7 Ways to Improve Your Relationship Marketing

Let’s face it. All marketing is relationship marketing.

In fact, the term relationship marketing is a bit redundant. It’s like saying cleansing shampoo. Or lubricating motor oil.

Companies big and small must create relationships with customers to generate purchase activity and ensure a positive brand experience. All marketing must focus on developing and nurturing a relationship. All marketing is therefore relationship marketing.

So here are 7 ways to get the most out of your relationship marketing—er, I mean—marketing.

1) Think Long Term: it generally takes 12 customer touchpoints to close a sale. Focus on the long term and you will acquire more customers and you will hold onto customers longer.

2) Refer, Refer, Refer: the fastest way to build a customer base is to help other businesses build their customer base. Join a networking group and make it a point to find customers for other businesses. Return on this investment will exceed your wildest expectations and continually fill your sales funnel.

3) Give to Give: don’t give to get. Give to give. The Law of Attraction is powerful. Offer your services generously—dare I say, free?—and it will come back to you tenfold.

4) Build Your List: if you can develop a list of contacts that welcome your marketing messages, the hardest part of the battle is over. Once you have a captive audience, selling your products and services is surprisingly easy.

5) Leverage Different Communication Mediums: don’t rely on only one marketing channel. Relationships are built across a number of methods and people respond uniquely to different communications. At a minimum, incorporate a direct mail program, an e-mail program, events or personal appearances and personal phone calls. But explore channels beyond these like social media, sponsorships, article marketing and more. Think of it this way: one may as well be none but four or more is sure to score.

6) Outsource Everything Except Relationship Building: you can always hire people to perform the necessary activities to build and run a business. But don’t hire someone to build and run your relationships. Only you can do that best.

7) Don’t Worry About Scale: too many clients tell me that one-to-one relationship marketing takes too much time and growth is slow. My response to that: one-to-one becomes one-to-many when word spreads. Scale will come. Your network will build scale. Focus on each individual relationship and let your network do the rest.

Remember, the core of all marketing is the relationship your product, service or brand creates and nurtures with customers and prospects. All shampoo is cleansing, all motor oil is lubricating and all marketing is relationship building.