What Is Relationship Marketing?

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of relationship marketing being about authentic connections, meaningful dialogue, hugs and kisses because it is quite simply nonesense. It is insincere, and your customers know this. Your primary concern is sales; and ultimately profitability. So it was refreshing to discover marketers that were starting to state the obvious.

Source: CopyBlogger

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of relationship marketing. Now keep it up if you know what it means.

Lots of hands still up, huh? OK. Fine. You, there. You with the iPhone and the I’m Kind of a Big Deal on Twitter t-shirt. What does relationship marketing mean?

Mmm hmm?

Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. I tuned out at “creating authentic connections” and “establishing many-to-many connections that foster meaningful dialogue.”

DING DING DING. You are WRONG, my tweep, my Facebook friend, my FriendFeed flunkie.

Let’s talk about what “relationship marketing” really is, shall we?

According to Wikipedia, and Len Barry who coined the term, “relationship marketing is a form of marketing which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on point-of-sale transactions.”

1. Relationship marketing is not about relationships. It’s about marketing.

As a relationship marketer, I focus on making sure you not only buy my stuff today, but you keep buying it over and over and over. “Relationship” refers to the customer’s purchase history, not some deep interpersonal connection.

We do not take moonlit walks on the beach. We are not friends. We are not acquaintances. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t pick each other out of a police lineup.

As a business, I’ve simply agreed to listen to you — or, more likely, people demographically similar to you — for long enough to know what you might buy. Then I make it and sell it to you.

If this is our relationship, we both need therapy.

2. Relationship marketing is not about authenticity.

I could tell you I’m just an ordinary person who happens to be exactly like you. I could tell you I’m the reincarnation of Cleopatra’s pool boy. I could tell you I’m a one-eared lumberjack.

It doesn’t matter a whit. If I get you signed up for my advance discount list and give you a good enough deal, we both win.

3. Relationship marketing is not about transparency.

Transparency is nice, and sometimes necessary, but it’s not what this is about.

It’s fascinating when Rand Fishkin tells me how much money he made last year, but it doesn’t affect whether or not I keep my SEOMoz

membership.

4. Relationship marketing is not about connection.

Just because Steve Jobs doesn’t know your kid’s name doesn’t mean you’re going to buy a Dell next time.

5. Relationship marketing is not about being social.

Social is Sunday morning brunch with your buddies. It’s not Twitter, and frankly, you’ll have a tough time selling anything in either place.

6. Relationship marketing is not about equality.

The only thing that’s equal about you being my “fan” and me begging you for money is that we’re equally codependent.

7. Relationship marketing is not even about communication.

I buy apples every week and the things don’t even have a label, let alone a communication strategy.

You joining my Facebook fan page is not a relationship.

You following me on Twitter is not a relationship.

You commenting on my blog is not a relationship.

Let’s face it, if your boyfriend treated you as badly as I do, your mother would tell you to break up with him.

Relationship marketing is about marketing.

The touchy feely, Summer of Love, gosh-aren’t-we-great-friends stuff is nice. Sometimes it’s even necessary. But it’s not what relationship marketing is actually about.

Relationship marketing is about getting the customer to stick around long enough to keep shopping. And it’s about making sure that customer comes back next time to buy more stuff.

Don’t fall so in love with the relationship that you forget about the marketing. Like talking about benefits and not just features. Like having a halfway decent market position. Like a real call to action. Like, you know, selling stuff.

All the authentically transparent connections in the world won’t fix those if they’re broken. But stick a Wheaties coupon on the back of every box of Wheaties and you’ve got it nailed.

Author: Naomi Dunford

How To Stay Close To Your Customers In Difficult Economic Times

Ouch. Watching your sales revenue plunge, but your operating costs remain stubbornly high, is causing you immense stress. Your margins have evaporated and you need to do something fast or go bankrupt. The natural tendency is to slash anything that you feel is not important, like that marketing budget. But you know that your brand will simply disappear, as your competitors continue to shout their brands from the rooftops. The alternative, if you keep spending on marketing that does not definitively lead to sales, you will be sunk. Does this sound like your dilemma? If it doesn't then you are clearly in a recession proof industry.

Of course you cannot slash your marketing. The key is to concentrate on marketing that builds repeat business, and do it fast.

Most businesses concentrate on attracting new clients and do very little to look after their existing clients after the transaction is complete.

I mean as a consumer yourself, when last were you "Thanked" for your business, or even better, when last were you contacted by a vendor that hadn't seen you for awhile, worrying that you may have defected? I will guess probably never.

Marketing is not directly correlated to sales, unless you are holding a blowout sale, where you are basically discounting your product to make the revenue. A lot of good that is going to do when your margins are already waffer thin. So the key is to keep your brand top-of-the-mind, and achieve this without the traditional marketing expense. The first place to begin is with your existing clients. It is much easier, and cheaper, to keep your existing clients than to pour loads of money into trying to attract new clients. Besides in a recession, the quickest way to land up in the poorhouse is to blindly pursue your mass marketing strategy.

So how do you set about keeping your existing clients? Well for starters you need to ask yourself whether you know who your clients are. Do you have a database of your past clients, or do you simply complete the transaction and let them walk out the door, perhaps never to be seen again? If you don't, then stop wasting time and implement a system that will allow you to gather your clients contact information at your various touchpoints.

So now the data is starting to come in, now what? Once you have started collecting this data you then need to communicate with your clients, and this should start immediately with a simple Thank You. Here communication means developing a meaningful relationship instead of mass emailing that simply erodes your brand value and shoves an endless supply of product down your clients throats. By meaningful relationship I mean use a give-and-take system. Provide value-add information in exchange for information. Everytime you communicate you have a branding opportunity, and if done correctly you slowly build loyalty. Imagine being able to track your individual client's so closely that you will be able to identify who your top spenders are, or being able to identify potential defectors before they go to your competitors. Oh great, I hear you saying cynically. You are not IT literate, you don't have the funds to develop a system and you don't know where to start. What now?

Well this is where Dialogue Marketing fills a niche. Dialogue Marketing provides an affordable system that will start creating your database instantly, and will help you design customised communications that will automatically, and periodically communicate with your clients across multiple mediums like email, text, fax, voice or snail mail. These communications can be fully interactive, gathering more client information for you, which in turn may trigger further communications to the client or internal notifications to personnel. The communications can also incorporate a points system, where points will be communicated via the medium of your choice and can track transactions, highlighting key information. All of this is designed to keep your brand top-of-the-mind and to encourage a repeat sales cycle.

In future postings, I will break the features down and explain them in more details, and what it will accomplish for your business.

About Us

Dialogue Marketing is a niche marketing communications company, that has a proprietary in-house communication platform. The business was founded in 2006 by Mark Pawley. The initial product development took place in South Africa, in an environment that has a large and active mobile phone user demographic. This resulted in the application integrating cell phone text communication, on the GSM network, together with email. In 2008 Dialogue Marketing opened in Calgary, Canada, which required an adjustment, to integrate alternative cellular technologies, and to incorporate fax communications. Current developments include incorporating Twitter, and other social media platforms. Dialogue Marketing specialises in providing customised turnkey solutions to customer communication problems. These include establishing your social media presence, developing your website and blog, linking it to your communications and providing ongoing maintenance. Dialogue Marketing is best suited to the business market that seeks to communicate with its clients/prospects on a 1-to-1 basis, using multiple mediums. Solutions start from as low as $50.00 per month.

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