Relationship Marketing :: Advisors On Target

Archive for Relationship Marketing

Build Good Relationships with a Customer Communications Plan

Posted by Linnea Blair on

09/17/2019

There is gold in your contact database if only you take the time to mine it. Every business owner has a list of customers who love your service, a list of prospects who have contacted you for a proposal even if they didn’t hire you, and a list of valuable contacts who can refer business to you. The secret to getting more business from your customers and contacts is to nurture those relationships by staying in touch. With some organization, some planning and some tools, your company can begin to reap the rewards of good relationship marketing

Customer Relationship Management
Most business owners are familiar with the term Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as it relates to the software system that your company uses to keep track of customers, prospects and business contacts. No matter which software you use as your database, the most three most critical factors in making it work for you are:
• Add every contact and their details to your system (without fail!)
• Categorize each contact
• Be able to extract contract information for any group of contacts easily to send them something.

Customer Communication Plans
Most of us like to think that our customers will always remember us when they have a need for our services and pick up their phone and call, text or email us. Some undoubtedly do, but many more may need a prompting to inspire them to call us instead of our competitor who just sent them a flyer, or another company their neighbor recommended on Facebook or Nextdoor. Think of your customer communications as building relationships. Consider the number of times per year that your customers might need to use your services. The frequency may help determine how often it would be best to stay in touch. For some businesses, perhaps quarterly would be enough, for others monthly may be better. The type of relationship may also dictate frequency of contact. Someone who is in a position to refer business your way might benefit from hearing from you more frequently than someone who may only need your services infrequently.

Take some time and map out a plan to stay in touch with your various categories of contacts. For example, you may want to send a newsletter to everyone on your list periodically, but beyond that there may be differences. For prospects: You may want to send them a direct mail piece or email blast occasionally when you are running a special or you want to highlight a timely seasonal service. For customers: Consider sending letter occasionally which gives a bit more of a personal touch in addition to direct mail or email blasts advertising your specials. A Thank You card at the end of a project is always in season. Speaking of seasons, it’s also a nice touch to send a holiday card. If you are concerned about sending a December card due to the plethora of religious holidays, consider sending a Thanksgiving Card or a New Year’s Card or even a holiday card at some unexpected time such as the 4th of July. For referral partners: You may want to stay in touch more frequently with other businesspeople who are in position to refer work to you. In this case you can plan to add in a telephone call to touch base, or a date for coffee or lunch periodically to get caught up with what’s happening in their business and exploring opportunities to work together.

How often should you stay in touch? For prospects and customers, I would suggest at least quarterly, but you may want to be in contact in one form or another monthly, particularly with your customers. For referral partners, staying in touch at least monthly makes sense.

Leverage Social Media
The more you can drive your customers, prospects and referral partners to connect with you on Social Media, the more you increase your opportunities to stay top of mind. All your marketing materials should make it very easy to connect with your company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. In addition, if you can create a reason for them to join you on Social Media, it will be easier to get them to connect with you. You may want to offer something of interest to them that is only available on your Facebook Business Page, for example. This could take many forms: Photographs of a community project, a drawing for a prize, an opportunity to participate in a poll, etc.

Keep it Cost Effective
Many businesses don’t invest much in marketing to their customers and referral partners, but getting leads is the lifeblood of your business. Even if you have a small budget that doesn’t cover things like direct mail and big media advertising costs, you can still stay in touch without spending a huge amount of money. Email marketing is extremely cost effective, and a good email service like Constant Contact or MailChimp will save you thousands over print newsletters. Even if you don’t have email addresses for all your customers, consider sending an e-newsletter to those for whom you do have an email address and the print version only to those you don’t.

Letters to customers are also pretty cost effective, and I suggest this to many of my clients who have a small marketing budget. Sure, you do incur the postage costs, but chances are you have a stock of letterhead and company envelopes on hand already. If you’re still concerned about costs – rank your list and just send letters to your better customers.

Put Your Communications Plan in Writing (and on the Calendar!)
As with everything else in your business, implementation is the key. Map out your communications plan for customers, prospects and referral partners by month and identify what method you will use to communicate with each and when. Then transfer action items to your calendar. For example, if you want to send a newsletter on September 1, put that on your calendar. If you know it will take you two weeks to get the newsletter ready to deploy, you should calendar an action item to start working on it two weeks earlier. Keep in mind everything always takes longer than you think!

Categories : Relationship Marketing

Build Customer Relationships with Email Marketing

Posted by Linnea Blair on

09/06/2012

Woman reading email For small businesses just getting started with marketing or even more established businesses who want to build better relationships with their customers, email marketing is one of the excellent tools business owners should consider.

Are email newsletters overused? Yes. Do your customers always have time to read your newsletters? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that they never read them. I don’t have time to read all the email newsletters I receive, but I keep my subscriptions to many that I know that I want to read from time to time.

What’s good about email newsletters?
They keep your brand out there in front of your audience. Maybe your readers don’t need your service this week or this month, but they may need or want it sometime in the next few months, and they’ll remember getting your newsletter and go back and search for it to contact you. When they do have time to read, we hope your great content will keep impressing them that you are the go-to expert in your field who serves up valuable information that will help them. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and your newsletter will reach them just when they are ready to buy. An example in my own business is when one of my readers signed up online for a $1,000 program I was offering without even calling me to talk about it. Though when that $1,000 hit my PayPal account, you can bet I called him!

Email newsletters are easy to use and very affordable. There are many good ones out there. I have tried several and found most to be user friendly. Most offer free trial periods. I personally use Constant Contact which has many great features and they keep adding more. I also see many people using Mail Chimp, which is free, with certain limitations. I found a very comprehensive review of email marketing software which you may want to check out. In future posts, I’ll talk more about how you can make your email newsletters more likely to be read and more effective in achieving your objectives. Many of the email newsletter software companies offer tips on their websites and some, like Constant Contact offer in person classes as well.

Categories : Relationship Marketing

In-Person Networking Works

Posted by Linnea Blair on

07/31/2009

Despite the benefits of online contact any time, from anywhere, personal interaction is as good for business now as it was 20 years ago. In the world away from your desktop, your competitors are shaking hands with your potential customers over lunch or a laugh right now. What are you waiting for? Get out of the office and network.

Making personal business connections may take longer, but they are potentially as important as driving web traffic and planning your advertising campaigns. For relatively little expense, seeking industry events and other face-to-face business opportunities should form an equal part of your marketing strategy.

When business is slow, mass marketing or email marketing your existing clients seems the obvious low-cost option to generate sales, but forging personal networks with face-to-face contact brings a unique set of advantages. And there’s no ‘delete’ key.

Networking builds trust

The important thing missing from online contact is the real connections that create genuine trust.

The advantage good networkers enjoy is access to more private or useful knowledge only available through personal contact. Filing unmanageable amounts of downloaded documents or exchanging emails is no replacement for conversations that spill over into further mutual contacts and unexpected opportunities.

Meeting with people also brings different skill sets to a business relationship. Online, you tend to stick to one topic or problem. Where a gathering incorporates socializing, common interests outside business tend to crop up too, leading to wider networks and experiences. Read More→

Categories : Relationship Marketing

Tags : Networking, Relationships Marketing

Keep Your Customers Coming Back

Posted by Linnea Blair on

09/28/2008

Customer loyalty programs work big time for big companies but small business owners are often deterred from developing one because of worries about how much it would cost or how difficult it would be to organize and manage. As a matter of fact, the very same principles that keep customers coming back to big companies can be utilized to develop a small business scale loyalty program without a lot of cost and drama.

Make customers feel like ‘members’

Creating a ‘club’ that provides special incentives to members is one of the best ways to retain customers. This approach works because it is based on the primal human need to ‘belong’ to something – especially where belonging also makes us feel we are being treated as special.

Who gets to be a member? A customer loyalty program based on membership should convey a feeling of privilege for those selected so it can’t be open to all and sundry. Customers may qualify for membership either by purchasing their entrée or by dint of their past support and loyalty.

General Nutrition Centers, a specialty retailer of vitamins and supplements, offers a Gold Card membership program that provides discounts on products, personalized mailings and email on health related topics, product news and exclusive offers. GNC found that they could even use their program to actively iron out lows in their sales pattern by offering a special discount on sales made on Tuesday, traditionally their slowest sales day. Read More→

Categories : Customer Service Systems, Relationship Marketing

Tags : Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Relationship Marketing

Good Business Deeds Can Be Good Business Deals

Posted by Linnea Blair on

11/27/2006

‘Cause’ marketing that links your company or brand to a non-profit group or charity enables you to promote your business while you give something back to your community. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this kind of marketing is that it’s been shown to make customers feel better about deciding to purchase and that translates into an increase in repurchase intentions.

Consumers transfer their emotional bonds

Many people have emotional bonds with a non-profit group. They may even be regular financial contributors or do volunteer work for a non-profit organization. When these people see a business that’s supporting this organization they’ll often be predisposed to purchasing from it. “Look at what you sell and understand the targets you’re trying to reach. Then align yourself with causes that will bring out the emotions of that audience, from a grassroots, a community and a media standpoint,” advises Rodger Roeser, of Justice & Young Public Relations in Cincinnati.

Employees feel better about their employer

Surveys consistently show that whether candidates are choosing an employer or employees are deciding whether to stay with their present company, the degree to which a business demonstrates a social conscience is perceived as increasingly important. In fact, a majority of employees of companies in many industries have said they’d work for less money if they felt their employer was socially responsible.

It’s good for PR and community relations

Naturally, there are a lot of positives about supporting a cause that will benefit the image your business has in the community. You’ll be seen as a good corporate citizen and as an organization that contributes to the welfare of everyone in the community.

Seek alignment with your business and your customers

There are thousands of causes and some will no doubt relate to your business activities. Find a cause that has a link with your company, no matter how tenuous, so that people will understand how your business fits into the cause overall. The cause needs to also be related to the interests of your customers. It should align with their feelings and beliefs, and not be in conflict with other organizations they might want to support.

Tell the world what you’re doing

Although it might seem a bit ‘commercial’, your business will only benefit if it tells the world at large about your involvement with the cause. You need to spell out what it is you’re doing and why you’re doing it. It will also help if your business becomes a conduit for your customers to help the cause by making donations through your website or at your business premises.

Your cause marketing activities should be part of both your external marketing and your internal communications. It should be featured in your promotions, your packaging and your website, as well as referred to in your employee newsletters.
Give your employees and your customers a chance to participate in the cause by hosting a function or sponsoring an event where the proceeds go to the cause.
Ask the cause you’re supporting to promote your association with them. They have every reason to do this; the non-profit world depends on donations and they like to tell prospective donors that they’ll be in good company when they part with their funds.

In today’s competitive world consumers want to know what a business stands for. Cause marketing will tell them about your business values and reassure them that part of their purchase money is going to a good cause.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc.

Categories : Marketing, Relationship Marketing

Tags : Charitable, Marketing, Non-profit, Relationship Marketing

Cut The Costs Of Finding And Managing Leads

Posted by Linnea Blair on

09/13/2006

Every organization with a sales force keeps an eye on the leads it generates – how many does each salesperson get and how many are converted into customers. But as most companies now appreciate, the costs of generating and converting leads need to be carefully managed or they can become a real drain on profitability.

The basic tasks of lead management are to lower the costs of lead acquisition while at the same time increasing the rate of conversion into customers. To do this it’s best if you separate the lead-getting activity from the selling activity and develop metrics for monitoring each. The two are actually separate functions and require different sets of skills and resources. Lead-generation is a marketing function, while the job of converting those leads to customers is a sales function.

Lead quality is essential

Leads are acquired in any number of ways. For marketers who purchase prospect lists the content and quality of the list should be far more important than the cost, yet how many lists are bought on the basis of price? The answer is, far too many. Those who specialize in lists know that good lists are worth what they cost. They’re regularly updated, their data is accurate, and it’s possible to nominate prospects by geographical area, by age, by occupation, or any other profile that will allow the sales team to target suitably qualified prospects. You don’t have to pay for a huge list if you’re only a small company or are restricted in your geographical coverage. Carefully targeted prospects are available on a cost-per-lead basis; it’s even possible to rent or buy lists of people who have previously responded to the same form of marketing you intend to use.

The most important metric to monitor is not the cost per lead, but rather the relationship of leads to final sales, by dividing the number of leads purchased by the number of conversions obtained from those leads. The closer this result is to ‘1’ the better the quality of the leads you’ve paid for.

Another way to improve the quality of the leads you get is to have your existing customers provide you with referrals or word of mouth. Referrals are really a way of leveraging off a high level of customer satisfaction and represent a much more likely set of prospects than leads gained from cold calling.

Raise conversion rates

High quality leads make it possible for your sales team to achieve better rates of conversion from leads to customers. This effectively lowers selling costs and will go a long way towards offsetting any additional costs incurred to ensure that lead quality is consistently high. There are many more steps you can take to improve the conversion rate your sales force achieves.

Have a system that assigns a relative value to each lead at the first contact. ‘Hot’ leads are those who are definitely looking to buy; ‘Warm’ leads are those who might buy; and ‘Cold’ leads are probably not interested in buying. Discard ‘Cold’ leads at the outset of the selling process. Concentrate selling efforts on ‘Hot’ leads. Give them priority and only after all the ‘Hot’ leads have been processed should the sales team turn its attention to ‘Warm’ ones.

Leads are often obtained through offers. Before the handover to the sales team the lead should be provided with any information they may have requested – a sales brochure or product order form for example. Have a system that records what was requested and what was provided. Be persistent. One inquiry handling expert estimates that 45% of all leads turn into a sale for someone, but only 22%- 25% actually convert within the first six months. That means that 45 out of 100 leads might eventually convert to customers if they’ve correctly handled.

Keep in touch

Another consideration is that competition usually decreases over time. The reason is simple – most businesses lose interest in a lead if it doesn’t turn into a customer pretty quickly. Patience and ongoing communication will eventually deliver all the conversions you’re going to get, but many won’t convert until several months have passed.

This tells us that every lead management system must accommodate the need to stay in touch with leads over a fairly long period of time. So communicate with leads – perhaps by telephone, email or a newsletter – until they either convert to become customers or must be reclassified as ‘Cold’.

Keep in touch for an appropriate length of time until you’re absolutely certain there’s no hope of ever converting that contact to a customer. Remember too that most businesses have competitors and if you’ve done your prospecting correctly even the people who initially reject you are somebody else’s customers. They may eventually become yours if you don’t give up.

Each member of your sales team will have a conversion rate that shows how successful they are at converting leads to sales. This metric can be used in conjunction with total dollar volumes when you’re comparing the results of individual members of your sales team and determining which salespeople are your top performers.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Marketing, Relationship Marketing

Tags : Conversion, Leads, Marketing, Relationship Marketing

Call 619.291.3700

Archive for Relationship Marketing

Build Good Relationships with a Customer Communications Plan

Build Customer Relationships with Email Marketing

In-Person Networking Works

Keep Your Customers Coming Back

Good Business Deeds Can Be Good Business Deals

Cut The Costs Of Finding And Managing Leads

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives