No matter your marketing strategy, you should consider each and every potential customer as an individual relationship. And yes, I mean like dating. This is exactly how inbound marketing is structured, though you can go a bit too far if you’re not careful. The key is to treat each relationship as fragile from the very beginning. Remember, your customers can leave at any time. So, how can you use inbound marketing to build strong ties with your buyers?
Get Personal
We all know that guy who seems to have dozens of friends but never calls any of them by name. How close do you think he could possibly be with “Hey, Guy,” “Dude,” “Buddy” if he doesn’t know their names? If you want to make an impression, you need to learn each customer’s name…and use it—when you send emails, when you target ads, when you answer their shout-outs on social media, and most especially when you handle customer service claims.
The beauty of most inbound marketing tools is that gathering name and contact information is easy. Most people are more than happy to say, “Hello, my name is…” and that gives you the chance to start a beautiful relationship with personalized marketing.
Be Yourself
If you don’t know your brand identity by the time you start chatting up with potential customers, you’re in trouble. Consumers are smart. They’ll pick up on your fake voice, your fake image, and your fake concern. Why try to cram your brand into a box when you could be yourself and build true relationships?
Your brand should shine through your website design, blog posts, and social media interactions, but it can’t stop there. Every time you interact with customers, you must be yourself…be your brand.
Don’t Interrupt
Yes, everyone likes a grand gesture here and there, but disrupting your customers is not the way to win hearts. Don’t flood their mailboxes and inboxes with irrelevant mail just to stay at the top of their minds. When you have something to say, go ahead and say it. Otherwise, let them come to you when they’re ready.
Meet Them Where They Are
No matter how hard you push, consumers won’t make a purchase until they’re ready. In fact, the harder you push, the more likely they are to walk away. You don’t want to break up before the relationship starts getting good, do you? Rushing things is never a good idea.
To meet your buyers where they are, you must be aware of where they are in the buying cycle at all times. Have they downloaded an informative ebook or white paper? They’re probably sitting near the middle of your sales cycle and need more information before they’ll take the leap. Have they requested a demonstration or downloaded a discount offer? They’re all yours for the taking.
Don’t Overdo It
Really, this last rule covers any manner of relationship faux pas. The biggest, of course, is gathering information your customers don’t really want you to have. With cookies and contact forms and every other intel-collecting program out there, it’s easy to get a little greedy with the info. The problem is, most of that information is stuff you shouldn’t know so early in your relationship.
If you are going to get sneaky with your suggestions and targeted ads, make sure you’re super sneaky. Surround those recommendations with products and services your buyers haven’t yet shown interest in. Otherwise, they’ll wonder why they spent ten minutes searching Google for pet shampoo and received coupons from you thirty seconds later. Let me tell you: that kind of behavior is creepy, and your customers will break up with you.
You can build great relationships through inbound marketing without crossing any lines. We’ll help you foster any connections you make and convert them into true leads, and then to customers. Better than that, we can show you how to maintain those relationships for years while boosting the lifetime value of each customer. Are you ready to change the way you court your customers?
