Relationship Marketing: People don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.
A proven maxim states, “people don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Relationship Marketing (versus Transaction Marketing) is a proven strategy that has it’s roots in the beginning of time when children clung to their mothers versus a stranger (or even their dads) because their mother had consistently provided love, concern and provision for them at every level.
The era of the hard sell is mostly over as businesses learn the value to promoting “goodwill” to their customers because as almost every company that is serious about growing their business knows, it is cheaper to keep a client, than it is to go get a new one. How do you keep a client? Great service. Who defines what great service is? The client mostly. The one thing we’ve learned in our 19 years of advertising, marketing and public relations work, is that the one thing every client wants is clear communication.
Good, bad or indifferent—they simply want to know what’s going on with their campaign. The same holds true for our client’s clients. Whether they are retailers, service-oriented, white collar or blue collar—their customers want a relationship more than a cheap price.
We encourage our clients to develop customer loyalty programs such a rewarding repeat purchases, give away products and services until it hurts and encourage referral opportunities. This kind of focus helps to create a culture of goodwill that typically pays off with repeat business as well as their customers becoming their best sales force.
So, when you consider a new marketing strategy, determine who you most loyal customers are and focus on making them even happier with your products or services. They will return your efforts with new customers.