Customer Relationship Archives

The Marketing Process

It is important to understand the process your prospective customers go through before they are ready to buy from you. If you understand that process, you are better equipped to put in place marketing activities that support it, and help lead people through it and towards buying from you.

The first step is for people to know you exist, so awareness is the first thing. I don’t just mean people seeing you once or twice, but actually noticing you. Actually registering that you exist. It’s pretty hard to get people to buy from you if you don’t exist, right? ;)

But even if they know you exist, they may not be in any way interested, and if they are not interested, the process stops there. You must gauge their interest in order for them to be open to what you have to say. Only if they find you interesting will they move on to check you out by, for example, coming to your website or checking you out on social media, or popping into your store the next time they are in the neighbourhood.

What if they don’t like what they find when they check you out some more? Then you’re dead in the water. [Read more…]

Marketing is branding

One of the reasons I fell in love with the subject of marketing was that when I did my MBA I quickly realised that marketing is the very heart of every business. Without marketing there can be no business. Non-marketing people often hate it when us marketing nerds harp on about how “business = marketing”. The thing is though, it’s true.

I cannot stress this enough, so I figured it would be good to enlist the help of two of my favourite business gurus in management and marketing in the last century: Peter Drucker and Al Ries, to drive home the message of just how important marketing is.

Peter Drucker says “A company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services, which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence. Other responsibilities, e.g., to employees and society exists to support the company’s continued ability to carry out its primary purpose.”

This is at the core of marketing. Serving your customer. Because it always has to be all about the customer. You have to see things from their point of view. You have to realize what they need and what they want and that’s what you need to be giving to them. So, that’s the primary responsibility. Try to flog junk they don’t want or need and you won’t get anywhere.

Peter Drucker also says: [Read more…]

Use Content Marketing To Make Your Life Easier

– by educating your customers

Content marketing is one of my favourite aspects of marketing for many reasons. One of the somewhat hidden benefits of content marketing is how it can improve your relationship with your customers through their learning.

Most of us have experienced bad customers, whether they were difficult to sell to to begin with or whether they are difficult to work with once business is underway. There are many reasons for them being this way (some people are just like that ;) but in many cases these difficulties can be reduced through content marketing. By informing and enlightening your customers you can remove many of the hindrances to a good relationship, and even open the door to selling them things that they may never have been willing to buy otherwise.

The best way to illustrate this is by examples: [Read more…]

Customer Relationship Nurturing With Online Groups

We have all heard that it is easier to keep your current customers than to get new ones. And this is very true. However, we tend to forget this and neglect the customers we already have, whilst we offer the world to new customers and give them all our attention.

For a while now I have been thinking how best to remedy this in my business and find ways to better maintain my relationship with my “older” customers. So I want to share with you what I am getting up to, and perhaps this is something that you could use in your business.

I buy a lot of online courses. I have bought courses on Facebook marketing, LinkedIn marketing, Pinterest marketing, email marketing, SEO etc. etc. I love this way of learning for so many reasons. I don’t need to be at a specific place at a specific time, I can always go over things again if I need to, and they provide easy step-by-step instructions. Very often these courses are accompanied by closed, members-only, Facebook groups where participants can interact, ask and answer, discuss and just in general help and support each other. The instructor is also there regularly to answer questions and take part. This means that you not only have constant access to the materials but you always have someone you can look to for help. Of course you can’t just take, take, take, you must also give in the form of helping others and answering questions ;)

Another thing that a group like this does for the instructor of the program is that they can keep in touch with their customers and thereby continue to build the relationship with them.

I had been thinking for a long time about this as a way to keep in touch with my customers before I did it. So I decided to invite my current and “old” clients, that have gone through my training program, to join. I wanted to build an active and lively group of great people that want to master marketing for their business, support each other and share advice and ideas. Something much greater than I can provide on my own. People have really liked the idea and most of my clients have joined. This has been just great. There are useful and lively discussions and exchange of information, and I myself am do my very best to make it so by checking in regularly, answering questions and taking part.

How could you use something like this to continue building your relationship with your customers? Here are a few ideas. [Read more…]

You Need to Communicate

If I had a dollar, pound or euro for each time I hear people complain about a customer, how they just don’t understand this or that, I could probably have at least one free meal a week (even if it is only a sandwich).

I recently came across this quote: “If you’ve told a child a thousand times and he still does not understand, then it is not the child who is the slow learner.” (Walter Barbee).

It might as well say: “If you’ve told a prospective customer a thousand times and he still does not understand, then it is not the customer who is the slow learner.”

It is not the customer’s responsibility to understand you. It is your responsibility to make yourself understandable to the customer. Perception is each person’s reality. I perceive the world one way and that is my reality, and you perceive it another way – which is your reality. You can’t say that one perception of reality is wrong and another one is right. There is only different perceptions. My perception is my reality and that is what I base my decisions on – including whether or not to do business with you.

So what to do if you know that things are like this or like that but the prospective customer just won’t understand and therefore will not buy from you? [Read more…]