Marketing Strategies – Building Customer Relationships

I was reading one of my favourite blogs – http://donna-mariecoggins.com/blog/ and her recent post about customer relationships was fantastic at this point in time so I wanted to share it with you. Her full post is at the bottom.

Your customers are your lifeblood. Without them, you don’t make any money. So why don’t people treat them well?? One of the questions I always ask my new clients is “what makes you different from your competitors?” Picture this, say you sell widgets in the local main street. What happens if a new store across the road opens up and sells the same widgets? Do you drop your price and market that? What happens when you start losing your profit margin?  You go broke. Your business is outa there! So what would make people still buy from you, even if your widgets were a little more expensive?

You.

Your customer service. How you treat people will make them stay and pay whatever they need to. Relate this back to some of your own customer service experiences. I know I pay extra for plenty of things, just because of the service I receive. Share some of your experiences here.

Cheers,

Emma
Diva Promotions

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Donna-Maries Post.

When it comes to building strong customer relations it’s often the little things that count.

This week I’ve received two pieces of mail that left me a little disappointed. The first was a magazine I had requested as I was considering advertising in it and I also thought that the members of my local business group might be interested. I sent the magazine publisher an email requesting a copy and stating my interest (this very small, very new publication is available by subscription only but they do offer a free copy to prospective advertisers).

Although I didn’t receive a reply to my email, the magazine arrived about two weeks later… with no cover letter, with compliments slip or anything. Just the lonely magazine.

Now this would have been the perfect opportunity for the publisher to make some effort to build a relationship and encourage my support of their magazine. Firstly, a quick reply to my email along the lines of, “Thanks for requesting a sample copy of xyz magazine. I’ll pop one in the mail for you today.”

This could have been followed up with a brief note or even just a with compliments slip in the envelope.

But… there has been no personal interaction from this publisher at all and I’m not sure if they even want my business. They’re certainly not trying to win my confidence in them.

The second piece of mail was a booking form for a series of workshops. Again, the sender went to the trouble to hand-address an envelope to me and pay for postage, but there was no cover letter – not even a generic letter photocopied for all recipients. And there was nothing to say how they knew me. In fact, how did they even know I might be interested? (Truth be told, I wasn’t. It’s not something even remotely related to my interests).

Apart from the 1,001 Direct Marketing mistakes we can get side-tracked by here, if the sender had spent two minutes introducing themselves it would have made the world of difference. I may have even passed it on to someone who may have been interested… instead of putting it straight into the recycling bin.

So, if you want a successful small business, remember to pay attention to the little things and the personal touches that go a long way in building strong customer relationships.