In today’s digital landscape, we can literally connect with anyone anywhere in the world.
With a click away you can connect with an old buddy on Facebook, a former colleague on LinkedIn, or a famous personality on Instagram.
But a connection is different from a relationship.
Relationships take time, effort and require a commitment to grow.
Although being able to connect with someone definitely has its advantages, it’s developed a culture of impatience. When we connect, we expect immediate results, rather than allowing a relationship to build.
Businesses tend to forget that these are real people behind these digital profiles. They have emotions, feelings, motivations, and problems.
It’s the people that you try to build a relationship with and not the business.
And it’s those people that respond to your advertisements, emails, and calls.
What is relationship marketing?
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy that focuses on building close relationships with the customers and increasing their loyalty. With the customer data and feedback, you can form strong bonds with your customers and gain their trust.
Relationship marketing is a long game that focuses on having a long-term relationship with your customers so that they are less likely to churn and become more profitable. And yet, many businesses still focus on transactional marketing and caring only about sales numbers.
Think about it, when you find a product or service that you can trust, do you bother to look at some other business for the same product next time?
The odds are that you don’t…
You go back to the same business because you know for sure that you will get the value for money and top quality service there.
This is what relationship marketing is all about – building lasting relationships that turn customers into your brand’s advocates.
If you’re looking for long-term returns on your marketing, then relationship marketing could be the perfect solution for your business.
Why Long-term relationship matters?
It’s not enough for businesses today to just gain new customers; enhancing the customer experience is also essential for your growth. Relationship marketing is the core of today’s competitive business world and here are the reasons why it matters.
- Increase in sales: A better customer experience means upselling and cross-selling of products or services to your existing customers is easy. Ultimately, it boosts the sales volume.
- Low marketing costs: An effective relationship marketing helps in retaining customers long term and reducing your efforts on customer acquisition. Thus, decreasing the cost of marketing.
- Customer retention: Relationship marketing helps with your customer churn. By meeting the customer demands, you create value for customers and make them loyal repeat customers.
- Creates brand value: A satisfied customer will promote your product or service with their friends, relatives, and close ones. This word of mouth forms a strong brand value for your business.
- Competitive edge: Instead of shopping around in different locations, a faithful customer feels comfortable ordering products and services from your business.
How to develop a relationship marketing strategy?
Before you can invest in relationship marketing, you must have a clear strategy to get the best ROI on your marketing.
Relationship marketing lets you get emotionally connected with your customers and leverage your brand. Let’s take a closer look at it.
- Step into the customer’s shoes
When developing a customer relationship marketing strategy, your primary focus should revolve around your customer and not on your product or service.
Get into the customer’s shoes for a moment.
Would the customer want to see your ad? Does your new product entice the customer? Would the customer be engaged with this social media post?
Use this to connect with the customer emotionally and then provide personalised solutions. This will not only yield a much better outcome, but it can also help your business grow and build a long-term relationship with that customer.
- Offer rewards to loyal customers
To create a successful relationship marketing strategy, you should not stop engaging with your customer after a purchase. You must engage with your customers even after the purchase to build a long-term relationship with that customer and improve customer loyalty.
This sort of relationship marketing strategy has been on the rise for a while, satisfying both enterprises and customers.
Many businesses offer incentives, discounts, and rewards for customer loyalty! Similarly, you can also provide your customers with discounts, gifts, or personalised offers on repurchase.
Loyalty programs are also a perfect way to engage consumers and evaluate loyalty. This also helps a lot in promoting it among customers.
- Provide Valuable Content
‘Content is King’ – This is true till this date. Providing value content will definitely help strengthen the relationship with your customers.
Creating engaging content such as social media posts, blogs, videos, and infographics can gain traction for your business.
When your content appears to the right target audience at the right place and at the right time, it’ll enhance your brand’s reputation. Customers are more likely to have a positive association with your business if they see more quality content from your marketing. This helps in emotionally connecting with customers and increasing your brand awareness. This in turn helps you gain loyal customers.
- Listen to customer feedback
To build a long-term relationship with your customer, you have to listen to your customer feedback and resolve all the problems the customer has with your product or service.
Instead of thinking of feedback as complaints, you can think of it as a way to engage with customers and learn what customers expect or dislike in your products to improve your business.
Conduct customer feedback surveys at regular intervals. Then take actions to improve on those feedback from your customers. This will definitely improve your relationship marketing.
- Engage with customers through CaaS
Your website is a significant aspect of your business. So, having a live chat for your brand makes a huge difference. You can interact with customers instantly and offer help or support if required.
CaaS (Conversation-as-a-Service) allows you to engage with your customers right when they land on your website to improve the customer experience and purchasing journey at a much early stage.
Getting quick support during the purchasing stage can increase positive experiences and conversion rates.
As for your business, it helps boost customer engagement and decrease the bounce rate of your website.
If you are thinking about building a deeper relationship with your customers, CaaS is a great way to strengthen your customer relationship and grow your business.
The following are the benefits of CaaS:
- Proactive and reactive customer interaction whenever a visitor arrives on your website
- Human-to-human communication with a personal touch
- Schedule appointments or demo meetings for your sales team
- Engage with your customers 24/7, 365 days
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