Relationship Marketing
May 2009
It’s called friendship when it’s person-to-person. It’s called networking when it’s practiced among colleagues or business acquaintances. When companies stay in touch, get to know and ‘socialize’ with customers, suppliers and partners, it might be called customer service or supplier relationship management. Or you could just call it smart, economical marketing.
All marketing budgets are tight right now so marketing departments have to look for new and different ways to keep visibility high while keeping costs low. Many, however, don’t realize that their current installed base, partners in their supply chains, and other business contacts could be fertile soil for planting their visibility message and sowing seeds for future sales. It’s well known that it is a lot less costly to keep existing customers than to go out and find new ones. But those existing customers and other existing business contacts are also your best friends when it comes to promoting your products and services.
Nothing speaks louder than a recommendation from a trusted associate or colleague. It is the most credible and effective promotion money can buy – except money can’t buy it. All it takes is a happy customer and sometimes a gentle reminder that you are the one that helped them achieve their success.
You may have noticed that you are probably receiving more of these electronic newsletters these days. A newsletter like this is very inexpensive, and, if it offers some value to the reader, is not considered ‘spam’. Many of your business contacts will actually look forward to receiving it, if it is done well and is truly of value. And, best of all, some of them might forward it on to colleagues that might eventually become new customers for you.
Electronic newsletters are just one of the ‘new’ marketing tools that smart companies are exploiting to help stretch marketing dollars and reach new prospects. By the way, has anyone yet figured out a way to use Twitter or FaceBook for lead generation? If you some ideas you’d like to share, let me know and I’ll pass them along in the next newsletter.
Meanwhile, Production Solutions stands ready to help you reach out to your network – we can compose the newsletter copy for you or write customer stories to link to from your newsletter. Contact us for more information.