The first time a child wants something out of reach it has an automatic strategy, it can’t talk, but it can draw attention. It cries and will keep on doing so until its needs are satisfied. At a certain point in time this kind of relating becomes counter productive for two reasons. Just asking for something is more accurate and keep on crying generates anger and frustration. More importantly, it costs a lot of energy.
When the child becomes more grown up it is expected to start helping it’s parents with odd jobs, shopping, cleaning etc. and not only exchange love, warmth and food, but also services. Working together adds value to a relationship.
In real life and in business, building relationships is alike
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
re·la·tion·ship /rɪˈleɪ ʃənˌʃɪp/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ri-ley-shuh n-ship] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a connection, association, or involvement.
2. connection between persons by blood or marriage.
3. an emotional or other connection between people: the relationship between teachers and students.
4. a sexual involvement; affair.
[Origin: 1735–45; relation + -ship ]
—Synonyms 1. dependence, alliance, kinship. 2. affinity, consanguinity. Relationship, kinship refer to connection with others by blood or by marriage. Relationship can be applied to connection either by birth or by marriage: relationship to a ruling family. Kinship generally denotes common descent and implies a more intimate connection than relationship: the ties and obligations of kinship.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Early marketeers and sales people used the billboard type strategy of drawing attention, either they shouted their message out loud or painted it on a wall. The latter is more sophisticated because it is not limited their physical presence.
With modern digital media at our disposal we can make use of different types of communication in order to build relationships. We still use billboards, but also newspapers, magazines, mobile phones, you name it. I think it is important to note that all these different media are treated differently by its users, readers or viewers. Each medium plays a different role in their daily behaviour. For a detailed overview of media and their possible use I refer to “Media Characteristics”.
The 4-step program
There is only one approach towards building trusted relationships. This approach enfolds in 4 steps.
1. Make yourself known, draw attention, shout and in doing so trigger an interested response. Get the attention without scaring people away.
2. Cover the interested response by allowing interaction as much as possible. This is the information exchange phase building the relationship creating maximum trust
3. Create a transaction
4. Maintain the relationship
The results in customer response should be measured at all times to be able to tune the messages sent or products delivered, achieving maximum customer response and involvement.
One could choose for a “black-box” kind of approach. This measures input / output of the whole system. This is like comparing marketing budget against growth of market share.
In the 4-step program a more detailed “step-by-step” measuring system is required throughout the relationship building process. This allows for predictable results against predictable costs.
The 4-step approach should be part of a long term plan, including marketing issues, predicted traffic (eye-balls) per step, media conversion traps (when transferring from one medium to another), Measurement schemes and direct links to internal business processes
This of course is a very generic approach, but is applies to all kinds of relationships. Even inter human relations as love (flirt, opening line, talk and …. maybe a kiss?) often follow this pattern.
All types of marketing communication have the same objective; to create a transaction. In order to achieve that transaction all 4 steps have to be defined. For each step an other medium, in combination with an other “information package”, is used. It may be superfluous to state that an integrated media approach is preferable because discontinuous information between the various steps will probably not establish the desired relationship. Customers will be confused. I strongly advise to create an interaction chart helping you organise this. It is dealing with three aspects
1. The steps
2. Company initiated information flow
3. Customer response
The final objective – the trusted relationship – can be achieved through customer participation. Until now this was hardly ever the case. The producer produced and the customer consumed. The value chain ended when the consumer had bought and consumed the product or service. With new interactive media at hand we are able to go beyond that and build true participation.
You can treat these trusted relationships as an extension of the company’s assets. These relationships are actually the value of the company. To maintain these relationships a different communication approach is required. The orientation on markets, or even target groups needs to be more sophisticated, more tuned to the individual relationship.
The customer or the transaction is not the end of our efforts. It is in fact the beginning of a relationship every company should desire. Companies need to invest in these digital relationships in order to have customers participate in their activities. Mobilise the customers force, it is your best asset. It has been well known for ages that the cost of maintaining a relationship is far less than the establishment of a new one.
In reality most companies stop servicing after a transaction has been realized, because they feel after sales service is too expensive. We all have experienced how tourists are treated (they probably will come here only once….). But customers are here to stay. Recent studies in the Netherlands showed that only 25% of customers were satisfied with after sales service by call centres. For the majority it was reason enough to turn to the competition. The total sum of telephone sales is still growing faster then internet sales. How can that be? Do customers have the need to grant the privilege of a transaction to someone of flesh and blood instead of a machine or a software application?
The customers changing role
To give you an idea of the differences in approach I related three types of orientation; market, customer and participation and compared relationship building, type of communication and the instruments used and their effects.
The matrix below shows the characteristics of these types of approach. I gave them each a value for; final objective, commercial attitude, weighing of competition, type of communication used,
type of organisation needed and last but not least customer involvement.
Meanwhile it is common sense that customers are willing to share their experience. There are enough examples showing customer participation enabling buzz marketing, based on trusted mouth-to-mouth communication.
Once one hits the right button relationship building accelerates exponentially in the digital environment. Fine examples are found on Youtube – getting world famous over night.
An other strong example is the Dutch Socialist Party’s (SP) election campaign of late 2006. Within three weeks a cleverly designed low-cost e-mail / video concept reached almost 2 million voters. In TV GRPS that is over 12,5%. Trusted communication, the talk of the town. In old media value that’s worth a lot of money. The number of seats in the Dutch parliament rose from 9 to 25. Go relate !!
Commercial Strategies
Hook-line-sinker
The fisherman’s metaphor. It connects the fish and the fisherman. It enables a relationship in which a certain amount of control is used over the other. Movements are registered behaviour is influenced and a transaction is made. To make the metaphor complete one should add “the bait” to start the whole thing off and last but not least “the rod” in order to influence behaviour.
Because of the unequal position on the different sides of the hook it is not a preferred relationship model, but it holds all ingredients that digital marketing and sales strategies should have.
. Bait to attract attention
. The hook stands for loyalty
. The line stands for relationship
. The sinker stands for measuring consumer behaviour and..
. The rod stands for the amount of control, but remember this works as a two-edged sword.
All strategies should consist of at least these five elements. The rest is distribution of the message.
DM like e-mailings, viral explosions, SMS cell cast to attract immediate attention and media transfer. Remember that customers do not like unwanted info. Use privileged addresses only.
It could be an email blast with built-in “mail-a-friend” options. This is only effective during a limited period in time. It explodes and then collapses. As with all explosions it should have critical mass. Start with at least twenty thousand addresses. Remember to build a database and be accurate to add and remove addresses when requested.
Semantic (- in context -) advertising.
Research shows that pop-up type advertisements irritate to a high degree, closely followed by colourful and blinking banners. Still most of the marketers or add distributors move billions of banners a month. The new and proven better way of advertising is text only and tuned to the context the user is interested in. When an individual visits a garden site on the internet he or she is probably not interested in mortgages. Maybe advertisements for lawn mowers generate higher hit rates.
Search Marketing is a type of marketing that is triggered by the one top activity in the net, searching. People search in the invisible word of the internet with so called search terms. From the advertiser’s perspective it is of value to appear in the top 10 search results, otherwise hit rates fall progressively. There are different types of search marketing;
Paid listing; Marketeers pay for specific search terms and sentences to appear top of list. The highest bidder comes first and the search engine cashes per click.
Contextual search; marketeers pay for certain terms in theme websites. The search terms are then highlighted in the text and the website owner is paid per click
Paid inclusion: This technique is used by companies that have too many products to sell. It becomes too expensive to buy and maintain the number of search terms. They communicate product listings with the search engines instead. In terms of hierarchy paid listings come first in the list.
Site optimalisation: This technique is executed by companies themselves. Inclusion of frequently used search terms in the website content and creation of links to the website are most common.
Ambassador strategies are very powerful. The trusted relationship between the ambassador and customer is must a more trusted one than between supplier and customer. In the digital environment ambassadors could play an important role but be careful. If customers get the idea that ambassadors earn money in their role as ambassador the game is over. If I told you the pizza in the restaurant around the corner are of excellent quality, there’s no reason why you should doubt me, as long as my opinion comes to you as an independent third party.
There are many other “event-type” marketing possibilities with very military names. We use them in traditional sales too. Circumvention, Guerrilla, Underground etc.
In the digital environment new communication strategies become possible since customers gather indifferent fashions. They ICQ, MSN, SMS, Twitter, Google, Tube and Profile. These new environments hold strong marketing promises since the fact that customers give away a lot about their behaviour and interests. One should realize that the 4-step approach is always applied; Attention, Information, Trust & Transaction and Relationship. It could be wise to use a mix of different types of media to do the trick.
Social buzzing (spread the word) on the web is becoming an interesting phenomenon as in mobbing (events in the real world – be on…. Square tomorrow at 18.00 pm and wear an umbrella). It looks like an artistic type of performance but just these types of expressions explore the new possibilities of people and machines working together in a new type of society. Commercial initiatives will follow suit.
Summary
Means : The network to support all of these techniques is almost ready. The new IPv6 machine identification system will revolutionise the networks possibilities and its ease of connectivity
Message : Messages will be tuned strongly on the final goals, since context and trusted referral behave as image and brand marketing type of approaches
Media : The penetration of more and more sophisticated personal and mobile devices will boost personal marketing.
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