Relationship Marketing: How to Increase Qualified Leads by Using the Purchase-Readiness Survey

July 25, 2008 by Christian · Leave a Comment

The Internet marketplace is growing increasingly competitive and difficult to navigate. The response rates from customer inquiries are trending downward and the process of driving new leads is becoming more expensive. Therefore, it is critical to incorporate a relationship marketing strategy into your businesses marketing plan to help maximize the power of each and every client lead with which you are presented. Simply put, not taking advantage of customer prospects that you have so diligently laid the groundwork to pursue is tantamount to handing these clients to your competition.

The process of ensuring that your client leads remain engaged and interested in ultimately pursuing a relationship with you is one of the central principles of relationship marketing. There are a few fundamental tactics to use in this early stage of building client relationships, which is also sometimes referred to as the nurture phase. These tactics are a good guide to help you increase the number of actual customers you obtain from your prospecting activities.

Purchase-Readiness Survey

If you do not have or are not already using a purchase-readiness survey, it is time to incorporate this survey into your relationship marketing strategy. The purchase-readiness survey should be incorporated into all of your lead and prospect generating mechanisms. A purchase-readiness survey allows you to gather critical contact information, as well as a customer’s readiness to make a purchase. Some standard questions to consider incorporating into your survey are:

•    Timeframe for considering a purchase
•    The customer’s role in the decision making process
•    Key qualifying questions

Finding the Right Balance of Questions

You will need to balance and be aware of a prospect’s tolerance for and willingness to share information, with your need to gather information. Nobody likes to feel invaded or pushed, so it is important to be clued into the mood of your prospect. The more information you request from a client prospect, the more time it requires of your prospect, which they may be unwilling to give. It may be that the more eager you appear to gain a prospect and make a sale, the more you will alienate this prospect. You do not want to appear desperate to land a prospect (even if you are) –most humans can smell the essence of desperation– and nothing makes a person retreat faster.

Try to take cues from your potential clients: if they seem willing to talk and divulge information, it is okay to proceed with your questions and your purchase-readiness survey. But if you sense reluctance in your prospect, it is always better to scale back and give them space, and perhaps come back and approach this prospect at a different time when they may be more amenable to hearing what you have to say. You may have better luck at forging a lasting relationship at a different time. Nobody likes to feel intruded upon or pressured. Adopting a persistent but more laissez-faire attitude in your relationship marketing plan, you are likely to be more successful and have satisfied clients who are loyal to your company.

Filed Under: Relationship Marketing
Tagged: entrepreneurship, joint venture marketing, making money, strategic alliances

First Steps to Forming a Strategic Alliance: Identifying Your Target Market

July 18, 2008 by Christian · Comments Off

If you have an Internet business, particularly a small one, forging partnerships with companies in related markets is an important marketing strategy to raise awareness for your business and to expand your own client base.

This may sounds like a fantastic idea, but how do you go about building these partnerships? It seems so daunting . . . if you’re just a small niche market business, how can you help anyone else and why would they want to partner with you?

These are valid questions and concerns, but forging a strategic alliance isn’t as difficult as it may initially appear to be. The Internet is full of small, niche market businesses, so while daunting, it is not a far fetched idea to think that a company of a similar size to yours would welcome an alliance with you, and that you would be able to help one another.

Getting Started

The first step towards embarking upon a strategic marketing alliance is to select a company who is not a direct competitor of yours, that wouldn’t serve either one of you very well, but to choose a company whose interests run similar to your own, without being a direct competitor.

The first step to figuring out what these businesses might be is to assess your own target market. You must know whom your business appeals to before you can embark on deciding who might be interested in a similar client base.

You first must ask yourself a few simple questions:

What is the average age of your clients?
What are their occupations?
What is their income range?
What other interests do they have?
What are some other products or services that are compatible with mine?

If you don’t have immediate answers to these questions, it is time to create a market survey to address these questions, or to simply inventory your client roster and compile some basic data. The occupation and income range may not be relevant information to your business, if you deal in luxury goods, it will of course matter, but if you deal in refrigerators or stoves, or something that everyone at some point needs to purchase, income is a less telling metric. Questions 1, 4 and 5 may be the most helpful in targeting potential partners for smaller Internet businesses.

The Next Step

Once you have identified your target market, and a product or service that may be a good accompaniment to yours, what do you do next?

Let’s say for instance, that your company rents designer wedding gowns. The occupation and income, as stated above, are less important considerations than questions 1 and 5. It naturally follows that someone in need of a wedding dress may also be in need of a caterer, photographer or wedding planner. In this instance, question number 5 is the most important consideration, but the age of your clients may also be important. Will a young couple prefer a young photographer? Will an older couple prefer an older more established photographer? Perhaps.

In this case, your next step will be to contact some photographers, caterers and wedding planers to propose a referral agreement, or even to exchange mailing lists and client lists. It is also important to seek alliances with a variety of companies in terms of age, and establishment: some clients will distinctly want an experienced photographer, while some will be willing to take a chance on a newer professional.

Forming a strategic alliance can be an integral part to the marketing and ultimate success of your business. The first step is to know your client base, so you can target and appropriate partner. Don’t be intimidated by approaching companies with which to forge an alliance, ideally this is a partnership – something from which both parties will benefit equally.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tagged: entrepreneurship, joint venture marketing, making money, strategic alliances

Key Points to a Collaboration Marketing Strategy and How It Will Benefit Your Business

July 11, 2008 by Christian · Leave a Comment

While a collaboration marketing strategy may not be ideal for every business, there are several benefits to consider. It is a mechanism with which to build strong relationships with both customers and business.

Relationships have always been a cornerstone of effective marketing, and collaboration marketing is a way to foster trust and build strong alliances. The following are a few ways in which a collaboration marketing strategy will benefit your business.

Take Advantage of Size Economics

Often, though not always, you can enjoy significant cost savings by collaborating with other businesses, which require the same supplies that you do. In this way, you may be able to command a higher market price for your product.

Maintain a Steady Flow of Product

Having your product readily available at the time your customer wants to buy it is essential for a successful business. Even the most popular products will quickly lose their market share if they’re not available when the customer wants them. By collaborating with others in your industry, you can be certain to always service your customers in a timely manner. The collaboration ultimately benefits all parties involved.

Preserve an Existing Market

As the structure of business changes, there is much concern about the disappearance of local markets in favor of global markets and outsourcing to other countries. A collaboration of small businesses in local markets can protect these smaller markets and help sustain the existence of small independent businesses.

Create a New Market

There are two sides to every market: suppliers who offer a product to sell and customers who are looking for the product to buy. Sometimes, potentially viable markets fail to develop if a minimum volume cannot be reached. If several small businesses are struggling to sustain enough customers, collaborating with other business owners may create a way to develop a niche market for your products, allowing you and your contemporaries to stay afloat in a situation where that may otherwise have been difficult.

Gain Access to Knowledge and Professional Expertise

Access to business owners who have knowledge in areas in which you may not be an expert is one of the most important and beneficial aspects to collaboration marketing. Everyone has different skill sets and areas of expertise. By collaborating with businesses and professionals who have strengths and capabilities in areas where you are weaker, and vice versa, will ultimately benefit and create stronger and more thriving individual businesses.

The collaboration marketing strategy is a potentially vast tool to help you expand and sustain a strong business. There are many applications of collaboration marketing to consider, and if initially you don’t feel it will be a good fit for your business, a closer look at the benefits of such a model may quickly convince you otherwise.

Filed Under: Collaboration Marketing
Tagged: entrepreneurship, joint venture marketing, making money, strategic alliances

Giving the Unexpected to Your Customers

July 7, 2008 by Christian · Comments Off

In a relationship marketing platform, creating lasting relationships with customers is integral to a successful marketing plan. Creating strong affiliations and contacts through superior customer service is the first step towards a successful relationship marketing platform, but it is also important to develop ways to give the customer more than other companies are providing and more than the customer expects.

What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere?

If you are operating in somewhat of a niche market, chances are you are already offering something that it is difficult for customers to find elsewhere. But, in a competitive marketplace, what can you do to distinguish your business by giving your customers something that they don’t typically get from other companies?

A few common ideas that are not universally implemented are free samples and discount coupons with each order. Another good idea that is only implemented in a handful of places is birthday recognition, either just via an email or a card, or by offering special discounts or free samples to customer during their birthday month. People love to get something for free and a high percentage of people who are given a coupon for a free item never actually redeem it, but the feeling of goodwill and loyalty is planted.

What can you give customers that is totally unexpected?

This is in somewhat of the same vein as the above suggestions, but with a slightly different slant. Doing something for your customers that is really unexpected and out of the ordinary will distinguish you to your clients, and may lead to word of mouth referrals.

How about a follow up email after an order to be sure that the customer is happy with their products? Instead of a free birthday coupon that the customer can redeem, how about just sending a small sample with a birthday greeting? What about automatic re-order email reminders? Email reminders are popular for products like contact lenses, but how about for coffee or skin care supplies?

Thanking potential customers who don’t make a purchase

What can you do to implement a platform to thank customers who don’t end up buying from your site? This may sound a bit odd, but if you have reached out to a new client, yet they don’t make a purchase, it is still a good idea to than this person for their time and consideration. This is not a widespread practice, we typically only thank people who make a purchase. The idea here is that just because this person did not make a purchase at this juncture does not mean that they never will. If they are thanked in an elegant way, even though they have not made a purchase, this will distinguish your company to them, and cause them to think of your for possible future purposes.

All of these strategies are suggestions of ways to help you strengthen the relationship marketing platform for your business.

Filed Under: Relationship Marketing
Tagged: entrepreneurship, joint venture marketing, making money, strategic alliances

Relationship Marketing: How to Increase Qualified Leads by Using the Purchase-Readiness Survey

First Steps to Forming a Strategic Alliance: Identifying Your Target Market

Key Points to a Collaboration Marketing Strategy and How It Will Benefit Your Business

Giving the Unexpected to Your Customers

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Relationship Marketing: How to Increase Qualified Leads by Using the Purchase-Readiness Survey

First Steps to Forming a Strategic Alliance: Identifying Your Target Market

Key Points to a Collaboration Marketing Strategy and How It Will Benefit Your Business

Giving the Unexpected to Your Customers

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