What are the three levels of customer relationship marketing?

The goal of every brand or organization is to have their prospects turn to customers and keep them coming back.

Best case scenario, have them advocate your brand name. This depends a lot on the prospect’s experience with your brand. Years of study have proved that it is easier to retain customers than acquire new ones.

In recent years, business dynamics have changed from businesses being product-centric earlier to being customer-centric now. To achieve this, businesses are focusing upon building and nurturing a relationship with the customer.

The various stages your customers or prospects go through during their journey with your brand are together termed as Customer Relationship Lifecycle.

Although it may be different for individual cases, the basic lifecycle that the customer passes through remains constant.

What the prospect encounters in the current stage will determine how fast or slows he/she will proceed to the next stage.

At every step in the lifecycle, you get an opportunity to make their association with your company more pleasant and understand and cater to their needs.

The basic framework of the customer relationship lifecycle consists of five stages – right from awareness to loyalty.

The steps might differ on a case-to-case basis, based on the market segment and its dynamics. Let’s take a look at each step one by one.

Stages of Customer Relationship Lifecycle

Awareness is the first stage of the lifecycle. Here, you work on reaching new customers as per their interest, i.e., making them aware of the existence of your brand and the products/services that you have to offer.

In this stage, you try to capture your potential customer’s attention. This could be through various sources such as advertising, word-of-mouth, and social media, among others.

You need to make sure all your marketing collaterals are in the right place with the right messaging, where you are able to reach your target audience in an effective manner.

You need to have your market analysis-ready about the type of audience you wish to reach, along with the means to reach them.

Analytics at this stage will help you understand where you are able to reach the correct audience more.

Conversion to paying customers seldom happens at this stage. Your main aim here is to capture the customer’s attention and develop a relationship with them.

This is the second stage in the lifecycle. The aim of this stage is clear – to convert the interested prospects to customers or subscribers.

It is this stage that you have to be attentive to your customer’s needs. They are coming to you with some ideas and requirements in mind.

You have to make them understand how you are their best option and how you can help them in the best possible way.

It is imperative to understand as a company that if you don’t provide good service, customers will find a solution according to their requirements from someone who provides a better service than you.

Not replying to their emails, not returning their phone calls, or taking too long to get back to them with a solution could all end up discouraging your prospect to invest with you.

After you have gained your prospect’s attention and providing a satisfactory pre-buying experience, it is likely that some of your leads will turn into paying customers.

This is where your sales skills are put to the test. Instead of concentrating on selling the product, you need to build a good rapport with the leads and imbibe in them a sense of trust with your brand.

Loyal customers are happy customers. Successful businesses concentrate on retaining their customers rather than acquiring new ones all the time.

It is necessary to nurture your relationship with the customers and not give them a chance to explore other options from different brands. Another reason being, the cost of acquisition is more than the cost of retention.

The process of retention involves cultivating a relationship with your customers, responding to their queries on time, providing proper support, sending follow-up emails, etc. You should do everything to make your customers feel valued.

An email during the festivals regarding new products that you have or giving them a discount on existing ones as a loyalty bonus, could make them happy and feel valued.

It also makes your name pop-up in front of them from time to time reminding them of you.

After the retention stage is achieved, you would want your customers to advocate your brand. A person is most likely to recommend your brand to their peers if they are satisfied with the service they have received.

People are also more likely to buy from a brand that their friends/family/colleagues have recommended, as there is an extra trust factor of someone else who has tried it before.

In Conclusion

It is not a surprise that brands keep advertising themselves to their current customers and keep them updated with the latest happenings in terms of products and services.

One might argue that this could come up as badgering the customers, but it is to be noted that re-advertising to customers is also an important part of nurturing your relationship with the customers to keep them.

This makes it easier for businesses to later make the push to convince the customers to upgrade from the older to newer products or to a better plan, which brings in more revenue.

For a business that has cracked the code of customer relationships is the one which is successful in the market.

They always ensure that their relationship with the customer is well maintained, and all the customer’s needs are met with complete satisfaction.

Hence, the customer relationship lifecycle is useful for businesses starting up or looking to expand. Nurture a great relationship and get good customers and then keep them on board, and success will follow.

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Customer Engagement – What do your Consumers Expect from You

“I want to implement CRM,” your sales manager says to you via email. “Do some research on what this would look like for our company.” Sounds like a straightforward project? Not quite. First, clarification is in order.

The acronym “CRM” is shared by customer relationship marketing and customer relationship management. Though the two terms are quite different, they complement each other and can be applied to sales and marketing processes.

What is relationship marketing

Customer relationship marketing is supported by customer relationship management. Think of customer relationship marketing as a strategy and customer relationship management as an action. The latter can be used to carry out the former.

To understand these concepts better, let’s break down the definition of each, their stages, and examples of each one.

According to Techopedia, customer relationship marketing is “a business process in which client relationships, customer loyalty, and brand value are built through marketing strategies and activities.”

The takeaway? Relationship marketing is a long-term strategy focused on the customer relationship, not on a single transaction. It focuses on ensuring customer satisfaction for the long-hual rather than simply for a quick sale.

Levels of relationship marketing

Relationship marketing can be divided into four stages:

• Establish the initial relationship. This stage is also called “exploratory,” better known as the first step in the customer acquisition process. It includes initial activities and conversations to determine if a customer and company are a good fit for each other’s needs. Consider it the first impression whether that’s on social media or at an event.
• Get to know each other. The “basic” stage takes the customer relationship a step further. A company attempts to prove to potential customers that they understand their needs, sharing helpful resources and communicating the value of their product/service perhaps via an email marketing campaign or other inbound marketing efforts.
• Develop a deeper relationship. A potential customer shouldn’t stay in the “basic” stage too long. Multiple departments need to become involved in this, the “collaborated” stage, and work together to nurture the customer relationship.
• Become committed partners. The “interconnected” stage means that your company has forged a connection with your customer that’s hard to break. Departments are working together to create a seamless experience. Customers completely trust your company and are incentivized to stick around for the long-term.

Relationship marketing examples

An excellent example of successful relationship marketing is PrescribeWellness.

According to Human Marketing, the B2B company (which works with thousands of local pharmacies across the U.S.) created “a separate site showing their solutions to expand their services, reach more patients, improve adherence and loyalty, and streamline operations.” The site is easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing for customers.

The PrescribeWellness website is specially designed to generate new leads as it shows that the company cares about customer needs, which strengthens the customer relationship and builds an overall better customer experience.

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Levels of customer relationship management

On the flip side, customer relationship management is managing potential and current customer relationships through collecting and analyzing customer data. It’s powered by the customer relationship management software.

The four stages of customer relationship management are

• Collect data. Insert contact and business information into a CRM.
• Analyze data. Automatically pull into insightful reports about customers.
• Develop customer strategies. Use the data to create things like personalized campaigns.
• Act on strategies. Make the customer’s life better based on what you know about them.

Examples of customer relationship management

Zendesk Sell is an example of a CRM tool. Contact information for potential and current customers is easily added into the platform. Sell then automatically pulls this information into helpful reports such as Deal Sources to see which deal sources bring your company the most business.

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For example, in the chart above, the website is proving to be a reliable deal source. Your sales team could use this information to work with marketing on further improving lead generation capabilities on your website. In other words, the info provided by your CRM tool could give you insights to revamp your site — similar to PrescribeWellness’ customer relationship marketing strategy of overhauling their website.

Learn how to remove the guesswork of sales software so your team can focus on building relationships and closing deals.

Benefits of customer relationship marketing

Benefits of both concepts coincide with each other. A CRM system helps achieve the goals laid out in customer relationship marketing. And vice versa: When customers are happy and interacting with a company, more data is inserted in your CRM tool which benefits customer management.

• Build strong relationships with current and potential customers. By implementing relationship marketing strategies, you up the loyalty of your customers and demonstrate that you view them as a relationship, not a transaction.
• Improve customer retention. The better you understand potential and existing customers and can solve their pain points, the more likely they’ll stick around.
• Increase the chance of quality referrals. When customers are happy, they’re more likely to refer your business. And according to one source, referral leads convert 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels.

With these benefits in mind, experiment with different relationship marketing strategies.

Relationship marketing strategy

Customer relationship marketing is all about getting to know your customers and using this knowledge to continually strengthen the relationship. A CRM software helps with building these relationships.

Here are four customer relationship marketing strategies and how to use your CRM with each one.

1. Personalize interactions through knowledge about customer value/needs

View customer data (e.g., budget, decision-makers, customer value, conversations, etc.) within your CRM. Segment customers by this information and personalize their experiences.

For example, maybe you segment customers by revenue. You then create a VIP package for your most profitable customers that includes exclusive resources and one-on-one consulting.

2. Focus on customer-centric metrics

Metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value and Net Promoter Score ensure that the customer relationship is the central focus across departments.

You can easily review key performance indicators (KPI) reports directly in your CRM, including charts and graphs for visual reference.

3. Use content marketing to meet customer needs

Content marketing is an effective way to take customer needs and turn them into helpful content (like this piece) for any part of the sales funnel.

Create case studies, eBooks, walkthrough guides, and videos based on what customers are asking for and leverage yourself as an influencer and a value-provider.

Ensure that customers’ conversations are all on one platform (your CRM) and see what resources customers need from sales and support.

4. Monitor customer conversations across departments for consistent customer messaging

Seventy-two percent of consumers think that having to repeat themselves — first to sales, then to support, etc. — is a sign of poor customer service. Integrate support tickets so no conversation falls through the cracks.

For example, you can connect Zendesk Sell with Zendesk Support. If an issue or upsell opportunity comes up, support reps can easily forward customer tickets to the right sales rep. Sales reps can also see what support reps are telling customers and if their messaging aligns.

And these strategies only touch the surface of customer relationship marketing strategies. Email marketing, social media management, and reward programs are other excellent strategies that can be combined with your CRM.

Do your research and find ones that match your company’s brand.

Give customer relationship marketing a try

According to Ann Handley, head of content at MarketingProfs, “Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.”

That’s the premise of customer relationship marketing — investing time and developing strategies to build strong relationships with individual customers. Use customer relationship marketing in conjunction with CRM software to make the most of every customer relationship.