Do you know that most online business owners don't know anything about relationship marketing? It's a strategy designed to foster customer loyalty interaction and long-term engagement. And it's designed to develop strong connections with customers by providing them with information directly suited to their needs and interests. Relationship marketing is obviously about building relationships, but I think a lot of people online forget that there is a relationship to build.
If you are interested in getting clients, you want to provide them with value. You do that through your posts and your live videos. And when you mention your product or service, you want to talk about the benefits. You don't want to talk about the features. It's about the benefits and how they can be transformative for a customer.
But what's truly number one with relationship marketing is building real relationships, and that means connecting with people. It's not inboxing them and sending your link and saying "buy from me!" If you're on the street and you walk up to someone and say "go to this website, and buy my product or service," they're going to look at you like you're insane because it kind of sounds crazy, right? So you don't want to be doing that. You want to inbox people, but talk to them like they're a person. If you go to a networking event, you're not going to run up to somebody and tell them to visit your website. That completely dismisses the networking part. You get in people's inboxes, and you build relationships. You can use the acronym FORM. Family. Occupation. Recreation. Motivation. You're asking about them as a person, as a human being. That's how you build a real relationship.
And then you want to focus on ongoing sales instead of one-off sales. And again, the way you do that is you build a relationship. If you just sell something to somebody once, but they don't know who you are or anything about you, then how are they going to come back? They have no relationship with you. That's like if you go and you to a Mercedes dealership, and the salesman sells you a car. Unless he spent time really getting to know you, you'll probably forget all about him when you go to buy another Mercedes in the future. That was a one-off sale. So you need to foster relationships.
When you build relationships, you're going to have a word of mouth business. It's going to be less effort on your part. They're going to hear about you from other people, because you did such a great job fostering relationships, and there's tremendous value in that. Now they want to come to you because they believe "oh, if this person's using them, they must be good."
There's more power in that than all the advertising you could do in the world. If someone refers you to a professional, whether you're moving to a new area, looking for a service, or a new manicurist, there's more value when it's coming from somebody that you know. You'll feel confident knowing they went to them and had a great experience. You'll assume if you go to them, you'll probably have a similar experience too. Relationship marketing is about providing this great experience to foster repeat sales so customers won't be shopping around. If they like you, they're not going to start searching all over the place again, looking for alternate solutions. Think about anybody you go to on a regular basis, for instance, your hairstylist. You're going to keep going back to her if you've developed a real relationship with her and you like her. You're not going to shop around.
It's easier to keep a customer than to get new customers. In direct marketing, there are retention campaigns, and then there are lead acquisition campaigns. Retention is when you're retaining the customers you already have. It's much easier than lead acquisition where you're trying to get new customers. Why not get repeat customers you have relationships with, and then they're going to keep coming back to you, and you're going to get repeat sales? And you're actually doing less work in the long run? And guess what? It's fun to get to know people because it forms more intimacy, just like in a friendship. You're not friends with people you know nothing about. And this is also a way to network for other possible opportunities down the road.
Then, expansion becomes easier. These customers are more likely to purchase other products or services from you as well including upsells or upgrades because they're in it for the long term. And so you're going to have this customer for life if you fostered the right relationship.
This is why just inboxing links is a big no-no. Nothing makes you stand out when you drop your link in someone's email. What's to prevent anyone else from doing that with a similar product or service? So it doesn't mean that I'm going to buy with you. I don't know anything about you. How do I even know I can trust you? How many scam artists are in our world? You just dropped me a link. You didn't even ask me how I was. You don't know anything about me, and you're trying to sell me something. So why would I want to go with you? I want to go with somebody who took time to get to know me. So make an effort to know a little bit about them because it fosters trust when they're starting to get to know you. And they're going to feel they know, like, and trust you. It's like any other relationship in the world. You don't get people to trust you in five seconds. You don't meet someone on the street and become lifelong best friends moments later. You have to get to know people. So make fostering relationships a real priority in your business. That's why people are also on LinkedIn. They're, they're making connections. They're going to networking events. But I think that particularly in online business, people forget to make that a priority.
Initially, the sales don't matter too much. They will come down the line if you're connecting with the right people. You don't need to do this high pressure way. First of all, no one's going to respond to that. Secondly, it's going to make you look bad. And third, you're going to have ruined your chances of even ever getting to know that person. Because I don't know about you when this happens to me, I block these people because I just feel it's so incredibly rude. You're not even saying hello to me, and you're trying to sell me something so you don't care about me. You only care about your sales.
Some people online work from desperation. They take, take, take. You need to give, and that's why I always talk about attraction marketing. Giving value, instead of taking. The more that you give, the more you'll receive. There's an ebb and flow in life. And so you want to give as much as possible. You don't have to worry when it will come back to you because it certainly will circle back to you in due time.
Have you established real relationships in your business?
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