Industry View – B2B marketing in 2009

We asked Mark Gibson, Head of Marketing at ING Car Lease UK Ltd for his take on the impact of the 2009 economy on customer acquisition and retention.

“Customer retention is going to be key for us this year. During the latter stages of last year, prospects were less inclined to see new providers due to uncertainty around their fleet requirements for 2009. A company with a fleet of 200 cars couldn’t necessarily be sure they would still need a fleet of 200 this year and getting new business appointments was tough.

Customer acquisition is going to continue to be hard this year but companies who can offer the right deal, who understand the true nature of that prospect’s business, what the key issues are in the current environment and can be more intelligent about how their services can support specific needs, will be the ones having meaningful conversations with prospects.

For example, we will be focusing on cost reduction and putting in place ways of helping customers to control costs because fleet expenditure is one of the main overheads for many company.

Getting in front of prospects will change in the 1st half of this year. Now we’re into the recession, and customers know the immediate task centres on controlling your money, it’s likely to be easier to see people as they realise they have to take action.

In terms of customer retention, we’re offering support and guidance to our existing customers – offering more services to our customer base and, as with acquisition, ultimately we’ll be helping them with cost control.

Because we’re a leasing company and because of the current uncertainty, another effect of the current economic climate is more of our customers are enquiring about extending their contracts rather than taking up new 3 year contracts. They’re keeping cars for longer rather than changing to new ones. This in itself provides us with an opportunity to develop new services to support that customer need.

So although it’s going to be a tough year, there are opportunities in the business to business sector. The fact prospects may be reticent to change suppliers is a challenge for new business but with the right approach meaningful conversations can be held. It can also been seen as a positive for customer retention programmes – it means we can offer more value in terms of controlling costs; customers can see the benefits of staying with us, rather than it being a forced choice due to the risk and cost of changing suppliers. And equally, by being more targeted in our acquisition activities we can work with companies we can really build strong relationships with.”