Forget for the moment that you are a professional. We're not going to ask you to close your eyes or anything-- especially since you wouldn't be able to read this fascinating webpage then would you?
Place yourself solely in the role of being a consumer. Then ask yourself:
Do you pay a little more, drive a little further; inconvenience yourself in any way to frequent your preferred hair stylist, mechanic, or restaurant?
If not, please click the term relationship marketing and personalized marketing for an introduction. If you answered "yes", than please consider whether you would define the company (or at least the individual service provider) you frequent as customer-centric?
Unfortunately, too often customers feel processed rather than served. Customer experiences are far more likely to be transactional than relational in nature. This causes customers to remain detached, making them susceptible to taking their business elsewhere for any number of reasons.
It is the ability to know, connect and partner with customers in a way that positively impacts the customer life cycle that will aid your brand equity more than almost any other strategy. Relationship marketing begins with traditional demographics and can extend as far in scope as personalized marketing. The range of your strategy often depends on the resources that a company is willing to invest in improving customer relationship management (CRM).
Earning customer advocacy (referrals) is probably one of the greatest litmus tests around. How much of your business is a result of referrals? How do you track it? How do you reward loyalty? And do you offer loyalty rewards in terms that your customer truly appreciates?
