Blogs on Modern Marketing and Sales

Learn how brands like Amazon, McDonalds and Amway build relationship with customers to grow their businesses.   Every business or organization looking to expand usually seeks out ways and strategies to help them. Relationship marketing is a system on its own and involves developing a relationship geared towards advancing the interests of customers. This also means that potential customers are given special treatment rather than being seen as opportunities to make money. Furthermore, this type of marketing often leads to more than a 300% increase in qualified prospects. But it’s not all result and no work or plans. Strategies are important. Whether you’re keen on taking your online marketing plan to the next level or actively setting up other plans, your customers, new and old, stand to benefit richly. And if they’re happy, you’re happy. Here are four relationship marketing strategies you’ll find worth your time and effort.     1. Creating Quality Content for Your Customers: Chances are you’re familiar with the efforts of many companies to come up with content to promote their products. However, it goes beyond writing a few paragraphs. You want to connect with your customers with high-class content showing them why they remain essential to your business. Ensure whatever you write is for the benefit of the readers. Optimize your content in a way that fits right with their perspectives rather than yours. Furthermore, your content has to be the best value for the time potential customers might spend reading it. For example, Coca-Cola uses interactive contents to engage users, while IBM makes the best out of its many content marketing blogs to nail its relationship marketing strategies. Another impressive example is McDonalds’ ‘Question time’ which keeps readers engaged and waiting for more. The Washington Post’s list-based article is also an example worth imitating.     2. Listen to Your Customers: What are your customers trying to tell you? Do you even bother to listen? Well, this is an essential part of business, especially if you’re a relatively new brand. Sure, it’s an effort to listen, but it’s even more of a challenge to go ahead and put what you’ve heard to work. It’s highly beneficial to listen to customers even if all they have to say is tiresome. The key point is, they want to be heard. You can create measures or use software to know what people are thinking. A good example is PowerSurvey tool which helps you receive feedback from customers and potential clients. For example, if you’ve just sold a product or service to a prospect, you can follow them up to see how much of a help you’ve been to them. You’ll also receive pointers on how best to improve. Additionally, if it’s a physical location, you should never argue with a customer. Let them vent if they have to but don’t trade words.     3. Reward Customer Loyalty: Gifts, incentives, rewards, and the likes. Who doesn’t love them? It’s like a tit for tat because on one side; you have loyal customers who love your products and the service you deliver. Then there’s you or your business getting the patronage from them. It’s an excellent way to improve customer satisfaction. Give your loyal customers gifts, discounts and bonuses as a way of thanking them for choosing you. Relationship marketing is never the same without some giving back. Remember, loyal customers are part of your success story, and they drive up sales. Create platforms where they can get something they’ve always craved, and make the process simple so they can benefit. For example, Amazon Prime and Starbucks have developed platforms to reward loyal customers. By being somewhat lucrative, their customers refer them to other prospects who are just as eager to earn similar incentives. Also, the points program by The North Face, where users earn more points according to what they spend is an excellent example you can follow.   4. Networking: Take advantage of the contacts you make both online and offline to create a powerful network marketing strategy. Not only is it a great thrust in terms of relationship marketing, but it also exposes you and your business to a wide range of opportunities. With the interests you have, you can link up with other people, groups, and businesses that share them. Think of it as a sort of fellowship geared toward advancing your business interests, and meeting the needs of your teeming customers. Amway is a good example of a brand using this strategy to increase engagement with its customer base by joining up with others to create ideas that solve a plethora of issues. More so, it’s not as difficult to begin. You need a clear plan and a decision to link up with those that share your business affinities. These are four proven ways to bring out the best in your quest for better relationship marketing. In your bid to generate more ROI, implement these strategies, and watch your business grow. Remember, the customer is king! Grab a copy of Marketing Management Essentials You Always Wanted To Know to understand more about customer relationships in the context of marketing management.

Loyalty Programs are structured marketing programs, which are built into a brand’s marketing and promotion plan with the objective of rewarding repeat purchases (of the services or products of the brand) by the customer who thereby shows loyalty to the brand. The development of loyalty programs as a marketing strategy was chronicled and boosted by the intense, yet healthy competition in the global business environment. At first, many businesses, entrepreneurs and companies embraced it, but few actually practiced it. Following its success to increase sales and improve customer retention, the practitioners, onlookers and critics became religious converts; they not only accepted but believed in it. What are the questions you must ask yourself before starting a loyalty program for your brand? Does your brand really need a loyalty program? Or is it being implemented because your competitors are using one? For example, loyalty is almost non-existent for any branded food because the cost of trying out newer brands of foods is not very high and customers are bound to do so. In this scenario, pumping in efforts into a loyalty program may not be very worthwhile.   If you have decided to use loyalty programs, are your efforts directed in the same direction? What would be the cost, time and resource allocation implications of such a program? Is your front end staff ready and trained to service and “DELIGHT” these newly acquired and “Brand Loyal” customers? It is important for your employees to have a good knowledge of customer relationship management in order to implement a solid and successful Loyalty Program. It is imperative to prepare new managers and leaders with the knowledge of building blocks of CRM as well as various facets of CRM. Advantages of Loyalty Programs 1) Entices New Customers In most cases, a loyalty program is geared towards rewarding existing customers. But as a natural consequence, a customer-centric loyalty program will, undoubtedly, attract new customers to your business, product or services. Potential clients or customers will be attracted to your offer and may purchase your product if they are convinced. They will get free products, discounts or rewards in the future. A report by B2B International, a global market research firm, shows that such clients or customers might even become “fans” and eventually refer other clients to your business. This opens up the door for an opportunity to integrate the loyalty program with a customer referral program – It’s a WIN-WIN for all! 2) Increases the rate of customer retention Perhaps the single, most important benefit of the customer loyalty program is its potential to increase customer retention rate. This program, in its different forms, allows customers to feel valued and appreciated. Consequently, this gives your customers good reasons to stay with your business to receive even more discounts, giveaways or rewards. “Businesses that increased their expenditure on customer retention over the past one to four years had a 200% likelihood of increasing their market share”, Forbes reports. Your loyalty program, therefore, should be designed as bait to incentivize additional purchases while also increasing customer retention. 3) Provides Useful Database for Marketing and Enhances Customer Engagement During your company’s loyalty program, customers are required to fill out a form with their details, and this serves as invaluable input for database marketing. From their data, you can evaluate customer behaviour, preferences and buying behaviours. In fact, professional marketers use these details in different ways, from pricing and inventory management to tailoring their products or services to a particular group of people. A professionally designed loyalty program enables businesses to differentiate profitable buyers from unprofitable ones. Moreover, a loyalty program enables direct, effective and two-way communication with a company’s customers. The company can disseminate new product information, benefits and features to its customers directly and the customers can convey valuable feedback about the product or service to the company. This simplifies the brand promotion and awareness efforts and increases loyalty by introducing actionable insights consistently. Thus, a loyalty program enables a business to keep its customers effectively and consistently engaged with its brand at a comparatively low cost. 4) Emotional Connect with the Brand Over time the customers develop an emotional connection with the brand and are “Customers for life”, for the business. A good loyalty program increases customer stickiness, and such customers hardly ever try out newer products as they have a sense of trust and reliability for the brand. This denotes the true success of any loyalty program. Disadvantages of a Customer Loyalty Program 1) Time and Money Involved A well-planned loyalty program provides a service, product or an offer that people actually want to buy. Running a loyalty program takes away time and resources from the other parts of the business, and this may or may not be worth the effort. Hiring a professional marketer or deploying a technological system requires extra costs. 2) Customer Satisfaction gone wrong! Loyalty programs may boomerang right back if the rewards fail to match up to the promises made by the company. For the loyalty program to gain popularity, the brand has to offer genuine discounts and rewards (both tangible and intangible) else the program might foster distrust and create a bad reputation for the brand. Losing your customers to your competitors, and that too, your most loyal ones would prove to be doubly unfortunate. Concluding Thoughts There is no doubt that the pros of loyalty programs outweigh its cons. You will experience a successful and profitable loyalty program if you strategically and carefully launch the program. However, it would help if you had expert advice and professional marketers for your business to retain more loyal customers. To understand more about customer relationships in the context of marketing management, grab a copy of Marketing Management Essentials You Always Wanted To Know.