When a business is just starting out, relationship marketing can seem intimidating. Here are our suggestions on how to incorporate relationship marketing in the early days of your business:

Utilizing Relationship Marketing strategies as a new Business:

• Research competitors to see who they are targeting and how. From this intel, determine your target audience.
• Think like your ideal customer. Ask yourself:
  • What type of content do they want to see?
  • What type of marketing campaigns do they typically engage with?
  • What are their pain points that we can solve?
  • What are their pain points with their current provider of the product/service?
• Learn from your ideal customer. Ask current and prospective customers questions to begin the relationship and help to rationalize your marketing plan moving forward.
• Engage with customers and prospects on social media. This is a more casual introduction, and everyone loves a shout-out!
• Develop a database to use in email marketing and cold calling. Maintain the relationship throughout time by continuously reaching out to this database. Initially promote brand awareness, later focus on what’s specifically important to each customer.
• Start with brand awareness and then get more specific using data. Start with more generic brand awareness to get the message out there and acquire clients; once you have some data begin sending more targeted messages to your customer segments and follow up with a sales call.
• Request reviews on Google and Yelp to continuously get feedback and foster the two-way street relationship.

Biggest Mistakes to Avoid in Relationship Marketing Strategies:

• Neglecting the emotional aspects of the relationship.
• Ignoring customers—especially in product/service reviews.
• Communicating in only promotional language
• Utilizing one-size-fits-all messages, rather than segmenting your audience.
• Forgetting about existing customers once the sale is done.

See relationship marketing in action through some of the top players:

• Domino’s does an exceptional job at utilizing social media to build relationships with customers and communities. They have built up a loyal following through various brand initiatives. Carry Out Insurance is a great example of fostering the relationship post-purchase. Paving for Pizza is a great example of building relationships with entire communities.
• HubSpot is a great example of a B2B company that does relationship marketing right. HubSpot’s target customers are mostly looking for the best all-around product/service for their business to use. HubSpot builds relationships with businesses and business owners by providing: free CRM software (with many optional features that can be purchased to make the software optimized for your business), a great interface, a Marketing Hub, a Sales Hub, beneficial tools for sales teams, HubSpot for Startups, templates, convenient and accessible customer service, and HubSpot Academy which offers all sorts of resources for businesses.