In today's fast paced marketing world, having a strong relationship with your customers is a vital key to marketing success. It's a terrific way to add value and improve your position against your competition. Here at Local Blitz Marketing, we know how important customer relations are. So we decided to share some of our tips for developing stronger relations with your clients or customers.
Get Their Info!
Just like in a relationship, the main goal is to get potential customers to want to give you their information to send them new offers and advice in the future. For example, an e-commerce site might track a customer's activity by allowing them to create a user profile so that their information is conveniently saved for future visits, and so that the site can push more tailored information to them next time. Site visitors might also be able to sign in through Facebook or another social media channel, allowing them a simpler user experience and automatically connecting them to the brand's social media presence.
Communication is Key
How often do you reach out to customers? Do you send them important offers or valuable content? For best results, it's important to communicate frequently and vary the types of messages you send. Instead of a constant barrage of promotions, sprinkle in helpful newsletters or some useful marketing tips or hints. For many types of businesses, it's possible to combine e-mail, direct mail, phone contact, and face-to-face communication to keep prospects moving through your sales cycle without burning out on your message.
Show Value Early
Entry point offers or lead magnets are, in dating world terms, like offering to buy someone a cup of coffee. This coffee offer, which has begun many healthy dating relationships, is a relatively risk-free proposition that provides value upfront. When your goal is to acquire a customer (and not a spouse), the EPO is a way of allowing large amounts of prospective customers to get to know, like, and trust your business without much risk.
Find Out Where Your Potential Customers “Hang Out” Online
To reach out to potential customers or clients. You need to know where they congregate in the online universe. This will usually be a popular blog site related to the area you are trying to market to. A smart marketer will research these online hangout spots to find out what their potential customers are all about. Use Facebook and Amazon as major guides for finding what influences your potential customers.
5 Steps to a Healthy Business Relationship
We've gone through a few aspects of what it takes to maintain and retain healthy relationships with your customers. To really ensure marketers are effectively engaging with their audiences, there is a 5-step checklist to a healthy business relationship that most veteran marketers abide by to ensure positive results.
1.Lead magnet – Like the coffee example earlier. This is just a small value offer to potential customers in exchange for their information. The key again is that you do not want to hound your market with useless offers and ads, but rather research and focus on a small offer that solves or improves problems your target market experiences.
2. Trip Wire – The goal with the trip wire, is to convert leads from the lead magnet into actual customers. The way to achieve this is to show commitment. Show that you believe in what you are offering and that people interested in your lead magnet need more because of what you offer in your trip wire. Don't give away the whole value of your product or service, but show enough to convince those people that they need what you have. This could be a free pie if you sign up for a month of an online pie service, or a free consultation on a web design. Just something that shows your service or product has value and gains an audience trust to lead them to the core offer.
3. Core Offer – A core offer, to liken it to the dating world, is the full commitment. The lead magnet and tripwire are meant as the first couple months of a new relationship. I use this analogy just to convey that your potential leads are not meant to be harassed and seen as just a number. You have to be cool and confident about what you're offering. Don't be too forward upfront, but when you gain trust and build a relationship with your audience, then you can show the full value of your product or service to convert customers to life long members. Because customers subscribe to your service or buys one or two of your products does not mean they will keep coming back. To ensure you keep your audience, is to show the full value and potential of your product or service through a core offer. A Core Offer is the service or offering that you are going to build your entire business around, so make sure it is solid and will retain your customers long term and lead them to other potential up-sells.
4. Upsell / Profit Maximizer -The simplest way to think of a Profit Maximizer is an upsell, but Profit Maximizers come in many forms but the upsell is the most common marketing tool. A Profit Maximizer has one primary goal: to increase the average transaction value of your customers. Basically, a Profit Maximizer is typically used to quickly raise the average transaction value, resulting in immediate ROI (return on investment). An example could be a premium membership or an exclusive or upgraded version of a product.
5. Return Path – This is the last step in ensuring a healthy business relationship with your customers. This is also the most crucial step. To ensure longevity in a business relationship, you need to remind your clients and customers that they need what you are offering. Set up e-mail campaigns, Facebook ads, and social media posts are all effective ways to keep reminding customers that your service or product is still relevant and to bring in cold traffic. Make sure these return path triggers are engaging and useful. Just to reiterate that we are past the age of spamming your audiences with useless endless ads. You have to be constantly engaging your clients and customers with relevant content to stay ahead of the curve.
So there you have it, pretty simple right? If not, feel free to check out or website HERE for more useful tips and information on the world of digital marketing. Don't forget that nothing beats research! Knowing your customers better than they know themselves is the only way to effectively market to them. Also, don't be creepy! Believe in your product and provide relevant content to your potential customers that makes them believe in it too!
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