What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?

✅ In the article below, we will explain «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?» in a simple way to get the best sales results ☎️ Be sure to read this article!

What is Relationship Marketing?

We know by relationship marketing the set of marketing strategies and actions focused on establishing more lasting relationships with customers.

To establish lasting customer relationships and build customer loyalty, we must strive to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction, to the point where we can turn our customers into brand advocates and promoters.

A CRM for Marketing will help us to reach a very high level of knowledge of our customers, since the system will collect all their data and will allow us to make sales campaigns more focused on their needs and more personalized communications.

Relationship marketing and crm, sure success.

Relationship marketing and customer loyalty, increased sales.

What is relationship marketing for?

Relationship marketing is used to create a continuous and progressive relationship with the customer.

We can achieve this in two ways: making a customer become an advocate of our brand or getting the customer of one of our basic products or services to evolve to more complex alternatives (this is to combine relationship marketing and customer loyalty).

With the above, the following will be achieved:

– on the one hand, increase the company’s sales volume, generate new revenues and obtain a recurring positive turnover,

– and, on the other hand, the company will receive more constant feedback that will help it learn from its audience and continuously improve its product or service.

When the public has a good experience of purchase or service in our company, it is likely to want to spread it to other people, thus generating a multiplier effect that impacts on the acquisition of new customers.

Relationship marketing objectives

Traditionally, marketing sought to sell without taking into account customer relationships after the sale. It was believed that the sale ended when the customer had paid for the product or service.

With relationship marketing, all of the above is transformed and brought to life through three key pillars: marketing, service quality and personalized customer service.

From these pillars, we can unravel a series of relationship marketing objectives that we tell you below. Read now about relationship marketing objectives:

– Convert visitors and leads into customers:.
The beginning of relationship marketing starts from the moment a potential customer or lead comes in contact with a company for the first time.

The first impressions are those that will generate the image of the company in the mind of the potential customer, therefore, from this point should be encouraged and maintain interactions with customers and get them to go from anonymous users to loyal customers.

These first interactions between customer and company can be carried out through automated messages aimed at bringing the relationship closer and inspiring closeness and trust in users.

This is known as lead nurturing. This is the phase in which customers are not yet ready to make a purchase but are curious. For this reason, we will try to carry out interactions to gradually lead them to the purchase decision.

For these interactions, we will use different channels, such as e-mails or e-mail marketing. We share quality, useful and interesting information and content about our products or services, discounts, etc. with our leads.

To carry out these communication interactions it is very important to know the phase of the buying cycle in which the lead is in order to adapt communications to their status.

– Measure the interest of the contacts: – Measure the interest of the contacts: – Measure the interest of the contacts.
In relation to the previous section, it must be said that for relationship marketing it is very valuable to know the interest that each contact has in finalizing a purchase.

This is what we know as lead scoring, a process that consists of giving a score to each user with purchase interest. Interest is scored based on the actions taken by each user in an online store or website.

The measurement of user interest is done with the objective of segmenting contacts and thus being able to send different personalized messages depending on the stage of the purchase decision process in which they are.

– Extending the customer life cycle and strengthening customer loyalty:.
The philosophy of relationship marketing is that the sale does not end when a user confirms a purchase. Relationship marketing and customer loyalty always go hand in hand.

For relationship marketing, the relationship with the customer continues throughout its life cycle with the objective of increasing customer loyalty. Thus, these customers will become brand advocates if we manage to give them the attention they require.

Customer relationships require continuous attention from the company; regular contact must be established with them so that they do not forget that we exist:

Recommendations, interesting news or milestones of your company, promotions and personalized discounts, are some of the keys to achieve lengthen the life cycle of the customer.

What are the characteristics of relationship marketing?

In this section of the article «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?» we will indicate the characteristics of a relationship marketing strategy:

– Relationship marketing is personalized: it is very important to perform a proper segmentation of customers in order to offer them what they need at all times. Customer segmentation will be a much easier task if we have a CRM system that stores all the information.

– This type of marketing is interactive.

– Relationship marketing is also receptive, that is, talking less and listening more to our customers and potential customers.

– It is customer-oriented and focused on their tastes, preferences, needs….

– It is discriminative: we must look for those customers who give us greater margin in our business, we want that customer to buy again and not only the same product or service, but to do cross selling (buy other products) and up selling (buy products with higher margin).

Relationship marketing benefits

In this section of the article «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?» we will investigate how a relationship marketing strategy can bring important advantages for companies.

Relationship marketing benefits lists the advantages of applying this system below:

– Better customer experience:.
When there is a stable relationship with the customer, it is possible for the company to acquire greater expertise in the services and products it offers and thus improve the customer experience.

The level of knowledge about the needs, tastes and preferences of customers is also greater and this contributes to adopt measures that further help this loyalty and increase sales.

– Increased customer loyalty:.
This is achieved with a greater knowledge of the customers and, with this, a greater personalization of the products and services offered to increase the loyalty of current and future customers.

When we become a trusted brand or company that is part of a customer’s day-to-day life, they are more likely to increase their purchases, both the number of orders they place annually and their average purchase ticket spend.

– Increased referrals:
When we manage to have more loyal customers, we will be able to get these customers to speak well of our brand to third parties. A satisfied customer = an ambassador of our services, products or brand.

In this way, your customer base can grow faster due to recommendations from satisfied customers.

– Greater process optimization:.
As we have a better knowledge of our products or services thanks to the feedback from our customers, we will be able to offer improved services.

Relationship marketing and customer loyalty

In this section of the article «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?» we will investigate how getting new customers can be up to six times more expensive than keeping them.

The most precious goal of companies is to establish long-lasting and stable relationships with their customers and this is where marketing and customer loyalty play the most important role.

How to build customer loyalty? Follow the tips we offer below:

– Make our customers’ shopping experience extraordinary:.
Really good shopping experiences will stay in the retina of our customers for a long time and will influence the perception of the company, its brand, products and services.

To achieve a memorable shopping experience, there are a multitude of factors that come into play. Here are some of them:

Customer service: personalized, fast, friendly, effective attention.
The design of the ecommerce or corporate website: to facilitate smooth and unique shopping experiences.
The ease with which the consumer can find what they are looking for: a user who is not able to find the product they are looking for within our site will lead to abandonment.
Packaging: When it comes to physical products, a nice and careful packaging will make us win many points.

– Make our customer service shine:.
We should try to offer immediate or fast customer service… at least during the next 24 hours from the moment the need for assistance is indicated (it always depends on the type of product).

– Humanizing our chatbots:
Chatbots are one of the latest trends in 24/7 customer service in corporate websites and ecommerce. Thanks to artificial intelligence there are more and more requests that a company can attend to.

Given the impossibility of having a physical person attending to requests 24 hours a day, many companies resort to this type of solution. Of course, if we want users to feel well attended, we will have to take care of the dialogues to make them (almost) human.

– Get involved:.
Customers perceive the involvement of a brand in their experience through many small details: courtesy, genuine interest in their needs, willingness to help…. In a single word, listen to them.

– Be excellent:.
Excellence in service really makes the difference between us and our competition. It’s about providing good service and seeking customer satisfaction above all else.

In order to provide excellent service, it will help if our employees have all possible information about the customer or lead at hand and offer personalized and satisfactory service at the same time.

This can be easily achieved if we have a crm system where all the data of customer interactions with the company is stored. This information will be vital when it comes to knowing their tastes and needs and knowing where they are in the sales funnel at any given moment.

– Solve problems:.
If we do not want our customers to leave us and go to our competitors, we must never leave them stranded with their problems!

The goal of any company is to help and facilitate that customers are satisfied and happy, so we must offer them agile and simple solutions instead of putting obstacles.

Nowadays buzz marketing or word of mouth marketing has a key importance to get and keep customers, so let’s avoid bad rumors and opinions about our company, services and products.

Relationship marketing and crm, how do they complement each other?

As we saw in our blog article: «What is a CRM and what is it for», the CRM is basically a system or program that allows to centralize in a single database all interactions between a company and its customers and leads.

Having a CRM system running in our company will make relationship marketing much easier to manage: create a sales system, have all the information of needs and preferences of users who interact, as well as what stage they are in.

A very simple example that helps to combine relationship marketing and crm is birthday greeting emails. When a company congratulates a customer’s birthday or offers them something free or discounted, they are telling them that they know and care about them.

The CRM sales funnel needs to be designed for a longer customer lifecycle and to be personalized based on certain actions. When a user performs a specific action, we can launch a targeted sales campaign.

In short, it is a matter of creating different flows of personalized and automated impacts that take into account certain information that we can transfer from the customer’s actions with the company. Depending on their level of interest and their individual situation, communications should be different.

The marketing automation thus becomes the company’s best ally, since it allows the creation of several different itineraries to respond to different customer archetypes according to the touch point they are at.

If you want to read more about relationship marketing and crm, be sure to visit our blog article «How to sell more with CRM Marketing?».

Relationship and transactional marketing, how do they differ?

In this section of the article «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?» we will see how they differ or what relationship marketing and transactional marketing have in common.

Which strategy is best suited to your company, can they be combined? Read the following indications carefully:

On the one hand, transactional marketing strategies have the objective of acquiring new customers and thus increasing sales of your products.

On the other hand, relationship marketing strategies have the philosophy of maintaining a relationship with customers, in order to build customer loyalty and keep them to repeat purchases on the website. As we have seen above, relationship marketing and crm are good allies.

It is not that there is a method between relationship and transactional marketing that is better than the other, but to choose the type of strategy that best suits the company, service or product you want to sell.

The choice between relationship and transactional marketing will also depend on the trajectory of the company, its longevity, the growth expectations (short or long term) that it has as factors to choose between one system, another or the combination of the two.

Relationship marketing examples

Some classic examples of relationship marketing that we can highlight, we can see below -> relationship marketing examples:

– Monitoring of mentions in Social Networks:.

It gives the option to know opinions, solve incidents, solve queries.

This can be both positive and negative: actions well planned by the company can raise it to a new level in relation to its customers, but poorly planned can damage the relationship marketing and the image of the company in front of customers and leads.

– Email Marketing:

It is one of the most powerful relationship marketing tools to create a close relationship with the customer. Some of the actions that can be performed with email marketing are:

Post-sale mailings: programming an email a few days after the purchase, offering the customer technical support, asking their opinion, doubts, as in the examples below:

– Offer relevant content of value to the customer, such as downloading a free guide, content from the company’s blog, etc.

– Send brand-building campaigns to the customer.

– Offer users new services or products, stimulating cross-selling and up-selling.

– Congratulate our customer on important dates, such as Christmas, his birthday, etc.

– Offer the user purchase discounts, special promotions, bonuses, gifts, etc.

– Surveys:– Surveys:

They give us the opportunity to improve, as well as indicate to our customers that we care about their opinion.

– Customer service:

Having a specialized team to offer a quality and personalized service for each client.

– Loyalty programs:

Satisfied customers can become loyal customers who repeat and do not go to the competition. Thanks to relationship marketing loyalty programs and customer loyalty we will get recurring customers who consider us the only possible supplier.

As we can see, relationship marketing is once again gaining prominence due to the emergence of Inbound Marketing.

Both methodologies are not a short-term strategy, they are processes that must be executed permanently and that can greatly improve the ROI of our marketing actions.

Is it worth investing in Relationship Marketing?

Of course it is. Relationship marketing makes the difference in such a competitive market as the one we are living in recent years, since, in addition to offering a product or service, it offers a relationship with the user.

Do not think that relationship marketing and customer loyalty are simple tasks. In addition to personalized customer service, marketing requires creativity and investment to offer a differential that will transform a customer into a fan.

Therefore, the key for a company should be: know your consumer. Only in this way will we achieve personalized attention and go beyond.

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So far everything you need to know about today’s topic «What is relationship marketing and how to implement it in your company?».

As we have seen throughout the article, relationship marketing and crm make a great team when it comes to customer loyalty.

If you want to make a good combination between relationship marketing and customer loyalty, you can read more about how to achieve it in our article from a few weeks ago -> «What is a CRM and what is it for».

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