Spotlighting Relationships In Business
How To Put The Spotlight On Relationships In Business?
Digitally speaking, everyone is free to connect with anyone on our beautiful planet. A celebrity on Instagram or Twitter, an old friend on Facebook, a former team member on LinkedIn, or an HR executive on Hired. The list is endless!
But wait a minute! There is a difference between a connection and a relationship. They are two completely different things. While you can easily win a connection by just adding them to your friends or the followers’ list, a relationship needs a commitment, space, and time to know and grow. In other words, a contact is like an instant gratification while a relationship is like a flower that requires time to blossom.
Now comes the worrying part. Most organizations emphasize more on connections and they stop realizing that there are real people behind these digital profiles (except few fake profiles, here and there). These real people have real emotions, problems, pain points, motivations, preferences, and feelings. Now here's some food for thought! You will always form relationships with people and not businesses and it will always be the people who will respond to your marketing initiatives.
What Is Relationship Marketing?
Relationship Marketing is a series of plans, actions, initiatives, and offers to engage with, win, and retain customers by appreciating their presence in the market and providing them with the right products and services while creating product awareness and helping them make informed purchase decisions.
Let us understand the difference between transactional marketing (the wrong thing) and relationship marketing (the right thing) to gain a clear understanding.
Relationship Marketing
The primary objective of the organization is to retain customers by delivering exceptional customer experiences, consistently.
The basic orientation of the organization is to emphasize on the benefits and unique selling proposition of the products and services.
The organization has a long-term version to engage with, win, and retain customers.
Customer service is the top priority.
High customer contact and customer commitment are the basic rudiments.
Every department of the organization focuses on quality.
Transactional Marketing
The primary objective of the organization is to focus on a single sale.
The basic orientation of the organization is to emphasize on product features.
The organization has a short-term vision to close sales and complete monthly and yearly targets.
Customer service is not the top priority.
Moderate customer contact and customer commitment.
Quality is the concern of the organization's product department.
How To Create A Sustainable Relationship Marketing Strategy?
Relationship marketing can be defined as an important aspect of customer relationship management (CRM) that emphasizes on long-term customer engagement and customer loyalty instead of short-term goals such as individual sales and customer acquisition.
Relationship Marketing can be achieved by offering the best products and services complemented with exceptional, personalized, purposeful, relevant, and consistent customer experiences. The theory of relationship marketing hinges on the fact that it is cheaper to retain customers than acquire customers, and happy & satisfied customers will always return the favor by building value for the business.
Apple, Tesla, Hewlett Packard, Amazon, and Nike are some of the few brands that come to our mind when we think about evangelism and customer loyalty. These brands have made massive contributions to their communities and share a wonderful bond with their customers that if you criticize them or talk negatively about them, you should be ready to receive a powerful defense from their loyal customers. The reason is simple, if people trust and are emotionally connected with your brand, they will do more business with you.
Now comes the big question - how to create emotional connections with your marketing campaigns? Remember the first rudiment of a relationship, "relationships are about giving" and not expecting something in return. Business relationships are no exceptions.
Here is what you can do:
Help your customers make informed decisions by offering them a series of tools such as tutorials, whitepapers, newsletters, product catalogs, presentations, seminars, webinars, podcasts, blogs, and everything you can offer.
Build trust, inspire confidence, show personality, and deliver great customer experiences, consistently.
Share pictures or documents of what you're doing for the communities.
Invite your target audience to share their photos, stories, or memories.
Maintain a consistent brand throughout the organization.
Only send relevant, engaging, unique, and purposeful content to your target audience. Don't bombard them with emails.
Send emails and personalized messages to your customers on their special days to show your appreciation for them.
Ask for honest, constructive, and unbiased feedback, complaints, and reviews. Be open to accept them and take corrective actions at the earliest, and inform such actions to the customer(s).
Have a purpose beyond sales, profits, revenue, and dividend sharing.
Conclusion
Successful organizations today realize that the key to sustainable growth lies with their long-term customers. Technology may have transformed things but it can never and should never come in between how humans connect.
How important is the concept of relationship marketing to your growing business? Please do share your comments and feedback.