Anita Welch

Relationships are essential in nearly every aspect of life – friends, family, coworkers, and business relationships. Right next to money, they make the world go around. A single relationship may change your life, business, mindset, or destiny.

Business owners find themselves in relationships with groups of people – their customers, and they must maintain these relationships by developing connections on a massive scale.

With that considered, what exactly does it take to build and maintain a relationship with customers?

Developing customer relationships may not come as easy as forming friendships. However, just like friendships, you must invest your time to build and nurture customer relationships. Matter of fact, a study demonstrates that nearly 80% of consumers stated that a brand must actively express that they understand and care about the customer before they’ll consider purchasing.

While building and maintaining customer relationships can be challenging, time-consuming, and tedious, it’s well worth it. Besides, with unlimited access to the internet, creating relationship-building strategies couldn’t be simpler.

Easy, peasy……

Why it’s Important to Form Relationships with Customers

Okay, so we all know that the customer isn’t always right. However, everyone can agree that the customer always matters. I mean, the purpose of a business is to serve the customer.

For example, no matter how amazing and helpful a product or service is, if the brand lacks a solid client base, it’s not going to be very successful.

The customer possesses a lot of power. Without them, you’d have no one to sell your product to. So, it’s very important for a business to pay close attention to their desires, needs, interests, and feedback.

Building strong customer rapport can lead to:

• more sales
• improved customer retention
• higher customer satisfaction
• greater conversion rates
• better brand reputation

More specifically, building customer relationships can result in:

Increased customer lifetime value

This is referring to the projection of the total amount of money a customer will spend on your products or services in their lifetime. The longer a customer buys from your business, the greater the value.

High customer lifetime value (CLV) indicates that each customer will provide more revenue for your business, aka repeat customers. However, if you have low CLV and your customers only buy from you several times, most of the money earned from them goes towards obtaining new customers.

CLV helps indicate how customers feel about your brand. High customer lifetime value suggests that your audience is satisfied with your product enough to continue buying repeatedly.

improved customer loyalty

Brand loyalty drives sales because not only does it keep the customer coming back, but that customer recommends your brand to other people – their friends, family, and even strangers. For example, I once bought a pair of Keds shoes because I saw a barista wearing them.

90% of people are more likely to trust a recommended brand, even if it’s recommended by a stranger.

When this happens, your customers are acting as brand ambassadors, providing the opportunity to spend less on marketing.

Furthermore, customer loyalty amplifies engagement. When a customer genuinely loves a brand, they are more likely to:

• tell their friends, family, and coworkers
• attend events
• engage on social media – likes, comments, shares
• respond to surveys
• join rewards programs

customer retention

Of course, gaining new customers is always a business goal. But retaining current customers is arguably even more important.

It costs nearly 5 times more to gain a new customer than to retain a current one. Nurturing customer relationships and building brand loyalty allows businesses to avoid acquisition costs.

Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%

Not to mention, returning customers spend around more than new customers. They already know the brand and enjoy the product, so they have less hesitation when purchasing from you. As for new customers, they might leave your product in their cart for a few days considering if your brand is the right one to go with.

To improve customer retention, it’s essential to build and maintain quality relationships with your customers.

How to Build Relationships with Your Customers

Step 1: Understand your Audience

Understanding your audience will inform literally every interaction you have with your customers. Therefore, a detailed interpretation of your market is necessary to build customer relationships. Audience analysis entails identifying your audience and adapting your content and messaging to resonate with their interests, values, beliefs, and emotions.

Defining your audience will inform your marketing strategies. Here are some examples of how it can inform certain areas of your marketing:

• SEO: Which keywords and phrases are most effective in representing your audience’s interests?
• Social media: Which platforms are most used by your audience? What are the best days and times to reach them?
• Content: What type of content will attract your audience? What type of blog posts should you create to target them?
• Copywriting: What language, imagery, colors, tone, etc., should you use to attract and convert your audience?

Here’s how to define your target audience:

• Age: It doesn’t need to be specific but it’s useful to know the age range of your audience.
• Gender: A breakdown of gender will help inform your messaging and marketing.
• Location: Location helps determine geographic areas to target and determines lifestyle behaviors. For example, someone living in Colorado is more likely to enjoy rock climbing than someone living in Wisconsin.
• Interests: Hobbies and interests inform marketing strategies based on motivation and passion. It wouldn’t be wise to market pet products to someone who has no interest in animals.
• Income: An income range provides insight on consumer purchasing behavior. A low-income audience has less disposable income than a wealthy audience.
• Goals: Tailor messaging to your audience by understanding their aspirations. If you’re in the skin care business, your audience’s goal might be to reduce the appearance of aging. Knowing that, you can adjust your marketing as needed.
• Challenges: Create relatable messaging by pinpointing the obstacles your audience faces.

Go above and beyond by defining your audience even further. Gather the details of occupation, marital status, education level, and websites they visit.

Step 2: tailor communication

Now that you have a precise understanding of who your audience is, you’ll need to tailor your communication to them. This means considering platforms, language, and tone when creating content.

Consider these questions when creating content for your audience:

1. What is my audience’s preferred platform of communication? Do they like receiving emails or SMS messaging? Are they more likely to interact over Facebook or Instagram?
2. What type of content resonates best with my audience? TikTok videos, Instagram posts, YouTube videos? Do they find infographics useful, or would they rather read a blog post?
3. How does my audience want to be talked to? Casually, like talking to an old friend? Or maybe they prefer a formal tone.

Each time you interact with your audience, make sure you measure and evaluate how your audience responds to find out what works best. Not only does this produce effective results and engagement for your business, but it also demonstrates that you are listening and care about your audience.

Steps 1 and 2 are the bare minimum. EVERY business should understand their audience – it’s as elementary as ordering your inventory. Now, let’s get to how to make your audience fall in love.

step 3: provide value

Obviously, your product or service already has value, hence why people buy it. But what I really mean is, to flaunt your value so everyone knows about it.

Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% of your content should be entertaining or educational, and geared towards driving customer engagement. The other 20% should be promotional, encouraging your audience to buy something from you.

This rule establishes long-lasting customer relationships because, well, it’s quite annoying when the only time you hear from a brand is when they’re trying to take your money. So annoying that you really shouldn’t be surprised if people unfollow or unsubscribe over it.

Offer them content of value and they have a reason to stick around. Teach them about who you are, what you do, and how your product can make their life better. They’ll be more willing to interact with you.

step 4: provide excellent customer service

I don’t mean decent customer service or even GREAT customer service. What I mean is, wow your audience with such awesome customer service that they are more delighted by it than when they see their food coming at a restaurant.

Yeah, make it THAT good.

89% of customers are more likely to purchase again after a positive customer service experience.

Top notch customer service includes:

• Prompt assistance: Don’t keep the customer waiting. The longer they wait, the more time they have to change their mind about your product and business. Even if they have the simplest question, they’ll be appreciative that you took the time to acknowledge them as a valued customer.
• Create damn good solutions: Don’t just resolve the problem, go above and beyond even for minor inconveniences. Send them a coupon, a free sticker, or trial product. It’s the little things.
• Provide a sense of care: Customers LOVE feeling like they’re the only person who matters and that your business cares about them. You can provide a sense of care by sending thank your notes, offering special discounts for loyal customers, or providing free samples.
• Ask for Feedback: Not only does feedback inform your marketing, but it also makes the customer feel heard and considered. Don’t just ask for feedback, use the feedback to improve your relationship with your customers.
• Respond to reviews: Responding to reviews left by your customers, good or bad, will make them feel appreciated. The simplest, minor discourse between your business and customers creates a good image. Responding to negative reviews will make your business look helpful and caring.
• Go the extra mile: Being nice and fixing mistakes is BASIC when it comes to customer service. We want to exceed their expectations and make them feel grateful that they found a company that cares so much about them.

Here’s a great example of excellent customer service at Lowe’s. When I needed a darker paint color, the employee didn’t simply do what I asked him to. He listened to my issue and provided me with every solution he could think of. He darkened my paint 3 times and showed me the progress so that we could compare.

I went home and tried the paint, and it still wasn’t what I needed. But I was extremely satisfied with the employee’s customer service and how he showed that he cared about my issue.

Check out this awesome example of top-notch customer service:

When an 89-year-old man was stuck in his apartment due to a snowstorm, his daughter called around to many grocery stores hoping that they’d deliver him food. Trader Joe’s, although they normally don’t deliver, offered to not only bring him food but to cover the cost of the food as well.

step 5: show appreciation

Don’t you love to feel appreciated? We all do, especially consumers. Simply taking the time to be thankful for your customers is an effective way to create a meaningful connection with them.

Showing appreciation can be as simple as creating a thank you video or post at the end of the year, throughout the holidays, or even when a customer is celebrating a birthday. This simple act of kindness will be appreciated by your customers.

It’s not always enough to simply say it. I mean, we are talking about going above and beyond here.

You’re thankful for your customers?

• Send them a free gift
• Provide them with a loyalty discount
• Send them samples of new products
• Give them promotional items
• Share their posts on social media when they tag you in it
• Give them something for free that others must pay for

This will cost you very little compared to the value of immensely improving your relationship with your customers.

step 6: interact with your audience regularly

Don’t be a snob! Engage with your audience the same way you’d like them to engage with you. Yes, this means handing out likes and comments on social media.

Obviously, you can’t respond to everyone, but you’ll make people feel special if you respond to at least some of them. I mean, imagine if your favorite celebrity liked your photo, you’d be ecstatic!

Here are some simple ways to engage with your audience on social media:

• use stories to create polls, quizzes, and answer questions
• share their content when it incorporates your product
• respond to their tweets and comments when possible
• share customer testimonials

Customer Relationship-Building Strategies

To develop strong, long-lasting customer relationships, you must engage your customers. Here are some proactive ways to do that.

killer email marketing

The best thing about online email marketing is that it’s permission-based, your subscribers are expecting to receive content from you. Good content. Not just good content, but effective content that gets to the point quickly.

The prevalence of smartphones and tablets has created a culture where consumers are always listening. Their email is always in their pocket. However, when people read their email on their smartphones, they do it quickly. So, your email content must be effective enough to grab the reader’s attention.

Email marketing is a great strategy to maintain customer relationships.

Email marketing:

• increases brand awareness
• increases customer engagement
• provides valuable content to subscribers
• keeps your brand relevant
• establishes your brand as an industry leader
• builds trust

Regularly sending engaging emails to your subscribers will keep your brand in the back of your customer’s minds when they’re in need of your service or product, making you relevant. Not to mention, providing valuable content makes your brand a thought leader in your industry.

By implementing email marketing into your strategy, you’re providing an opportunity for two-way communication between your brand and your audience. A call-to-action encourages the reader to engage with your brand. When you offer incentives, such as discounts and promotions, you’re motivating the reader to interact and heighten their engagement.

Furthermore, email marketing allows you to personalize and tailor communication more thoroughly. By leveraging user data, you can create segmented email lists and use different messaging to better target the readers on each list.

74% of people HATE being shown irrelevant content, making personalization extremely important.

Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.

Newsletter marketing

Newsletters go hand in hand with email marketing. They are entertaining, informative, and engaging for your customers. Additionally, they serve as an effective tool for nurturing leads, building brand loyalty, and engaging your audience.

Take a look at the Stevens Point Area Co-Op’s newsletter. They engage the reader with informative articles, featured products, and community-driven content. Their newsletter establishes credibility, advertises products, and keeps their brand relevant, yet it offers the reader interesting information, recommendations, and insight into useful products.

loyalty rewards

Just as it sounds, loyalty rewards compensate customers for being loyal to your brand. Providing loyalty rewards is an effective strategy to incentivize your customers to keep coming back to you. I mean, why shop for another brand when you’ll receive a discount after your next two purchases?

Loyalty rewards 1. reward your customers and 2. give them a reason to continue buying your products.

75% of consumers state that they prefer a brand that offers rewards.

Starbucks uses an app for their rewards program and gives you stars each time you make a purchase. It’s extremely effective because you don’t need a ton of stars to receive a reward. As you can see, with just 25 stars you receive a gift. The more stars you receive, the greater the prize!

Starbucks is very smart about their loyalty program – they keep you checking the app (i.e. paying attention to their brand = engagement) by offering random bonus stars. BUT you have to go on the app to see the offers available. For example, right now I can collect 70 Bonus Stars by order two days in a row.

See what they did there?

If the customer doesn’t use their stars in a certain amount of time, it starts over. The program incentivizes the customer to regularly visit Starbucks and use their stars. If you’re going to shop their anyways, it’s nice to get something back.

Customer relationship management tools

Get to know your customers thoroughly by utilizing CRM tools. By monitoring likes, dislikes, purchasing behavior, location, gender, and age, you can find out valuable information about customer demographics that can influence your ability to strengthen your relationships.

Have a post or an email that didn’t receive the engagement you’d hoped for? With CRM tools you can find out exactly what content customers engage with most. This information helps inform your future marketing and content strategies.

Here are some recommended CRM tools:

1. Hubspot – great for storing EVERYTHING you need to know about a lead, partner, or client in one place. It also allows you to create email templates, tags, schedule calls, and more.
2. Salesforce – a great all-in-one software that’s easy to use. It includes features such as sales forecasting, workflow automation, contact management, opportunity management, and more.
3. Nutshell – it offers live support, multiple integrations, and unlimited data storage. This tool makes tracking and storing leads simple.
4. Freshworks CRM – this tool uses AI chatbots to convert website visitors into leads. You can also customize reports, make calls, send emails, and access automation features.

take advantage of user-generated content

If you don’t utilize user-generated content, you’re missing out. User-generated content is original, brand-specific content created by customers. It may be a video, image, testimonial, etc.

When a customer vouches for a product or service, it highly influences people to buy that product. Especially the friends and family of that customer. Obviously, it’s easier to trust REAL people using the product and recommending it than the brand spending thousands of dollars on a paid advertisement.

85% of consumers state that user-generated content is more influential than brand-created content.

Now, people will always be talking about brands and products they like, that’s not the part that’s important. What really matters is how you decide to leverage it for your brand. For example, exchanging free products for valuable word-of-mouth marketing.

Here’s an example of a rad user-generated content:

Trinidad Sandoval created this TikTok video demonstrating the incredible effects of an eye cream sold by a skincare brand called Peter Thomas Roth. This video went viral, leading to the retailer selling out of the product. This is a prime example of how beneficial user-generated content can be.

@trinidad1967

♬ original sound – Trinidad1967

User-generated content is beyond beneficial for developing strong customer relationships. It rewards customers for sharing, it makes them feel appreciated, and it allows for direct communication between customers and the brand.

The Power of Relationships

SURPRISE! It’s not all about the money. Nope, it’ll be hard to create a lucrative brand without establishing kickass customer relationships.

It won’t all happen at once; these things take time. Start small. Begin with your current customers – gather feedback and customize your strategies accordingly. When that works, reward them for being badass customers and offering you their loyalty and communication.

Even on a small scale, you’ll see what a difference these small efforts will make in your customer relationships. And then, you’ll see how it impacts your leads and sales.

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