October 7th, 2009 → 12:50 pm
@ Richard
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:
- Retain customers
- Harness positive word of mouth
- Sell new products and services to existing customers
- Prevent other businesses from poaching clients through education
- 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?
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Tags: Customer Retention Program, Relationship Marketing
