As a professional in customer rapport merchandising, I can tell you that it is much more difficult than most people think. Customer marketing, in nearly all people's opinions, is a pretty simple matter. As a consumer, you assume that a business sends out either a flyer, card, or a broadsheet almost indiscriminately. They may use radio marketing, television marketing, or anything else. From the consumer's perspective, it might be all the exact same, but from a business standpoint, all of these are extremely different approaches. Consumer 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 good reason why Automobile service centers, physicians offices, and even small niche garments stores often send out postcards for consumer merchandising. When you send out a business postcard, you play off of the perception of an intimate association between you and the customer. This form of customer merchandising is incredibly effectual because it inspires brand loyalty. Even though the consumers, of course, know that it isn't a custom-made card, it still seems thoughtful. Some companies take customer merchandising so far that they send out glad holiday cards to many of their loyal consumers around Christmas. The effectiveness of this truly depends on the niche, however.
One of my very favorite client service merchandising methods is to send out targeted advertisements to consumers. This is such an effectual form of client merchandising because customers always appreciate it when you're in tune with their own interests. You can even make an effort to educate about the products while you advertise them, talking about the relative pros and cons of each. Typically, people assume that you don't wish to ever speak badly of your very own products, but from time to time it has its advantages. A few negative details thrown in to a client marketing report can give the consumer the perception that you are unusually truthful and concerned with the welfare of the consumer.
Of course, this isn't the only type of custom merchandising that businesses routinely engage in. As a matter of fact, the job of a marketing consultants is to come up with new and more innovative methods to market products. Techniques such as guerrilla merchandising and word-of-mouth have revolutionized the merchandising industry in the last decade, and customer merchandising continues to evolve due to that sort of bright thinking. Not only does it help companies to earn more money, but it also helps customers to receive a product more carefully altered to their own interests.