The one thing about marketing strategy that remains unanswered for me is the ‘obsession’ so many marketers have with attempting to attract new customers whilst they correspondingly pay little attention to studying the behaviour of the ones they already have. I just don’t get it.

I get it that the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 times the cost of keeping an existing one! Or was it 10 times? 7 times? The multiple never had an author. Never have I seen or heard it quoted with support of real data. And as a cliché I think it’s done untold damage to the term CRM and its value in marketing strategy.

My other passion in marketing is related. Brand strategy. If you want to take a brand forward go back (and study and study and study) the original intention and essence of the brand, and then revive it so it’s relevant to contemporary consumers.

Marketing communications is not much more complicated than that. Understand everything about existing customers before talking to new ones. Don’t ever try to reinvent a brand; revive the one you have.