Relationship Marketing — OR, The One Simple Paradigm Shift that Will Change Your Marketing Forever
Okay, folks, listen up.
If there’s one single shift you can make in the way you think about marketing to revolutionize your revenue, it’s this.
Marketing is the simple act of buying customers.
The faster you let that message really sink in, the better off you’ll be.
Whenever you run a print ad…give your sales team a commission…send a direct mailing…you are really just exchanging your dollars for their dollars.
And if you do it right, your one-time cost to get them through your door will mean repeat purchases over and over and over again.
I mean, did you know it’s more than 10 times easier–and cheaper–to get someone to buy from you twice once they’ve bought from you once?
That a mere 5% improvement in retention can mean an increase in profitability anywhere from 25%-85%?
And yet how many of you are religious about capturing the names and contact information of your customers? How many of you market consistently to them? How many of you seek out opportunities to sell them something more?
How many of you are buying the same customers over and over again at retail prices by running expensive external advertising while NEGLECTING your most precious asset: your customer list?
Okay, so I’m fired up. You feelin’ it too? Hopefully it’s getting you fired up…fired up enough to TAKE ACTION…NOW. Today. To make massive amounts of money as cheaply as possible.
By lovin’ on your customers.
Don’t believe me? Sales expert Diane Helbig has a killer post today over at her blog about how small businesses are perfectly poised to react to their customers wants and desires better than the big boys–and how that equals stronger relationships and more money (even during the recession) for those who do it right.
Truth is, this “down” market is a big opportunity for small businesses. While your big competitors are floundering to figure out what to do, you can swoop in and romance their customers…and then keep selling to them so they’ll stick with you over the long haul.
To your success!
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Comments
Katie,
Thanks for continuing the conversation! I feel like an evangelist for small business right now. People are probably getting sick of me saying that NOW is the time for small business.
Diane, thanks for stopping by! I really loved your blog post yesterday and agree with you wholeheartedly that small businesses are really our lifeline in this economy. The truth is, we’re much more adaptable and have the capacity, anyway, to form much more meaningful relationships with our customers. In any event, I, for one, am not sick of you evangelizing the cause!
Katie,
You and Diane are right on. Let me add this little formula to help people make the shift to emphasizing their existing list as the people they should be marketing too…
1. Allocate up to 50% of your marketing budget to marketing to your existing list.
2. Allocate up to 25% of your marketing budget to marketing to the existing list of joint venture partners.
3. Allocate no more than 35% of your marketing budget to the expensive, traditional, mass media “retail” ways to bring in business.
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