Relationship marketing is a component of the long-term customer relationship management life cycle that concentrates on customer loyalty and engagement over sales and temporary customer acquisitions. Relationship-based marketing, which is sometimes referred to as customer relationship marketing, is designed to create enduring and emotional connections to brands.
Emotive Marketing
According to Forbes magazine, the essence of relationship-based marketing is positive emotions. That is, the success of relationship marketers is gauged by their ability to establish emotional connections with consumers. Some feel that branded merchandise is the best marketing tool because it creates intimate and interpersonal relationships with consumers. Companies that align themselves with lifestyles and positive emotions will experience increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
While some companies create marketing campaigns based on budget limitations and casual research, the most successful companies will target their message’s content at specific demographics. This is because consumers consciously decided what to wear, use, consume and display to others based on how they personally feel about the brand. Properly presented and marketed merchandise will cultivate a positive image and promote positive behaviors, such as brand promotion and exclusion of competitor brands.
How to Implement this Unique Strategy?
Relationship-based marketing strives to enhance and optimize customer experience management programs. These focus on improving the quality of customer interactions in order to foster better brand recognition and loyalty. Although most customer-business interactions occur in person and over the phone, the majority of commercial activities and relationship building occurs through the Internet. Popular websites and social media platforms provide consumers with accurate and realistic details about brands, so companies must create smooth and successful online experiences.
Related: 5 Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Online customer engagement and relationship management is easy through the powers of data mining, web analytics and big data research. Companies can easily track and trend customer activities in order to provide individualized information that enhances consumer experiences and opinions about brands. Most businesses track customer’s activities by encouraging them to create user profiles, which results in the website automatically pushing more customized information to them on repeat visits. Because online relationship management is so critical, most companies use CRM and marketing automation software to support their marketing strategies.
What are the Pros and Cons?
Relationship-based marketing is usually reserved for established demographics, so companies can concentrate their promotional efforts on customers who have already loyal. This will yield significant profits because loyal customers are much more likely to pursue promoted up-sells or to try new products or services. Because companies already know who the target demographic groups are, they will save money by not wasting advertising resources on uninterested individuals.
There are notable drawbacks to relationship-based marketing. First, it focuses so much on loyal or pre-existing or customers that there will be missed opportunities to reach new customers. Small and highly focused marketing efforts will only make money if the target customer base consistently responds. Second, some companies may over-advertise and overwhelm existing clients with text messages, email newsletters and direct mail flyers, which may annoy and turn away certain clients.
Customer relationship marketing is the art of establishing a solid customer base, consistently appealing to the same group and directly communicating with customers.
