What is Relationship Marketing?

Relationship marketing emphasizes the value of building relationships with potential clients above simply making sales. It places emphasis on engaging with your audience, by recognizing those factors which make them human – their wants, their needs, and their pain points.

When traditional marketing ruled the day, this wasn’t the case. But with the appearance of social media, it’s much easier to get close to your audience, and less ‘salesy’ – which translates to long-term customer loyalty.

Getting started with customer loyalty

To get relationship building going, you need to understand your customers. This is easy when you’ve created a ‘buyer persona’, i.e. what motivates them to make purchases. To create your buyer persona ask questions like:

What things do they value most?
What are their most pressing problems?
How do those problems make them feel?

Next, look inward and decide how you’re going to get where you want to go. Develop an action plan that will get you there. Ask yourself these questions:

What must you do to accomplish your goals?
How will you measure whether you’ve achieved your goals?
What are some potential obstacles to goal achievement?

Your base of operations

For starters, you must have a digital home base! Potential customers need a place to find you, a place which gives them everything they need. A place where it’s easy to conduct business and connect with you. Make it clear your focus is on helping and serving customers, rather than trying to sell something.

Your website should accomplish all the following:

Give your visitors a clear message about what you offer and who you can help.
Provide an easy way to contact you via email or phone.
Educate clients and potential clients.
Make the purchase process as easy as it can possibly be.

Use social media

Make maximum use of social media. It has an extraordinary reach and can quickly and easily reach your target audience. You’ll need to commit significant time and effort to this endeavor. Once you’ve decided the best channels for your business, develop a content strategy with the posts you want to publish, and the message you want to convey. Consider if you want to buy active Twitter followers or not. Remember, your posts shouldn’t be salesy but should support revenue generation.

It’s important to engage your audience by sharing content, answering questions, and responding to people – all with the goal of driving traffic back to your website.

The real advantage of relationship marketing

When you engage with potential customers 1-on-1, you embrace them as fellow humans rather than as sales statistics, and they recognize it. From these people you’ll attract better leads, people far likelier to develop into loyal repeat customers who seek out your brand, and pass it along to others.

Building relationships amount to building the future for your company.

What is Relationship Marketing

Jessika Phillips Live stream on Tuesday Nov 29 @ 4:00pm EST