Market Your Business For Free: Relationship Marketing

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Relationship marketing to me is really somewhat hard to define because there are really so many ways to do it. If you have built a business online, then there are certain ways to do it for this medium. It includes blog posting, email marketing, viral marketing, and any way that you can connect with your visitors and customers.

The point is that you want to build a relationship with your customers, especially if you own a business you run online. This is because credit online is earned, and you will have to earn that credibility in order to keep your customers and readers happy and connect with them.

There are so many scams online, and so many people are skeptical. To avoid this, do what it takes to connect with readers and customers, and they will stay loyal. Word of mouth marketing is effective.

Now, to build a simple relationship marketing campaign, you will need to do three things. First, let's start with your blog. Can your customers and readers easily connect with you?

This means offering email and RSS subscriptions, as well as offering audio if you can. Audio is important. I have customers who are blind, and this is the only way they have to get my blog posts. What I'm saying is to consider the needs of your customers. Make your content easily available to them.

Next, you'll want to think about your email marketing. You want to stay in contact with your customers and readers. This means developing email marketing campaigns for them.

Here's how to get started:

1. Decide what types of content you will want to send to them. Do not constantly bombard them with emails. If a marketer emails me every day, I do not stay on his / her list for very long. The reason is that I simply do not have time to read all that email. Once or twice a week is plenty. You will want to mix up your content. Send them articles, blog posts, videos, and sales emails. Mix it up. A 50/50 ratio of half sales content and half content is a good place to start.

2. Email your readers regularly. Do not go months without sending emails to your lists. Try to email them regularly. Usually once or twice a week is fine. Develop the types of emails I mentioned before. You can use an autoresponder system and fill up your que with emails to send to them. Once you get your campaigns set up, your emails can run on autopilot.

3. Test and track your efforts because you want to make sure that what you are doing is working. This will help you in planning future marketing campaigns.

The final technique I want to mention is viral marketing. This type of marketing is much more difficult to achieve because it takes rabid fans to make it happen.

One technique you can use to make this happen is to develop an affiliate program for your business and create brandable materials others can give away. Develop a relationship with your affiliates and keep them motivated. This is the easiest way I know to make this happen, and it will help you put your marketing on autopilot.