Relationship Marketing – Strategies for the Age of the Customer - ReachForce Book Club
This chapter had some really good stuff in it.
“Marketing Is Everyone’s Job” I couldn’t agree more. “Marketing is about creating and sustaining relationships with customers and those in the industry’s infrastructure. That means everyone, from salespeople to engineers and production workers, must see themselves as marketers.” As marketers we are expected to define our position in the market as well as our image but we rely on everyone else in our company to uphold it and continue to reinforce it. Here at ReachForce, we run many different lead generation programs to warm up prospects and help move them into the sales funnel, then our sales team takes over and continues to ‘market’ our value. Once we win a new customer, we are dependent on our customer success teams to deliver not only high quality data but also help our customers with best practices. Each group that touches the prospect/customer has a different role within the company but still continues is market to them along the way. It’s important and we believe it’s what makes our customers continue to come back for more.
As I continued on reading I got to the section about Using Word of Mouth as a marketing strategy. “Word-of-mouth testimonials are more believable than any advertising or marketing ploy you can dream up.” This seems so simple, why aren’t more people leveraging it? Here at ReachForce, I spend little to no time on branding. I always say, our branding strategy is to win more customers, continue to make the ones we have happy and hope they will help us spread the word and build the ReachForce brand. But am I being too passive about this, just waiting for it to happen all by itself? In this chapter, author, Regis McKenna, listed a few ideas of places to start a word-of-mouth marketing initiative. I’ve included them below –
- Customers – we’ve got to stay in touch with them and keep them involved so they will help continue to spread our message
- The selling chain – “Training and educating people who meet with customers pays handsomely.”
- Industry watchers – i.e.analysts, consultants – “these people gain their information by word of mouth – they visit plants, attend analysts’ meetings, and talk to people in anyway connected with the industry”
- The press – “More than 90% of major news stories in the business and technical press come from conversations with insiders. Journalists rarely write stories based on press releases, so it’s up to you to engage them directly.”
There’s lots of other great points/messages in this chapter. Anything jump out at you? Please do share.
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May 24th, 2008 at 7:27 am
What Would Skooby Do?
Over twenty years ago, a guy nick-named “Skooby” (whom I consider one of my most valued mentors) - taught me a very simple, powerful thing about my job. It was that ‘marketing’ works best when its practioners view the word itself as a verb and not a noun. I thought of this immediately when I read AH’s thoughts on “Marketing is Everyone’s Job.”
In the SMB sector, defining marketing’s parameters has always been a challenge. Among the best descriptions I’ve run across is that marketing is “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.” In other words, it’s everything a company does to successfully sell – and encompasses [as a verb] a whole lot more that what typical marketing departments [as a noun] are structured for these days.
Everyone knows that keeping current clients happy and engaged is by far the best way to grow and protect the bottom line, especially in uncertain economic times. That is why many companies I’ve talked to have been breaking out their playbooks and turning to the ‘Customer Retention’ page as plans are formed about how best to finish the 3rd and 4th Quarters this year. Hence, Relationship Marketing will likely ascend for a time as this year’s buzzword king-of-the-hill.
Customer Retention is the result of a tactical mixture of activities aimed at finding out what matters most to customers, why, and whether or not a product or service meets or exceeds those expectations. And like any good relationship, the key is finding compelling ways to engage and communicate with customers in ways that really work – which, In a nutshell, is Relationship Marketing.
Like any good marketing plan, Relationship Marketing needs to have the right elements in the mix. There are quite a few versions used for breaking these out, but the one I learned from a fellow name Todd Stine – and like the best – is yet another awkward acronym.
U Understand (things your company does to really know what customers want and need)
E Execute (things your company does to live up to customer expectations)
A Add Value (things your company does to exceed customer expectations)
C Communicate (things your company does to measure and quantify results driven performance)
Drilling down and tailoring specific activities encompassed by UEAC is a function of the entire company. And a truly effective Relationship Marketing plan needs to pull resources from all corners of the company together and put them on the same page with a clear, integrated schedule of objectives and rewards as the blueprint for making them happen.