How Relationship Marketing Can 22x Your Customers

Relationship Marketing Strategy - There’s one marketing truth that I’ve discovered after consulting with over 350 businesses and spending $2M+ on marketing during the past 9 years.

And that is you MUST begin to build a relationship with your clients and prospects BEFORE asking for the business.

Here’s how (and why you should do it)


When it comes to beginning a relationship, here's what I'd like to ask you: If I was to go out into a shopping mall right now and I was to go up to every female that I saw and ask "Hey, would you like to get married?" How many out of 100 do you think are going to say yes to that?

For me, because I'm quite handsome (joking), it could be 20%. If I just had my haircut, it could go up to 30% potentially. But not many, right? It's pretty much zero. That's because we're going in for the kill straight away. Some of those people may want to marry me. But not if I ask straight away.

Likewise, with our business, when we do a piece of marketing that goes straight for the kill, "Do you want to buy now? We've got a sale on, 20% off." No one cares about that. You haven't done the second step which is: begin a relationship.

Don't look to get clients now because you need them now. That would be like me going out to a shopping mall, with the "I need to get married now" mentality. Are you here to get married now? It's not going to work. And I'll give you the stats to follow. I call it the 3% versus 67%.

For example: at any one time, 3% of people are actively shopping for energy healing. Or whatever your product of service is. They're looking for energy healing right now. They're on Google, on YouTube etc. 7% of people are open to. If you have the conversation and say, "Hey, I'm an energy healer." They're open to having that discussion.

Then we've got 30% of people are aware for the future. So not right now, but maybe in the future. I'm going to tuck that little nugget of information in my brain and then maybe in the future we can have a conversation. 30% are unconscious. Not literally unconscious. But they don't know what an energy healer is. They could potentially find out and do business with you as well, if you take the time to begin a relationship. Not just say, "20% off energy healing services today only." Last 30% is no. They know what it is and the answer is no.

So we should be focusing our efforts on the 67%. If you take out the people who are no, we shouldn't be concentrating on those. If we take out the people who are already actively shopping for us anyways, they'll probably find us.

We should be focusing on the 67% instead of just going for the 3%. And therefore, instead of wasting our marketing dollars, putting a piece of marketing out there thinking, "Why is this not getting a response? How come I'm wasting my time?" Or whatever it is like that as opposed to starting to begin relationships with people.

How do you begin a relationship? In this day in age, people want solutions to problems that they have. So if you think about your ideal client, if you put yourself in their shoes, which once again, is easier to do when you've got one person in mind, if you put yourself in their shoes and think what's their top of mind problem?

What's the problem that they go to sleep thinking about? When they wake up in the morning, that problem is there? You want to have a direct match with that problem, and solve that for them by giving them education.

They want it for less, for lower. That's an educational problem. Doesn't matter what product you've got. If you build swimming pools, if you've got coaching, if you've got a Spirulina product, if you sell organic wine, property, everyone needs some type of education.

I was talking to a lady in Melbourne. She does brow bars. She paints peoples eyebrows on. So she sometimes gets people that call her up and says, "Oh, how much do you charge?" She says she charges $480. "That's too much. The person down the road charges $420. I'm going to go to them." So for $60, you lose a client. But she uses a better technology. So I told her, "You need to (if you want) begin a relationship by teaching people things."

People who are searching for brow, eyebrows or whatever your product or service is, they want to know the different technology. Is it pain free? What's the recovery time? What are the things I should look for?

Put out a video series, a special report, an evening event, "The Five Pit Falls of Building Your Own Home", "Seven Things To Look Out For In The Share Market", "Three Ways To Longevity". Could be anything, an automated webinar. But something that educates.

When you educate, you increase the trust you have with your client and you increase what we call, "inelasticity of price". Inelasticity of price means, when you put your prices up, the demand doesn't change.

You put your price up, and because they trust you, they've got a relationship because you educated them, the price doesn't change.

Imagine right now your client was searching for your product or service. If they took the time to consume solutions to the problems they have, like they learnt, they spent an entire 30 minutes on a video series or a webinar, they read the special report, now they've got a connection with you. Now they think you do things slightly differently.

They can see the type of technology you use. How much experience you've got. Your five step system for how you lead people from lost to finding fulfilled passion. Whatever it is, now that they've got that, they won't just jump ship because of price. And now you've got a connection with them. We're beginning a relationship with people. We want our first time clients to be lifetime clients.

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Cham is the CEO and Head of Marketing at Authentic Education since co-founding it in 2009. He is passionate about productivity, empowering people, marketing and is creator of Digital Marketing Made Easy.

He has worked for Anthony Robbins, Chris Howard and Dr John Demartini from "The Secret" and has featured in BRW magazine, and newspapers such as Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.