Stay-In-Touch Marketing – How To Build Business Relationships

Stay-In-Touch Marketing is a set of the most effective marketing tools you can use to build your business. The beauty of these tools is that they cost very little compared to other marketing methods, and often get better results.

Another phrase for Stay-In-Touch Marketing is virtual roundtables Relationship marketing. In its broadest form, it is building a warm connection with prospects and customers in a way that creates customer loyalty.

Why is this important? A few statistics from the Small Business Administration and the Chamber of Commerce are revealing:

It is easy to lose two-thirds of your customers if you are indifferent or forget them
Lose 10% of your influence with customers for each month that you aren’t in touch with them
Lose 50% of your customers every 5 years if you are just an average company that does not stay in touch
Lose 20% of potential new customers because you don’t ask your existing ones for referrals
With good products and services, most of your customers would give you a referral, yet 80% have not been encouraged by you to do so
60% of your customers may not be taking advantage of all your products and may not know about them
Your customers must see and hear your message 7 times before taking action
Can you see how a concentrated effort to stay in touch could differentiate and build your business?

It is important to note that none of the tools that allow you to stay in touch and build relationships with your prospects and customers are free. They all take time and some money. So it is really important to focus on using a few tools really well, and tracking results and returns on your efforts. By doing so, it will help you stay within budget and make good business decisions.

How to Stay-In-Touch

There are two fundamental ways to make this marketing strategy work for you. The first is the personal touch, and the second is the social media touch.

Relationship marketing through the personal touch is reaching out to your customers as individuals to acknowledge their importance to you. One of the best ways to do this is through handwritten cards and notes. Even if you do not know them very well, customers appreciate getting personalized cards for occasions like:

Seasons Greetings
Birthdays
Thank you for your business
Thank you for referrals
Anniversaries
Congratulations on an achievement
Welcome to the team
Invitations
Reminders
Fortunately, there are affordable and automated ways to do Stay-In-Touch marketing that can manage the work of personalizing cards and gifts, and mail them out with a real stamp, in your personal handwriting. It’s magical, and it’s also good to use with friends and family.

A consistent effort at Stay-In-Touch marketing through the personal touch really makes you stand out, and creates a competitive edge over those who don’t do this. Again, it needs to be done in a very sincere way. If you are not genuinely interested in them as people, this method could come across as manipulative.

The second way to do Stay-In-Touch Marketing is through Social Media

When Twitter first came on the scene, the business world reacted to it like a monkey with a football. No one knew what to make of it, or what to do with it for business.

Those days are gone and now and social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Digg, and countless others, have proven themselves as ways to become known, to distribute content, and to engage customers and prospects.

Social media has the power to create ongoing interaction with prospects and customers. Just a few examples of how businesses are using these tools:

Customer service
Distribute announcements and news
Surveys
Product design data gathering
Share business and technical information of value to customers
Branding
Scan the internet for feedback on products and the company
Create interactive dialog with customers
Make the company more human
The last point is worth more explanation. Social media is a real time, dynamic, and informal environment. Businesses can build connections with people by providing interesting content but also by letting their hair down and passing on things that are tastefully humorous or cute, or just plain interesting even if it does not directly tie to the business. Doing this humanizes the business and makes their followers feel like they can actually relate to the business on a personal level. This is one of the odd achievements of what can sometimes be a non-personal environment.

This path to Stay-In-Touch marketing through social media requires more than just opening a Twitter account and following a few people. It needs to be a clear company marketing strategy with some resources put against creating a consistent presence in whatever media tool works best.

In my opinion, it is best to execute both of these Stay-In-Touch marketing strategies. Your customers will find their interaction with your business to be interesting, valuable, and personally rewarding, and that combination pays off in customer loyalty, and more leads. Who couldn’t use that in today’s competitive business world?