What is Relationship Marketing?

Recently, the term relationship marketing has been growing popularity, and is being used more often than ever. This term, relationship marketing, is used to refer to everything you’re doing that develops a lifelong, strong relationship with your customers. Relationship marketing helps in building your brand awareness and makes your brand your customers best option available. The key to relationship marketing is helping a two way conversation to happen with your customers. 

Relationship marketing is different from the traditional marketing approach. It focuses on increasing the amount of single sales. In transactional marketing, the customer might purchase but it doesn’t assure you that the customer will come back without a strong relationship marketing strategy. While transactional marketing is important, relationship marketing is starting to be more important for companies.

Relationship Marketing Helps You Retain Long-Term Customers.

Study has shown that the longer time a customer stays with a brand, they become more valuable. Did you know that an annual increase of even 1% in your retention in customers could be 20% annual revenue increase. When you build a relationship with your customer, and you don’t just sell to them, you develop customer loyalty which means your customers become more likely to stick with your shop for a longer time, especially if you have what they need.

Relationship Marketing Increases the Likelihood of Referrals.

No matter how many marketing techniques are available today, the most powerful technique would still be word of mouth. There are as much as 84% consumers who are citing recommendations from friends and family as their source of recommendation because of trust. When you satisfy and make your customers loyal, it becomes more likely for them to refer your brand to people they know. Relationship marketing is the best way to do this.

Relationship Marketing Makes Price Changes Easier.

A lot of businesses hate hiking up their prices because they’re afraid they might lose their customers by doing so. But with our economy, we have to consider price increases from time to time. When you have developed a solid relationship marketing strategy with your customers you can make rolling a price increase smoother. Because when you have developed a strong relationship with your customers, because of their loyalty, they would understand and stay even after a price change.

Relationship marketing is a good way to ask for feedbacks 

When you have a group of loyal, happy customers, you have a test market right in your hands. Whenever you would need to try a new product or share a new service, your loyal customers could stand as your ready test market. If you want to know how your business is doing, you can ask your loyal customers. Your loyal customers feedback would help you determine what the strengths of your business is, it will help them identify which areas need improvement.

Relationship marketing gives you an advantage competitively

The fact that not everybody has jumped into the relationship marketing bandwagon is good news for you. This means that there’s a big chance that your competitor isn’t leveraging from this powerful marketing strategy yet. When you offer a personal touch to your products and services you will have a head start from those who are stuck in the old marketing era. When you take the shift towards relationship marketing, you would be on the right way to retaining and attracting customers who love your brand.

Relationship marketing tips for businesses

So, now you see why relationship marketing is important. How do we get started?

1. Make sure your customers understand and have the information they need:

You have to research your customers before you implement your campaign to make sure it goes successfully. Make sure you take the time to understand what they need and what they are interested in, so you can use that knowledge to give them valuable information. It’s best to know the best format so you could deliver appropriate content. In order to help in making a decision, evaluate what content your audience is interested in and what medium you have to use so you can get your message to them. Some people are more interested in reading blogs, some are into marketing guides, and other people like videos and podcasts, it all depends on them so make sure you choose what they’re more likely to notice.

Also, make sure that your content actually meet what your audience need. Put in examples, and make sure you paint a picture in their mind to help them grasp the content better. To make your content even better, make sure your write with the right tone. Are they serious type of people? Are they into humor? What type of sentences would resonate with them?

You could invite your readers to participate in the process of creating it. Like when you create blog posts, you can ask your customers for tips and ideas, or even what they want to learn next. Be as interactive as you can be.

2. Make your brand identity strong

If you want to keep people excited in your brand, you have to make sure you’re creating a stronger brand identity. You must make sure your audiences see the difference you have from your competitors, you have to make sure your customers know why they should buy from you instead of looking elsewhere.

You have to make it easy for your customers to be able to identify you from other brands and show them why they should pick your business. This all starts with the basic branding elements such as the slogans, logo, and unique selling propositions. Are your products superior to other businesses on the market? You should definitely have a different mission aside from your sales. You should also make sure your customer service is exceptional. Make sure that you also deliver every promise that you say.

3. Make sure that you follow up after sales

After your customer purchases from your brand, make sure that you follow up whether they are satisfied with your service or not. You can request them to give a feedback, review, or answer surveys. You could also offer to make their negative experience better.

4. Send them email updates

Email newsletters are a good way to keep in contact with them. There are a lot of things that you could include in your newsletter such as important updates, promotions, contests, sales, and others more. This strategy would keep your audience engaged and encourages them to go back to your store in the future.

Restaurants as well as other retailers could email coupons to customers and encourage them to come back and receive a discount.

5. Give your loyal customers a reward

Everybody loves rewards, everybody likes to be recognized for being loyal customers. When you give your customers a reason to go back to your store, you give them a reason to come back because you give them rewards every time you purchase. This strategy would keep your stores filled with shoppers and you’d need to restock constantly.

Companies that are killing the relationship marketing game

Starbucks

When we talk about relationship marketing, Starbucks is one company you can study for the skills they do. Their loyalty program allow users to load money into their card so they could buy drinks, this card even holds more money than some banks already. Starbucks does a good job in rewarding their loyal customers, thus the reason why many come back. There are other perks that Starbucks offer such as free WiFi, ordering screens that are undeniably fancy, baristas who have actually tasted every Starbucks coffee they offer. Their customers could expect the same experience from all their other locations world-wide, and that what makes people love them.

Etsy

Entrepreneurs from all over the world uses this site to sell the items they make with their hands. Etsy customizes the shopping experience with the products that are relevant to an individual’s interest. In order to achieve this goal, Etsy has made recommendations based on different factors such as what an individual views on the site.

Zappos

Zappos has been known for their customer service icon, and they have clearly shown their dedication to go out of their way for the satisfaction of their customers. Some people even say that when it comes to customer service, Zappos is royalty. Zappos, instead of focusing on marketing ads and campaigns, focused on their customer service. They do everything in their power to exceed the expectations of their customers and make sure that it’s as hassle free as possible to find, purchase and receive what they need.

Conclusion

Relationship marketing may be a bit new to the industry but it sure is an effective way to keep your customers coming back for more. This article has everything you need to get started, go ahead and join the bandwagon to be ahead of your competitors.

by Tariehk Geter