Building Customer Relationships

Blogging, email, and social media are not just used to toot our own horn or spam out salesy info. Online marketing channels are best used for building customer relationships, and this is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process.

How To Create and Grow Customer Relationships Online

1. Know Who Your Customers Are: Before you can start building customer relationships, you have to know who you’re talking to. To provide value to your customers, you have to first know what they see as valuable. Previously, we talked about creating a buyer persona (link to post) in order to truly understand the likes and dislikes of your potential buyers.

2. Collect Email Addresses: Regardless of your industry, you should be collecting email addresses. Last year, MarketingSherpa took a survey about email marketing and found that 91% of adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with*. The preferred frequency varied, but this shows the importance of having an email list. (Quick Tip: Offer incentives like coupons or a free e-book to increase your signup rate.)

3. Undersell, Overdeliver: Once you have email addresses, you have an opportunity to connect directly with your customers. Don’t take advantage of the situation or take it for granted. When people sign up for your email list, it’s because they have an interest in your business and want to receive further communication from you. That doesn’t mean that you instantly start trying to sell to them though.

People want to be surprised and blown away. Surprise them with a free sample, big coupon, or content only your email subscribers get. Deliver top quality content from your blog over and over again and establish yourself as the ultimate authority in your industry. You have to earn the right to sell to them.

Don’t ignore other means of communication either. Social media, blog comments, and direct emails offer daily opportunities to amaze new and returning customers.

4. Repeat: You should always aim to create new relationships, but also still build on the relationships you already have. Lifelong customers don’t get created from simply liking someone’s tweet or responding to a comment on your blog. Building customer relationships online takes time and work. It is not a one-time event. If you want your customers to keep buying from you, you have to earn their trust. You have to prove that not only do you have the best product, but that you will consistently deliver the best customer service out there.

Regardless of what type of business you run, building customer relationships is absolutely essential to your success.

Need help with what kind of content you should be creating for your followers? Give us a call at 616.929.0790 or send us an email.