I often find that people misunderstand cold marketing versus relationship marketing. Entrepreneurs typically try to apply principles that are valid for cold marketing to relationship marketing, and it is a massive mistake. Let’s get clear on the definitions first. Cold marketing targets prospects who don’t know who you are, what you do, or that you’re even in business. Relationship marketing is designed to create customer loyalty and long-term customer engagement rather than just achieving short-term goals like customer acquisition and individual sales. The goal of relationship marketing is to create strong, emotional customer connections to a brand or individual that can lead to ongoing business, free word- of-mouth promotion, referrals, and other resources from customers that generate leads. With cold marketing, you must have a clearly defined goal, such as “I want to send a targeted campaign to these 5,000 people to get webinar registrants and make sales through the webinar.” Once all the sales are counted, you can clearly check your campaign’s return on investment. This type of marketing clearly falls into the direct-response marketing category. However, if you don’t have a clear call to action saying, “Sign up for the webinar,” this is no longer direct-response marketing. For example, if you send a campaign to 5,000 people and simply tell them who you are and what you do, and provide them with no reason to respond, you now have a branding piece. The easiest way to spot a brand-based piece is to look at the mailing list. The people receiving the pieces have never purchased from your brand before.
Now, on the flip side, we have relationship marketing. These are pieces designed to play the long game by building a relationship with your customer or prospect. These pieces also allow you to add value and promote products, services, or specials. Relationship pieces allow your customers to get a glimpse behind the curtain of your business and maybe even gain some insight on you personally. Done correctly, relationship marketing builds trust, authority, loyalty, and long-term leads to get more sales, more referrals, and an increased customer lifetime value. My tool of choice for relationship marketing is newsletters. Relationship marketing also works well for nurturing your leads. A lead is trying to make a number of choices. Do they want or need your product or service? Which vendor should they buy from? Who is going to take care of them after the sale? By using multimedia content (newsletters, emails, videos, etc.) to build a relationship with your prospect, you drastically increase your odds of closing the deal because people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Prospects in many cases will even pay more to do business with a trusted source, such as choosing Apple products over PCs. Apple has spent decades building a trusted brand, providing free tech support in stores and focusing on customer experience, and they’ve reaped the rewards of doing that. There are times when a call to action in relationship marketing is both warranted and needed. The above statement is even more true when talking about prospects, but expecting to get a 100 percent ROI for every relationship-marketing piece is crazy town. That is just playing the short game with your marketing. Continued on Page 6 ...
experiences, these CEOs, presidents, managers, and even a judge provide readers with an intimate look at the thinking and humility they possess. McHargue and the leaders then explain and elaborate on the lessons they have learned from these experiences to help up-and-coming leaders, managers, and business owners avoid making costly errors. McHargue himself doesn’t shy away from learning from his mistakes. He even invites readers to Tweet at him about mistakes and omissions he made in the book using the hashtag #RookieMistakesBook! McHargue serves as a principal consultant with Patrick Lencioni’s Table Group. He focuses on bringing organizational health into the workplace and has partnered with leaders across the globe to foster this worldwide movement. He currently lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and three kids. Learn more about him online at Mike- McHargue.com, and find “Rookie Mistakes: Advice From Top Executives on 5 Critical Leadership Errors” on Amazon.
Have You Heard the Good News?
Romans 11:36 — ”For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” Mark 10:27 — “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.’” John 16:33 — “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” Philippians 4:19 — “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
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