Relationship Marketing

Should Relationship Marketing be Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

Every business wants to attract new customers and grow new business, but very few focus their energies on building lasting relationships with their existing customers.  Most assume that their existing customers are happy and that new business growth will come from acquiring new customers.

Are they wrong? Are you wrong?

Yes and no.

Your existing customers may well be perfectly happy but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to stay with you forever. And yes, new customers and clients are essential to the growth of any business but they’re expensive to get and keep.  It is a marketing strategy that emphasizes the need to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. It’s not just about good customer service.  It means maintaining communications with your existing customers and growing their involvement with your business over time.

So what are the real benefits of good relationship marketing and what should you do?

Benefits of Relationship Marketing

• Existing customers are often your best source of new business – they already know and trust you and so are often more open to adopting new products and services.
• Existing customers are also your best possible source of referral business and positive word-of-mouth.
• It is much less expensive to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.
• Existing customers are the backbone of your cash flow.
• Existing customers can help provide feedback – making your marketing, customer service, product development and every other aspect of your business stronger
• Existing customers can become advocates for your business, heading off negative word of mouth.  Dissatisfied customers are more likely to start and spread negative word of mouth.

What Should You Consider as Part of Your Relationship Marketing Strategy?

Any relationship marketing campaign should have a few aims:

1. Retain customers
2. Harness positive word of mouth
3. Sell new products and services to existing customers
4. Prevent other businesses from poaching clients through education
5. Make your customers feel important and part of something

So how?

• Focus on your existing customer base – The easiest thing to do is move on to the next prospect once you’ve made a sale. This is a mistake. The relationship that got them to buy needs to be maintained if they are to continue as a loyal customer.
• Keep the lines of communication open – Both communications to your customers and feedback from your customers.
• Have a long-term customer contact plan – Much of your communications with your existing customers can be pre-planned and even automated. This can include things like newsletters.
• Keep in touch – But not all of your marketing to existing customers should be pre-planned. You should be at pains to keep and build a personal relationship. A phone call can make a huge difference.
• Encourage feedback – make it easy, take it seriously and reward it.
• Build customer communities – Communication between customers can help them feel part of a tribe. You don’t need to run this but you should make it easy. Be the facilitator.
• Involve them in your marketing – Consider referral programs based on rewarding word of mouth. Give customers sneak peaks about new product launches and new marketing campaigns – take their feedback on board.
• Do sell to them – Continue the marketing and sales process but focus less on hard sales messages and more on informative content. Educated customers are more likely to buy new products and services, upgrade existing purchases or services plan and become the kinds of fans that help spread the word about your business.

Existing customers should be the cornerstone of your marketing efforts and deserve their own marketing plan and dedicated efforts.

What Next?

We Do it For You: If you’d like help developing a relationship marketing plan, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report

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Current Customers

Referral Marketing

How to Make Your Business More Referral Friendly

Are you getting as many referrals from your referral marketing?  Do your customers send you new business?  What about your contacts or other businesses you deal with?  If you provide a high quality product or service but are not getting the number of referrals that you would like, then a simple, planned referral program can be a great way of getting more.

Your referral program should include:

• A referral reward
• Simple referral tools
• Plenty of promotion

Referral Marketing Step One: Rewarding Your Referrals

Rewarding the people that send you referrals is not only the right thing to do but it can also encourage more people to do the same. You have a few choices to make when it comes to rewarding referrals:

1. The first is the reward itself. In some cases it might be appropriate to use a financial reward – say 10% of the value of the business.  This is often a good choice when trying to get referrals from other businesses.  If money doesn’t seem appropriate then something of a similar value might – say a meal for two.
2. The second choice is what you will reward. In most cases you will want to reward actual new business won.  However, it might be a good idea in some cases to reward every referral – with a simple thank you or token gesture – even if it doesn’t turn into new business.
3. Finally you need to decide whether you will promote this reward or simply give the reward after the fact.  Again, in some cases promoting the reward will increase the number of people who do refer. However, you don’t want it to look like you’re buying referrals. The choice depends on your business.

Referral Marketing Step Two: Creating Referral Tools to Make Referring Easier

You want to make sending you business as easy as possible; so, you should create simple tools to smooth the process.  This can be as simple as making sure that every customer has plenty of your business cards to hand out. You could also create a specific gift voucher for them to use or include tools and forms on your website.

Take a mental walk through the process of someone referring business to you. Point out the places where it might be difficult and find ways to make it easier.  One of the best tools you can create is a special offer for the person that they refer to you. This will make it easier for them to talk about your business and convince someone to get in touch.

Referral Marketing Step Three: Promoting Your Referral Program

If you’re not getting as many referrals as you would like there’s often a simple explanation – you’re not asking.  If people don’t know that you want referrals they may never think to send you any.

So what do people need to know?

First off they need to know that you welcome referrals. Make a point of asking for referrals from satisfied customers and clients. Having a referral program in place will help this but only if you promote it.  When you start your program make sure you contact all your customers and professional contacts and let them know about it. After that you can promote it in your newsletters, on your website, in your email signature or even on your invoices.  From time to time you might consider a marketing campaign just for your referral program.

Once they know you welcome referrals the next step is to show them the process – i.e. how can they send you a referral and what will happen after that? Before people will be happy to send you their friends, family, colleagues and customers they will want to know that you will look after them.

Finally, use the referral rewards to honestly thank people who have helped you out. If someone has gone to the trouble of sending you new business you need to make sure they know it was appreciated.

Referral Marketing Summary

The first step in any referral program has to be to deliver a great product or service but if you do, a simple plan for encouraging and handling referrals will help you get the most out of the goodwill you create.

What Next?

We do it for you: If you’d like help developing your own referral marketing program, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide

Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report

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Current Customers & Referrals

Lead Generation Techniques

10 Simple Steps to Build a Long-Lasting Business

Are your lead generation techniques working for you?

Have you tried different lead generation techniques, only to fall short of your goals for inquiries and new business?

If so, here are our top ten techniques to increase sales and new business inquiries.

10 Steps for Long-Term Lead Generation

1. Market and Advertise Offline and Online

A lead generation strategy is useless without a way of getting prospects to the first rung of the ladder.  This means successful advertising and marketing of your business.  A good marketing strategy can motivate cold prospects to become warm leads and take the first step in doing business with you.  Read my FREE eBook for more information on this.

2. Build a List

Your list is your most important asset.  Most prospects aren’t ready to buy the first time you come in contact with them, but they may be ready at some stage in the future.  A well developed list, packed full of prospective customers allows you to see better returns, cut marketing costs and maximize the returns from the money you do spend.

Of course good list building is not just an excel sheet with everybody’s email address.  A good list is detailed, segmented into different types of buyers and is regularly updated with new information.  It’s the backbone of every good lead generation system.

3. Schedule Appointments

For those businesses with a more complicated sales process that requires a personal approach, the next step after a prospect shows interest is to arrange for a meeting.  Depending on your business and resources, you might consider using a professional appointment setter to do the legwork.

4. Close the Sale

If your prospect expressed an interest or met you for an appointment, they’re interested in what you have to sell.  How interested? Ask them to buy it. They can either say “yes”, “no” or “not now”.

Whatever the result, by closing the sale you’ve moved the process along. You may have a new sale.  You may move a prospect along your sales system towards a future sale. You may have eliminated a prospect that could have cost you time in the future.  Of course you don’t want to come across as pushy, but don’t make the common mistake of shying away from asking for the sale.

5. Build a Follow Up List – Clients and Prospects

As your list grows you’ll want to split it into two (or more) kinds of follow-up lists.  One is for current and past clients. You’ll ask them for future business, sell new products and services and ask for referrals.  For existing customers you’ll also need to use effective customer retention programs because these are the people you need to pay the most attention to.  After all, it’s always cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones.

The second is for prospects who aren’t clients – yet. From that list you’ll want to implement Step 6.

6. Identify the Most-Qualified Prospects

As your list grows even more you’ll want to segregate it to make more money by spending more energy and time on your “A” prospects.  Spend less time and energy to your “B” and “C” prospects.  The first step is to create profiles of who the A, B and C prospects are.

The next trick is to starting using your automated systems to make C prospects into B’s and B prospects into A’s (and A prospects into paying customers.)

7. More Closing

If your prospect didn’t buy from you the first time, you should have put him on your mailing list. Find ways to follow up with him so you’re there when he is ready.

[Alec Baldwin - Best Performance On Closing]

8. Keep in Touch with Prospects

Keep delivering useful content to your prospects, keep making offers, closing, and asking for the sale with all your prospects who haven’t bought yet.  You never know when they’re ready to buy. But when they are, you want to be there.

9. Keep in Touch with Customers and Clients

Once you convert a prospect into a customer, don’t ignore them!  It’s more profitable to do business and keep in touch with clients who know and trust you.  Advertising and prospecting for new business, in the cold marketplace, is the most expensive kind of business development.

10. “Rinse and Repeat!”

Turn your long-term lead generation techniques into a repeatable cycle. Turn lead generation techniques into a system. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

What Next?

Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook

Articles & Autoresponders & Closing Sales & Current Customers & Customer Retention Program & How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & List Building Strategies & Qualified Lead Generation & Setting Appointments

Customer Retention Program

Find Out How You as A Business Owner Can “Lock Customers In” by Following Simple Proven Steps

A good customer retention program can help you reduce the costs of marketing your business. It is always more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an existing one happy and ready to buy again.  Existing customers are more trusting of your offers, more willing to listen to your communications, and like the idea of dealing with a solid, regular supplier.  Existing customers are your most likely source of new customers too – through referrals and positive word-of-mouth.

Attracting new customers is expensive.  You’ll have advertising costs, sales costs and staff time costs to consider.  New prospects are harder to convince and it takes a lot more effort to weed out the serious buyers form the ‘tire kickers.’

So why then, do you spend more time and money chasing new business?  In this article we’ll outline what a customer retention program is and what it should look like – as well as how it can help your business in more ways than you’d think.

Incentive-Based Customer Retention Programs

Some programs often use incentives to reward and encourage customer loyalty over time.

For example, you could consider any of the following programs:

1. Discount programs
2. Loyalty programs
3. Card-based programs

The purpose of these kinds of programs is to encourage repeat and long-term business by introducing (normally progressive) price discounts. For products and services that compete on price – like air travel, grocery items or insurance – incentive models work well.

Contact-Based Customer Retention Programs

Incentive and price-based programs can be hugely effective where price is the most important thing.  But sometimes price is not necessarily the most important thing – service levels, personal recognition and quality can all be deciders.

Contact based programs (often termed Customer Relationship Management or CRM) focus on dedicated communications channels – like customer newsletters.  These are often combined with incentive and reward based programs as described above.

How to Create a Good Customer Retention Program

Before you even consider a retention program you need to make sure you’ve got the basics covered – excellent customer service and high quality products or services.

• Find ways to show customer appreciation and create a system that allows customers to give their opinion or feedback on your product or services.

• Provide information and useful content – helping your customers become more successful and get the most out of your product or services.

• Monitor results in detail – There’s no point offering discounts if they’re not increasing sales volumes.

Of course, a strong retention program should be a part of every business but if you don’t have the time or expertise to develop, implement, or manage one yourself, you should consider bringing in an outside firm to help.

What Next?

• We do it for you: If you’d like help developing your customer retention program, click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
• Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas

Download our free report

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Current Customers & Customer Retention Program & Lead Management & Referrals