Tick Yes

Imagine where we’d be without technology. No email, no mobile phones, no plasma screen TV, no swank printing processes.

Welcome to the way it used to be. For thousands of years, the main tool marketers had to rely on is virtually an alien concept today: personal relationships.

No, this is not a history lesson; it’s a marketing reality check. You see, today’s marketers are spoiled rotten. Technology hands us our audiences on a silver platter.

The only trouble is we’re not the only ones playing the technology game. Our customers are too. And that is what has really changed everything.

Customers now have a voice. They send email blasts to their friends, call talk back radio shows, post and read comments on consumer websites (e.g. www.notgoodenough.org) and send SMS’s in their 100s of millions every month.

So when customers stop buying what we’re selling, there’s no longer a valid excuse for us not to see it coming. All we have to do is watch, listen and read.

Listen to what? Where? When? They’re valid questions. As for the answers, I have no idea.

But your customers do. They will reveal all. In fact, they WANT to reveal all. All you have to do is ask them, give them valid reasons to tell you and, most importantly, prove that you care.

Think about it: who really knows what you do and don’t like? Family and friends would be the most common answer. Why do they know so much? Because they care. It’s part of having a personal relationship with you. Loyalty and trust are also part of every healthy relationship.

And what, according to Australian CEOs in the 2004 AFR BOSS Survey are two of the most critical issues for business today? Loyalty and trust.

So with all our marketing sophistication and modern technology, there are some valuable lessons to be learned from the good old days.

Like creating personal relationships. Like asking individual customers what they want and crafting our products and services accordingly. And the best way to do that? Using marketing sophistication and modern technology. In other words, combining the best of the old with the best of the new.

I know it sounds obvious. But are you doing it? Are you and your customers reaping the massive benefits that can result from employing such a strategy?

The Wine Society is a terrific example of doing it right. They capture your personal information, opt-in and preferred wine varieties on their website. Then you receive offers tailored to your personal wine preferences and invitations to events in your area. Emails AND brochures are personalised throughout; it’s ‘Michelle’s Wine Collection’ not ‘The Wine Collection’.

It’s a nice theory, I hear you say, but wine is such an emotional product. My product/service is different. I sell coal. Or ball bearings. Or accounting services. It won’t work with what I sell.

Wrong. With EVERY transaction there is always at least one emotional reaction, usually many. It’s up to the skill and initiative of the DM practitioner to get to the heart of the matter.

This is such a simple and powerful idea. Yet with all the tools available, it’s so rare to see it being done in a meaningful way. Even many of those who ‘get it’ are only dabbling.

What that means is that the field is wide open for those who get it and go for it as a core marketing strategy.

Creating personal relationships with your customers is not as visible as running an ad or printing a brochure. And it takes time, care and nurturing.

To assess the value of such a strategy however, all you have to do is ask your partner, parent or child about the difference you make to their life.