How to Use Conversational Marketing to Build Customer Relationships
By Samuel Thimothy, VP at OneIMS.com
We often think that marketing is about selling, but in my years as a marketer, I’ve realized just how wrong that is. Marketing isn’t about selling a product -- it’s about building relationships.
Customer relationships help fuel business decisions on every level. From the products you offer to the way you sell them, knowing who your customer is and what they need is incredibly important to building a successful brand. However, getting to know them can be challenging.
One of my favorite ways to boost customer relationships is through conversational marketing.
What is conversational marketing?
Conversational marketing uses the power of real-time conversations to build authentic experiences for customers. It focuses on providing unique conversations, talking points and messaging to each customer depending on their needs, meaning happier, more trusting customers.
Conversational marketing also helps bring a personalized, human approach to marketing. Instead of putting new leads and customers straight into a pipeline of automated messaging, conversational marketing looks at how to build authentic experiences.
How can you build a conversational marketing strategy?
Let’s break down how you can implement a conversational marketing strategy to start building stronger customer relationships.
1. Include two-way messaging opportunities on your website.
Traditionally, a customer can only start a conversation through your website by filling out a form, sending you an email or giving you a call. They then need to wait for you to get back to them.
Unfortunately, this one-sided communication can make it difficult to really get to know your audience. It’s not conversational, meaning back and forth can be time consuming and easy to forget about.
Use an easy-to-engage-with chatbot or direct messaging feature to start a conversation. This allows customers to get in touch quickly and gives you a chance to create a dialogue that helps dig into the issues or challenges your customers are experiencing to get to know them better.
2. Offer personalized next steps.
The biggest benefit of conversational marketing is that you can get to know the unique struggles your customer is facing. To take advantage of this, offer personalized solutions for their problems.
Conversational marketing allows you to get away from a one-size-fits-all approach to your marketing funnel. Through talking to your customer, you can recommend a next step that fits their unique needs.
3. Use communication to build more human experiences.
Conversational marketing brings a human touch to the buying experience. By creating conversations with your audience, you can get to know more about what your audience is looking for and refine your marketing strategy to fit their needs.
This not only makes the sales process more efficient, but it also makes you more trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. When customers can hold a conversation with you, they can get to know you better as well.
A dialogue captures your customer’s attention and gives you an opportunity to share more information about what you offer. By engaging your audience in conversation, you bring a more human element to the way you do business.
4. Build from previous conversations.
Each conversation you have with a customer shouldn’t exist in a vacuum -- especially when it comes to repeat buyers. When using conversational marketing, each conversation should build on the last one you had with the customer.
Continuously building the conversation helps you dig even deeper and truly get to know your audience. It also shows your customers that you’re listening, helping you build your relationship with each individual. Store notes about interactions with customers so you can refer back to them the next time you talk.
What are you waiting for?
Conversational marketing help you build authentic relationships with each and every customer. By focusing on creating conversations with audience members rather than just sending them one-sided content, you can build trust that encourages leads to become repeat buyers.
Start your conversational marketing strategy by making it easy for customers to get in touch and get a quick response. Offer personalized next steps, and focus on communication that creates human experience. Finally, build from your previous conversations with customers by keeping notes on each communication.
Samuel Thimothy is the VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founded Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.
Published on: Jan 24, 2020
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
The Best Relationship Marketing Strategies Small Businesses Can Use Today
Consumers prefer to give their business to people they like. The age of entrepreneurs hiding behind faceless company setups is long gone. Today’s businesses must have a human touch to their products and communications with existing and prospective customers.
If you run a small or medium-sized business, the best way to cultivate a personal connection with your customers and prospects is through relationship building marketing strategies. When you succeed at building strong relationships with your customers, they will reward you with loyalty and referrals.
This article explores some of the best tactics you can use in your business to build lasting relationships with your customers and prospects.
Focus on Account-Based Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is failing to clearly define who their ideal customer is. Without a specific customer in mind, marketing communications tend to be generic and unfocused. The cure for this problem is account-based marketing.
Account-based marketing refers to the practice of using highly-targeted marketing strategies that are tailored to specific accounts a marketer wants to win over. Instead of running a campaign targeting 100 different accounts and hoping that a few will bite, you should decide on the one account you want to land and tailor all your marketing communications to that one account.
This approach yields high-quality leads with a high likelihood of converting. Moreover, when you only have a handful of high-quality leads to focus on, you can devote more time to them and build an even stronger and more productive relationship with them.
Build a Community around Your Business
In the old days, only the products with fanatic followings such as popular movie franchises and video games enjoyed the privilege of having an engaged community around their products. Today, because of the internet, even the most boring businesses can build communities around their products and services.
You can take advantage of social media and email marketing to build an engaged community for your business. If you offer a ‘boring’ service such as plumbing or home repair, the trick is to look for verticals in your industry with high engagement on social media.
For plumbing or home repair, for instance, you can build pages on Instagram and Facebook for various verticals such as homes for sale in your area, luxury real estate in your city, and other relevant topics. You can then advertise your business to the people who follow these pages.
Instagram allows its users to build as many pages as they want as long as you don’t break the platform’s rules. In fact, this is one of the strategies that serial entrepreneur Gretta Van Riel has used to build several multi-million e-commerce businesses.
Become a Brand Butler
In 2010, Trendwatching.com published a piece touting how serving was the new selling. They called on entrepreneurs and businesses to be ‘brand butlers.’ Given how marketing evolved in the last decade from 2010 to 2019, they couldn’t have been more correct in their evaluation that serving was indeed the new selling.
If you want to remain competitive in 2020 and beyond, you must join the ‘brand butler’ marketing phenomenon. Consumers today have access to pretty much any piece of information they need. They know from the click of a button which businesses offer the best convenience, independence, and satisfaction.
Given this new landscape, you must polish your butler skills and build a down-to-earth relationship with your customers. As a small business owner, you have a unique advantage over large corporations. You have more leeway to create individualized experiences and products that are tailor-made to every customer’s unique needs.
Co-Creation and Feedback Utilization
Businesses that understand how to build customer-centric products and services have a tremendous competitive advantage over their peers. The first step to gaining this competitive advantage is figuring out what customers actually want. This is where co-creation comes in.
Co-creation refers to the process where a business invites consumers to play a central role in the designing and building of products and services. The internet has made this process much easier as businesses can today invite ideas, comments, and designs from their customers cheaply and fast.
Remember, though, that co-creation involves a lot more than inviting your customers to send ideas, comments, and designs. It has to be a continuous process and the consumers must be engaged from the start to finish. In the book the 7 Principles of Complete Co-creation, Jansen and Pieters note that co-creation is an ongoing transparent value-creation process with extensive collaboration with all relevant parties, including end-users, playing a central role.
Closing Thoughts
There are a lot of opportunities for businesses that take relationship building seriously. Having a brand that embodies customer service, a holistic butler mindset, community, and on-going co-creation can give you tremendous competitive advantages as a small business owner.
Take advantage of both offline and online tools to build lasting relationships with your customers no matter what business niche you are in. As mentioned earlier, even businesses in the most ‘boring’ niches can creatively build communities around their products and services. Relationship marketing is a gold mine for every serious small business owner.
8 Tips For Building a Strong Relationship With Your Digital Marketing Agency
PHOTO: David Leo Veksler
Digital marketing agencies aren’t going anywhere. The top 100 digital agencies — which include digital marketing, design and build, and technical and creative agencies — made a combined $2.8 billion with an average growth of 20 percent, according to Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies Report 2017. Digital agencies help marketers revamp or build websites, run marketing campaigns, construct social media strategies and help with digital tool selection, among other things.
If you're in marketing you will most likely work with a digital marketing agency at some point, contributing to that $2.8 billion. It’s a crucial relationship, and it’s incumbent upon marketing teams to make sure it’s successful by being transparent, open to feedback and treating your digital marketing agency like a true partner, experts told CMSWire. We caught up with some people on each side of that relationship for some helpful tips in building a relationship with a digital marketing agency.
Be Responsive to Your Digital Marketing Agency's Needs
Dave R. Taylor, chief marketing officer of Impartner, said modern marketing agencies aren't the set-and-forget type. Digital marketing agencies are strategic business partners who require regular feedback. “Responsiveness is especially important with public relations or social media agencies," he said. Taylor cited two common examples, where feedback and responsiveness can make a big difference.
Like it or not, your digital marketing agency partner may teach you about your own company, Taylor said. You may want to maintain a consistent marketing strategy, but an outside digital marketing agency’s perspective can be invaluable. “Agency partners can drive your business forward by pointing out new ways to position your company and new ways to message your products or services,” Taylor said.
Digital marketing agencies that specialize in SEO, for instance, can do more than just optimize your website or increase your search ranking. “Many can advise you on how competitors are performing and what you can do to gain an edge,” Taylor said. Advertising agencies may have built digital media campaigns for companies similar to your own company and can guide you on what works and what doesn’t, informing your ad spend.
Don’t shut down your digital marketing agency or you risk missing an opportunity. “Your PR agency could open your mind to new ways of positioning your brand, and might even point you toward areas of expertise you didn’t even know you had,” Taylor added.
Related Article: Navigating the RFP Process: 7 Tips on Evaluating Digital Agency Experience
Ensure Agencies Understand the Technology
When evaluating digital marketing agencies, consider both the art and science of marketing, said Mary Ellen Dugan, chief marketing officer for WP Engine. “Not only does your digital agency need to deliver creative, breakthrough campaigns but it’s vital they excel at the science of digital — the marketing tech and analytics — as well,” she said. “As the landscape continues to expand and evolve, the need to leverage technology that allows rapid prototyping, agility, communication, collaboration and measurement is essential for success.”
Clearly Outline Expectations for Success
Make sure your digital marketing agencies understand how digital marketing campaign metrics map directly to the company’s business objectives. Your organization has to understand your digital marketing agency's philosophy on success and you must clearly set expectations on ROI to alleviate any pushback from the CFO for digital budgets. “Simply put,” Dugan said, “find an agency that matches your philosophy on digital impact.”
Related Article: 5 Reasons Marketing Budgets Will Drop in 2018
Do Your Research
Don’t forget there’s more to just improving your digital business when it comes to working with agencies. Jenn Tanabe, director of project management for digital marketing agency Vertical Measures, said it’s important for marketers to get face-to-face time with their agency, or potential agency, when possible. Tanabe suggests organizations push for things like video conferencing meetings if face-to-face is not in the cards. If it is, an office visit to your digital marketing agency can be valuable because you can get a better sense of the digital marketing agency's culture, Tanabe said.
Get to know about your digital marketing agency “culture-wise,” Tanabe suggested. What can you find about them on their website? Or Glassdoor? Have they won a “best places to work” type award? Are they willing to connect you with a current/past client for a recommendation? “Anything you can find out in terms of what the agency values is crucial to knowing who they are,” Tanabe said.
Be Transparent With Them
Tanabe stressed the keys to a good working relationship with a digital marketing agency are transparency, collaboration, partnership and implementation, about which she blogged. Your organization should help the digital marketing agency support the full scope of your marketing programs, even if they don't particularly work on each of them. Be clear about what you may be doing on the traditional marketing side, any other digital marketing that the digital marketing agency may not be responsible for and new services/product offerings, etc. “This helps the digital agency better support and recommend strategies,” Tanabe said.
Make sure that your digital marketing agency partners understand how each area of your lines of business works so they can provide you with their best service, Taylor said. “It’s not enough for an agency to know what your company sells. If your agency doesn’t have a firm understanding of how you work, they won’t be nearly as effective,” Taylor added. “This is especially important for ad and search teams, who have to target content very specifically.”
A digital marketing agency’s outside research can only go so far, Taylor said, especially if you’re selling software. “Give your partner agencies a walk-through as soon as you can, so they know exactly what your prospective customers stand to gain and how to communicate these gains most effectively,” Taylor said.
Find a Partner Not a Vendor
Don't just set-and-forget your digital marketing campaigns with your digital marketing agency. Collaboration is key, Tanabe said, because the marketer is truly the expert in their own industry/service/product. “The digital agency is the expert in digital recommendations and does their research to get to know the marketer’s business, but they may never know the marketer’s business as instinctively as the marketer,” she said. Think of it this way: the digital marketing agency is a partner, not a vendor, Tanabe added.
Are They Responsive Enough?
Can your digital marketing agency move fast? Will you be a priority when you have a digital fire? One of the biggest benefits — and challenges — of digital is the speed at which you can launch new campaigns, test and engage audiences, according to Dugan. “When evaluating new agencies, ensure their organization is equipped to move very quickly,” she said. “Every second counts online and if the agency isn’t able to adapt and take advantage of opportunities in real-time, it can greatly impact your success. As more companies and industries undergo their own digital transformations this speed and agility will become ever more important.”
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