Relationship Marketing:

How farming revolutionised human existence, and has lessons for marketers too.

Let's pretend that customers are food. It's a good analogy in some ways, because customers are the 'food' of your business. They're what allows your business to keep living, and maybe even to thrive. Without customers, your business is dead just as without food you'd be dead. The analogy isn't pefect because in the real world the food in question always loses by the transaction, whereas the supplier-customer relationship should always be win-win. But the analogy does work for us so we'll keep it.

Okay, there are three primary ways of getting food:

• You can set a trap: dig a hole in the ground, cover it with camouflage, maybe place some bait, and wait for an animal to fall in.

• You can go out hunting and gathering.

• You can farm.

In the 'trap' method, you - the businessperson - set up your restaurant, shop, salon or office, bait it with good signage and hopefully a good location, and wait for customers to arrive. (You might combine this with a bit of 'hunting' marketing, of which more below.)

The problem with this is that it's very passive. You have little or no control over how many customers this attracts. Once a customer goes out the door, you've no idea if you'll ever see them again. For sure you get repeat business - but do you get enough? Could you get more? And if somebody doesn't come back, do you know why?

So sometimes you try 'hunting' marketing. You apply what my marketing mentor, Dan Kennedy, calls 'random acts of marketing' by running an advertising campaign of some sort. Like hunting, this is expensive in terms of resources, and while it can give an excellent return if the 'hunt' is successful, equally it can all be wasted if you don't catch anything.

And even if you do have a successful hunt, once the results of it are consumed, you're back to square one.

The third method of getting food is farming. The invention of farming about 10,000 years ago absolutely revolutionised human society by giving a reliable and dependable source of food, and directly led to the huge leaps we've been making ever since. The same applies to 'farming marketing', better known as Relationship Marketing.

Would your business benefit from a reliable and dependable source of customers?

With this type of marketing you plant your seeds, tend your crop by weeding, watering and fertilising, and produce a predictable and consistent harvest.

Relationship marketing requires a proper marketing strategy. It's something you do regularly. The rewards are huge, in terms of consistent and growing business.

Relationship marketing, at its simplest, works by:

• Taking names, addresses and e-mail addresses of customers
• Keeping in touch with them - e.g. newsletters (and lots of other ideas too)
• Offering them special offers and discounts
• Keeping the standard of service very high.

I can help you organise and arrange this relationship marketing. It would be like hiring your own personal farmer to do all the sowing seeds etc - you just enjoy the harvest.

Contact Me if you'd like a no-pressure no-obligation chat to discuss your needs.

Remember:

There IS business out there. You just need to be clever about getting it.