No matter who your consumer is, how big or small your order, giving a consistent quality offering without compromising on service is the way to establish your brand and reputation in the market, says Raghwendra Kumar, Sr Manager (Corporate-Marketing), Burnpur Cement. Kumar shares his views on what it takes to make a business successful and sustainable. Excerpts from the interview.
What are the challenges that you face in the market and how have you factored them into your marketing strategy?
The major challenges are to meet the delivery requirements and to keep prices under control without compromising on the quality of the product. We have been maintaining excellent control. We ensure that our product reaches the customer within five days of production.
Soaring raw material prices have forced cement prices to rise higher. How do you convince consumers to shell out extra for your product?
Today the market is driven by the quality of services. We have excellent consistency in our delivery system. Today customers are ready to pay extra if you provide good service along with good product.
How do you distribute your product in the market?
We have a sales promoters system under which we keep various dealers and through that, we move our cement smoothly.
How do you create brand differentiation and stand apart from the rest?
Our brand reaches customers in a hot and fresh condition without losing the MPA, whereas the other brands transported by rail, reach their consumers sometimes after two months. Such delay is detrimental to the quality. Cement reaching that late may have lost its strength by 12MPA during the transit. The freshness of our cement and its high performance is the key factor that separates our brand from the rest. We maintain consistency in the quality of our product and there is no difference in the product from customer to customer. From time to time, our R&D team improvises on the product based on the market`s requirement.
What is your strategy to reach potential customers?
We keep a close watch on projects planned by the government as well as by the corporate sector. We have a channel of reliable sources to make authentic and verified information available to us. We remain in continuous interaction with professionals of the concerned organisation and accordingly, plan a strategy to penetrate the market. Once we have secured bigger players in the field, the smaller consumers too, follow the trend automatically.
What is your mantra on effective brand building practices?
For any organization, in any sector, if it has to grow then the first thing that it ought to do is to be loyal to its customers. Only if your customers are satisfied with your company, will you be able to sustain your business. Otherwise you will be wiped out from the market within short time. So our success mantra is to be loyal to our customers.