectiveness of this really depends on the niche, however.

One of my absolute favorite consumer service marketing methods is to send out targeted ads to consumers. This is such an effective type of customer marketing because customers always appreciate it when you're in tune with their own interests. You can even try to educate about the products while you advertise them, speaking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. Typically, people assume that you don't wish to ever speak badly of your very own products, but every once in a while it has its advantages. A few negative details thrown into a customer merchandising report can give the client the perception that you're unusually truthful and concerned with the welfare of the consumer.

Of course, this is not the only form of custom marketing that companies perpetually engage in. As a matter of fact, the job of a merchandising consultants is to come up with new and more innovative strategies to market products. Strategies such as guerrilla merchandising and word-of-mouth have revolutionized the marketing industry in the last decade, and consumer marketing continues to evolve due to that kind of bright thinking. Not just does it help companies to earn more money, but it also helps customers to receive a product more carefully altered to their own interests.