Relationship Marketing
Consumers are rapidly becoming immune to traditional marketing campaigns due to constant bombardment by advertisers. To implement a successful marketing solution, your company needs to look in new, relationship-building directions—and relationship marketing is one of them.
Relationship marketing architecture is a complex machine, with distinct but interconnected software layers optimized for sales and service, order processing, and decision support; together, they essentially mimic all of the functions of an extremely intelligent marketing administrator and a personal sales representative, supported by a smooth-running back office.
Relationship marketing works on the methodology of moving customers through five levels of loyalty, consisting of awareness, recognition, preferences, commitment and endorsement—and in the most expedient and cost-effective manner possible. Successful relationship marketing is dependent not only on the ability to smoothly execute certain business and operational tactics, but also on the ability to implement it using the right tools and technology .
Relationship marketing software meets this requirement and yields additional profitability for its users by supplying them with the means for identifying precisely those customers who harbor the most lucrative potential. In doing so, these customers can be selectively cultivated. This softwar e develops customer profiles, tracks opportunities, categorizes customer propensities, forecasts client behavior, identifies their interests, defines campaign parameters, and manages costs and resources.
The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways—your company achieves reduced marketing expenses measured in both time and money. Relationship marketing is more powerful and efficient than other tools for increasing sales and market share, and it’s also a formidable device for retaining key customers. It costs five times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one, and an additional 5% retention in customers over their collective lifetimes results in an 85% to 125% increase in company margin over that same time period. The ability to rescue potentially “lost” customers and turn them into loyal buyers is clearly a competitive advantage.
Our management team has years of experience developing marketing programs around relationship marketing. The best way to keep in constant contact with clients and prospects and build a strong relationship is to position yourself as an information provider. You can call someone every month with a sales pitch, but very quickly they’ll learn to hang up on you. However, if every time you call clients you give them new, valuable information, they will begin to look forward to your call, and even call you themselves when they’re searching for information. Once you’ve established this relationship, and a customer comes to you for information, their purchase decision is made with greater ease. They go to their trusted source—your business—when they’re looking to buy.
Ultimately, a successful relationship marketing implementation will create the illusion for each customer that every single one of his or her previous contacts and transactions has been remembered and carefully considered. In doing so, it adds value to the experience and makes each future visit appear as a progressive step in a growing relationship.
Relationship marketing is an intriguing marketing technique that gives companies a competitive advantage. At present, employing relationship marketing may be optional—in the not-too-distant future, however, it will be an operational necessity.
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