Four Marketing Experts on Building Relationships

It’s been said that life is all about building relationships and when it comes to both B2B and even B2C building relationships is crucial. For this piece we bring you highlights from four marketing experts that shared invaluable insights on building relationships through marketing.

Why Is Building Customer Relationships Important?

It should be a no brainer that building customer relationships is an absolute essential in your overall growth and journey. This applies to any type of business. The truth is that relationships are the glue of your business holding it together. Remember customer relationship building is never static, its ongoing and evolves as your business evolves. One you’ve built relationships you then must work hard at maintaining them. This does involve some degree of emotional intelligence (EQ) and a genuine willingness to help others.

Humanize Your Social Media Marketing

Carlos Gill social media marketer, founder of Gill Media and author of bestselling book The End of Marketing says that you must humanise your brand and social media marketing. You do this through listening to your customers, building relationships, engaging with them, and then selling to them. It’s a sequential process. He compares the buyer’s cycle to dating. In dating you get to know someone; you make them fall in love with you. It’s the same with sales and marketing. Listen, build relationships, engage first, then sell.

Know How To Sell

Selling is an art form and should only be done after you’ve done the listening, building, and engaging with your customers. When you reach that stage, you’re ready to sell. Ultimately, you’re selling yourself not just your product or service. But by doing all the other stages right people will naturally want to buy what you have to offer. They like and trust you and so selling doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.

Social Media with Purpose

According to Derek social media is a giant noisy digital ocean that makes it hard to stand out. That’s why you must have a plan, a purpose for being on there. What are you trying to achieve? What’s your objectives? This helps with building relationships. Don’t just get on a platform like TikTok because everyone’s on it. Get clear about what you wish to achieve and keep mind your returns. If you're not getting a return on a platform go elsewhere.

Make Your Content More Empathetic

Corrina Owens, Director of Marketing at Profisee with over 10 years of marketing experience with premium brands is a big advocate of empathy in content. She encourages us to not forget that B2B is marketing to fellow human beings, not just companies. COVID has forced us to be more empathetic. By providing audiences with content and resources that is helpful to them you are being empathetic, and this naturally fosters good relationships.

All About Customer Experience

Owens says that you need to think about what your customer’s experience and impression of you is throughout all your touchpoints. Ask the key question: Are we solving the problem that we’ve promised we would solve for you? If not go back to the drawing board and keep asking more questions till you get at the root pain point.

Build Authenticity Through Inbound Marketing

Derek Hovinga founder of the Inbound Lab believes that inbound marketing is all about authenticity which is vital for building relationships. Whilst content marketing, is more about attracting customers to your business, inbound marketing follows the entire funnel and is empathetic to customer’s needs at every stage of the journey. It’s about nurturing leads, turning visitors into subscribers or followers. Its messaging is more tailored to a specific audience who actually want your solution.

Advocates for your Brand

Eventually the audience who consume your content will come to you and ask for your help. By giving it to them they will also advocate for your brand (eg: tell others about you) so you can get new inbound customers. This of course results in more relationships and more opportunities for growth.

The Flywheel

Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot created the flywheel which according to Derek is better than the traditional marketing funnel. The funnel takes a prospect from point A to point B. Once you're at the end of point B, you're done with them. Essentially, you've attracted & engaged with them. They've made a purchase. They're pretty much at the end of their sales lifecycle. But with the flywheel in inbound marketing, it doesn’t end. The flywheel works as the attract stage, the engaged stage, the convert stage, and then the delight stage which makes it ideal for relationship building.

Followers Aligned with Your Brand

You don’t just want any followers for your brand, you need followers that are aligned with what you stand for. This helps with building and maintaining the right relationships. For instance, Hovinga gives an example of vegan influencer Dan Clapson, who was reached out to by a beef producer. This clearly wouldn’t make for a good fit. There is no relationship in such a case!

How to Build a Customer Centric Business

Jeff Adamson, co- founder of Skip The Dishes and Neo Financial focuses his attention on building a customer centric business. This is all about putting your customer first not you. Its about removing friction and barriers for customers to make their lives easier. Skip the Dishes is food delivery on tap for Canadians and Neo Financial is all about simplifying finances for Canadians. Hence friction and barries have been removed.

Build Strong Lifelong Relationships

Jeff understands the science between relationships and happiness. This applies to both personal and profession relationships of course. He says you want to look back on your life thinking Who did I spend my time with? How did they make me feel? In B2B these are important questions to ask which probably are not asked enough. They are relevant to your staff, co-founders, partnerships etc.

Add Value in your Marketing

“Canadians don't want better ads, they want value” says Adamson. This of course applies to consumers all over the world. Marketing is moving towards a more empathetic approach where its messaging is about improving the life of your end user. You must think about how you can help them and also make your marketing attributable. This is all about understanding what worked and what didn’t. For instance, which channel is more effective? Where did my sales go up?

Ready to take your Customer Relationships to the Next Level?

These insights when applied will do wonders at building your customer relationships. For more expert help on customer relationship building and generating massive sales and brand growth Book a Time with our Content Marketing Experts today who can take your business to the next level in 2025 and beyond.