6 Tips for Turning Internet Marketing into Relationship Marketing

Internet Marketing Seminar of Prof. Erwin Globio

erwinglobio.sulit.com.ph - Saturday, September 24, 2011

2011 © Sulit.com.ph

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

6 Tips for Turning Internet Marketing into Relationship Marketing

A good relationship with your loyal customers is worth a fortune. Hence, relationship marketing should be at the heart of your business.

Why is relationship marketing priceless?

Internet marketing = Relationship Marketing

When everything you do revolves around your community – customers, fans, followers, employees, etc. – the answer is clear. You will have the reputation, loyalty and love that keeps your business alive and thriving. You will have a connection with your audience, and that’s the key to success for your company.

Take the focus away from the dollar signs attached to your products and services, and focus on what’s really going to affect your sales: relationships.

Relationship marketing online is a fine balanceof technology and personality.

Something that has remained constant throughout the years is the power of relationships in business. Relationship marketing these days is just present in a different arena – online.

There are people who may insist that there were no problems of disconnect until the Internet came along. This simply isn’t the case. Technology is not the cause of this disconnect; the cause is the people behind the computers.

If your online presence is genuine and your brand is “real,” relationships will blossom.

And since nearly 90% of consumers use search engines to make purchasing decision (Digital Influence Index), you better believe that a strong community presence will feed your bottom line.

Relationship marketing from the ground up

To create a healthy community online, set up a steady foundation for your relationship marketing.

1.   1.  Understand your audience. Identify your niche market and how you plan to solve their problems. Have a clear vision for who your products and services are going to help so you can target them more directly with a message that resonates more powerfully.

2.   2.  Engage with your audience. Write with your audience’s wants and needs in mind. Listen to their feedback – good or bad – and give them a say in the conversation. Conversation is a two-way street, and there’s a difference between talking to people versus talking with them.

3.   3.  Be a part of your community. Be present in conversations about your own brand and your industry. A good relationship marketing strategy covers all aspects of a community – from customers to competitors. Find ways to join in on relevant conversations, offering your own opinion, experience, expertise and input. Just be sure you have something worth saying.

4.   4.  Demonstrate your expertise. One component of your relationship marketing strategy must address the fact that there is competition for what you’re offering. People will respect and listen to you more intently if your language is confident, clear and beneficial. If you’re not the expert in a certain area, that’s okay. Seek the advice or help of a non-competitor who knows the subject through and through, and give them credit for their knowledge.

5.    5.  Answer questions. Create free downloads, pay close attention to what people are asking on social media sites, and set up a blog dedicated to helping visitors find the answers to their most common questions. Your customers want to be acknowledged and appreciated.

6.    6. Provide excellent service. Don’t just stop online with your relationship marketing. Continue the process offline and really show your customers that you appreciate them. Treat them with respect before, during and after a sale.

Final thoughts

The purpose of relationship marketing is to put the “people” back in business and ignite that “warm and fuzzy” feeling. It’s about having actual human beings dedicated to nurturing your online presence and every person that is a part of it.

Take the focus away from profits, put it back on relationships, and trust that the profits will come as a result. That’s relationship marketing in a nutshell.

Are you building relationships with your internet marketing?

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

Internet Marketing Seminar of Prof. Erwin Globio

erwinglobio.sulit.com.ph - Saturday, September 24, 2011

2011 © Sulit.com.ph

Forming That Internet Marketing Bond

Internet Marketing Seminar of Prof. Erwin Globio

erwinglobio.sulit.com.ph - Saturday, September 24, 2011

2011 © Sulit.com.ph

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

Forming That Internet Marketing Bond

No matter how many marketing platforms become available to businessmen to sell their products and services, one thing remains essential: creating that sincere relationship with the customers

You can bore someone into buying your product or you can develop a bond that will generate bigger market share.” These, according to OgilvyOne Worldwide VP for Consulting Services in Asia Pacific Lucy McCabe, are the two general things business owners can do with social media.

“Selling a brand or a product now is more complicated as compared to 10 years ago,” says McCabe in a recent press briefing on social Customer Relations Management (CRM). Not only do business owners and marketers have to learn newer platforms, they also need to determine how to take full advantage of these tools.

Social media has not only affected the way customers pick brands, it has also changed how and to whom people give their feedback. A few years back, when a customer had something to say about a product or service he acquired, he would share it with his family and friends in a confined gathering. Nowadays, a customer can share his thoughts on a certain product or service not just to his friends but even to people across the globe. Most of the time, sharing is so instantaneous that even if he is still in the process of experiencing it, he is already sharing it to the world via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Path.

E-commerce is also giving more brands the vehicle to reach a wider market. In Asia, the growth of e-commerce is expected to surge as more infrastructures mature and develop. Products that we only see in stores can now be purchased in just a click.

The above scenarios sound healthy. But the problem, McCabe points out, is that the brands are having a hard time catching up. For a brand manager, McCabe says as an example, managing the output or the product feedback within the world of social media can actually be scary. At the same time, a lot of brands are still learning the ropes of e-commerce. She said the challenge for marketers in the next five years is to understand how to make use of these media to their advantage.

“A lot of brands struggle as to what their e-commerce strategy should be,” shares McCabe. “It’s not just about the shopping carts, it’s the whole shopping experience—the process of discovering the product all the way to the purchase,” she says, adding that sharing this experience is crucial.

Bond With Your Customers

In a world where digitalization is one of the key trends, online recommendation greatly influences purchase. In fact, McCabe says online recommendation is in the top five influences on purchases in almost every single market in Asia. “That’s a massive shift from 10 years ago,” she reveals. And based on their surveys, she says recommendation is a key driver of market share.

That is why “bonding” with the customers—whether existing or potential—is important. “Bonding is when you feel a real emotional affinity to the brand,” explains McCabe. “If you’ve bonded with a brand that you trust, you will recommend it.” She adds that customers who have bonded with the brands they trusted spend up to at least 20 percent more recommending those to other people. “The higher the level of bonding, the higher the future level of marketing share, so there’s a direct correlation between that bonding score and the market share. It’s a critical number,” she says.

To be able to create that bond, one must earn the customers’ trust. “Trust and recommendation are big drivers of market. If you don’t have these with your customers, your brand is less likely to grow,” she says. This is how social CRM becomes the new era of relationship marketing. It’s building a relationship with your market through social media. For business owners and marketers, this means being perceptive of their audience. “Understand your audience, segment them; what will interest them? Understanding the audience means giving them the right content they need,” she points out. This is very important in this highly digital age and marketers now must have a rigorous approach on how to use the technology available to them.

“It’s like your relationship with your friends—it involves a lot of communication, of valuing their opinion, of celebrating with them, working with them, of learning how to be there for them and when to leave them alone at the same time,” she says. And if you find this kind of relationship with a brand you like, chances are you will share this experience with other people

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

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The Internet vs. Facebook in 10 Years [infographic]

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online The Internet vs. Facebook in 10 Years [infographic]

When we take pause to appreciate where we are, we can truly appreciate just how far we’ve come. I recently stumbled across an interesting infographic as it made the rounds across the social web recently. Created by bestedsites.com, the graphic visualizes the meteoric rise of the Internet in just 10 years. For example, in 2002, the Internet boasted 569 million users, which represented 9.1% of the world population. In 2012, that number skyrocketed to 2.27 billion at 33% of the world population. Another tremendous stat is the daily time spent online. In 2002 it was only 46 minutes a day (that was probably the time it took to load one web site). In 2012, it’s clocked four hours a day. As I was reveling in the rapid evolution and ascent of the internet in general, I took stock of Facebook’s growth. Well, I suppose not literally. Looking at Facebook as a subset of this particular infographic would provide a visual comparison of the static and social web. I once wrote that to the connected consumer, the end of the destination web was upon us. The flow of information has been disrupted. While websites aren’t dead they certainly don’t meet the needs and expectations of a much more real-time audience who live in their egosystem and benefit from news and information finding them. We live in an era where news no longer breaks, it Tweets. As such, I’d love to see a visual comparison of the destination and social web and the numbers between them. In 2011, Facebook was the size of the Internet in 2004 That’s certainly a dramatic headline. And, it’s true. Last year, when Facebook hit 800 million users, Royal Pingdom reported that not only was the milestone significant in terms of user base, it was the size of the entire Internet in 2004. In July 2012, Facebook reported that its user count was approaching 1 billion with 955 million active users and counting. Those numbers are almost too big to truly grasp. So, I again took pause. In 2004, thefacebook launched for Harvard University students. Within 24 hours, thefacebook was already home to somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 students according to co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Within the first month, more than half of all Harvard students were registered. By October 2005, “the” was dropped from the company name, Facebook.com was purchased for $200,000, Sean Parker was now the company president, Facebook moved to Palo Alto, and the company opened the network to universities around the world. Over the course of eight years, the site continued to experience incredible growth, a story of which you’re more than familiar with today. Here’s a timeline representing milestones for each jump of 100 million users: August 26, 2008 = 100 million users April 8, 2009 =200 million users September 15, 2009 = 300 million February 5, 2010 = 400 million July 21, 2010 = 500 million January 5, 2011 = 600 million May 30, 2011 = 700 million September 22, 2011 = 800 million April 24, 2012 = 900 million Now (August 2012) = 955 million users CNET recently reported that as many as 8.7 percent of users are fake. Just to clarify, not fake as in shallow personalities, but fake as in bogus accounts that represent duplicates, misclassified, undesirable, spam, etc. But event at 8.7 percent, the the overall number of people who use Facebook in one way or another is staggering. It is its own Internet and that’s both frightening and fascinating. My colleagues at Altimeter Group Andrew Jones (@andrewjns), Christine Tran (@christineptran) and I took a look at the numbers to plot them on the infographic to truly visualize how big Facebook really is. Accounting for the 8.7% of fake accounts, Facebook represents 28% of all Internet users at ~12% of the world’s population (estimated at 7 billion).

Some day, I’d love to see Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, the Internet overall, side by side to show the different behaviors in information flow. Please feel free to share any numbers or infographics you’ve created that expand on this story. Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online