Few would discount the value of relationship building as it relates to marketing. After all, when you establish a relationship with consumers — find out what’s troubling them and how you can solve it — they’ll be there for the long haul. Come at them from out of nowhere and even if you get a sale, they’ll always think of you like a car salesman (ie., someone they’re only likely to need once or twice in this life).
If you’re looking to build lifetime relationships with your customers and enjoy the profits that come along with such a relationship, keep reading:
1. Identify your offer.
Listen to Godin’s advice:
“Consumers will grant a company permission to communicate only if they know what’s in it for them. A company has to reward consumers, explicitly or implicitly, for paying attention to its messages.”
Working the “what’s in it for me” into your offer is the toughest part of any marketing campaign. That’s because you have to add some unique value to their life in the form of something they can’t find elsewhere. This isn’t a good arena for copycats to play in, unless you can offer the same thing as the next guy for much less money.
2. Start sourcing your list (if you don’t already have one).
If you’re an established brand of any kind, you should already have a huge pool of potential customers to draw from. If not, you need to start gathering customer information from your various data-collecting channels (eg., online contact forms, information requests via email and phone, industry directories and social media). I can’t in good conscience recommend buying lists. That kind of takes the “permission” aspect out of permission marketing before you’ve even had a chance to make first contact. It can take years to build a solid profitable list, but you only need a few to get the ball rolling.
3. Plan to teach, plan to grab and hold their attention (start formulating your pitch).
Godin tells us:
“The point of permission marketing is not just to entertain people (although it does need to be entertaining) but also to teach them about your products.”
He really is the master of teaching if you’ve ever read any blog post the man’s written or listened to him speak at any of the hundreds of talks he’s given. Definitely work storytelling into your communications with consumers, but make sure they’re always learning something in the process. Always make yourself or someone from your company available for communication and let customers know they can ask any questions they want and expect a prompt response — this is key to trust building. It puts a face to the name.
See: 5 Secrets to Use Storytelling for Brand Marketing Success on Forbes
4. Test it.
You’re going to be building a two-way relationship with customers. One where you can contact them and they can feel totally comfortable contacting you without the threat of having the ABC’s thrown at them all the time. Start out small testing your initial communications with customers by planning to spend a lot of time interacting with them. Obviously you can’t spend hours of your life on this as your brand starts to grow. However, spending a lot of time doing this in the testing phase will help you get inside the mind of your idea customer-base and formulate the best overall approach to use in the future.
5. Scale it.
Once you’ve learned what drives your ideal demographic, it’s time to go all in. Make sure all your marketing channels are keyed-in on making the customer come to you (ie., driving leads). Start hitting those triggers and making it clear that you’re the brand customers can trust to ease whatever ails them.
See: 15 Psychological Triggers That Turn Leads Into Customers on Kissmetrics
6. Always remind them how it all started.
Start out reconnecting with the customer in the first paragraph of every correspondence you send them. Something as simple as “Back when we first spoke, you told me you’d do anything to be able to make $100,000 by the end of next year…” Though that sounds like something you’d see from a sleezy MMO pitch, it would still be effective if that’s the business you’re in and the customer told you that’s what they wanted most out of life. Reminding them gives them a reason to read on (or keep watching/listening if you’re doing video/podcast stuff). Once they’re reminded of where the two of you started out, they’ll be more receptive and less of the mindset that you’re just in it for the profits.
Need More Info?
Buy Permission Marketing by Seth Godin. I won’t link to it because I’m not trying to sell his book with this post. You can find it for sale on SethGodin.com, Amazon or any number of other book-selling websites. It’s well worth the read if you’re looking to build a list of long term customers instead of one-off sales.
In this day and age, brands NEED to be in it for the long haul. Go for the quick buck and the consumer will inevitably be scooped up by a smarter marketer who understands the value of getting their permission first!
“Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers.” — Seth Godin
Main Image Credit: Will Lion/Flickr
