In today’ business environment, competition has taken the great heights. In order to become successful, each firm is using some form of strategy. Customers are also aware regarding their rights as well as they also have enough information about the product that they are purchasing. Therefore, in order to maintain the strong brand image and building of long lasting relations with customers, relationship marketing has become essential. Relationship marketing is serving the various benefits to the company. This is the reason many firms are more successful than other. For getting the positive feedback on the part of customers, firms are offering the products and services according to their demand only. Various businesses also has research department to proper research about the market and customers need. In this way, several relationship-marketing strategies have emerged over time to serve the customer in a better and efficient way. The discussion is done on the whole concept of relationship marketing. Importance of relationship marketing for firms is also highlighted further. There are various relationship-marketing strategies such as social media, email marketing, messaging that firms are using to build strong relations with the customers (Eduba, 2018).These strategies are also being discussed in the further discussion.
Relationship Marketing is the process that creates, maintains, as well as enhances the strong relationship with the stakeholders and other customers. The relations are not only maintained for getting the new customers rather than maintain the relationships for long time. It help in the various stages of the customer journey. From procurement to retention, it becomes possible to decrease the cost and increase the ROI (Quezado, 2017). The aim of relationship marketing is to identify the opportunities that can get the benefit from the purchase. It also tends to keep the client happy as well as engaged with the product and company. It mainly focuses on building the on-going as well as long-term relationship with the customers. In this way, it nurtures the strong and positive relations with the customers rather than pushing the purchases or sales. Service providers, IT developers, as well as online stores use the relationship building strategies to maintain good and positive relationship with customers. In this regard, authors have also focus on the relationship marketing definition:
“Relationship focused definition of marketing – ‘The purpose of marketing is to establish, maintain, enhance and commercialize customer relationships (often, but not necessarily always, long term relationships) so that the objectives of the parties involved are met. This is done by the mutual exchange and fulfilment of promises. – Gronroos, C (1990)”
Besides this, Jay Deustch stated that:
“I view relationship marketing as a brand’s ability to create an emotional connection with the consumer”
This statement is true as the attractive relationship marketing strategies can help in identifying the target audiences. It is one of the best ways to know the tastes and preferences of customers. In today’s time, relationship-marketing strategies becomes important for firms to adopt. There are varieties of choices available to the customers from where they can buy the products and avail the services. Usually they make choice based on the perception of service, quality, and value. This has increased the companies to understand the determinants for the customer satisfaction and value. The firms use relationship-marketing strategies in order to maintain the long-term relationship with the customers. As a result, it benefits the company in profitability, turnover, as well as overall performance. On the negative side of the relationship marketing, it is not easy because every customer is different. Companies are required to see the existing customer base while formulating relationship-marketing strategy. The major success of the relationship marketing depends on understanding the customers properly. For example- the smart phones of Samsung has great market share because it is designing the product as per the demand of its existing customer base. Due to this, customers do not think of switching the brand. In this example, the relationship marketing was occurring on the product level (Kumar & Reinartz, 2018). The relationship marketing occurred on the service level by providing the after sales service to the customers. For example- while purchasing a car, customer always require the after sales service.
Various factors are important for the success of the relationship marketing. Market knowledge is the first and foremost factor. It is true that customers’ expectations cannot be delivered without knowing the realities of the market. Customer’s desires can be easily known by observing the market trends. Secondly, the people build relationships (Piercy, 2016). Therefore, training programs can lead into the positive result. For example- some passengers were misbehaving with the airhostess in the flight. For addressing the situation, airhostess went to the group and told to behave properly. This helped in immediate result. From thus, it is clear that training is one of the important aspects to handle such type of situation in long-term building of relationship. The third factor in relationship marketing is the empowerment of employees. The worst situation is that when customers are shouting at the company and employees are not allowed to take any decision due to their position. Therefore, besides training, success of relationship marketing depends on the empowerment of employees. By doing this, they will be able to take the quick decisions and make the customers happy (Basin, 2018).
Relationship marketing strategies holds an essential position in the organization. The positive relationship marketing skills helps in opening the various business opportunities because the personal connection with the customers leaves the long-lasting impression. For example- an e-commerce who is selling kitchen items usually maintain the buyers profile in either marketing solution software or in CRM. This helps in updating the permanent customers regarding any new products that are available to them. Good relationship with customers helps in creating the memory in the mind of customers regarding the brand. By following the relationship-marketing model in the organization, long-term success can be achieved by the company. By maintain the good and positive relationship with customers; it can lead to set the brand on the top priority of customers.
There are various relationship marketing strategies used by the organizations. With the emergence of more electronic and digital ear, paper work has been reduced. The trend has begun to invest in the solutions of customer relationship management. Therefore, the ideal strategy is to install the enterprise resource management software and customer relationship management strategy. This technology helps in integrating the various functions of the company in single system. However, this strategy involves the huge cost for the implementation that might not be suitable for the small business enterprise. Besides this, customer relationship management helps the company in storing all the details about the customer, their personal information, purchases, and some other details. Sometimes, this strategy not proves to be effective due to high number of customers. It is not feasible to take information for all the customers or even sometimes customers are not interested to share their personal information. At this time, this relationship marketing strategy proves to be unsuccessful. Various companies also reward their customers for being loyal for their company. For this, they give bonus to such customers in the form of reward points or giving cash back offers. Companies also give “loyalty program cards” that is used by retail outlets for frequent purchasing on the part of employees. On the negative side of this strategy, several authors stated that this strategy is not feasible for all type of businesses. Email marketing is also one such relationship marketing strategy used by the business firms. It is founded that the retention of customer’s data helps the organization to send timely information regarding exclusive offers, launching of any new product, or for solving the clarifications regarding any product failure, service issue or exchange offer. The term mailchimp also enables the companies to send various information’s to large number of customer without getting it spam. This strategy sometimes fails due to the loss of data that was received from the customers (Rahimi & Kozak, 2017). In recent time, various companies have online presence using websites. For this, websites are required to be informative, interactive and should have user-friendly features. Therefore, the websites of companies require having the online chatting facilities. It should also clearly display the toll free numbers that will enable the customer to call at any time. This sometimes creates problems also due to the fail calls. In this regard, various authors have also considered this strategy to be not useful. However, this problem can be taken into consideration by appointing a specific person for handling these calls and enhance the satisfaction of customers.
“Short messaging relationship marketing campaigns” is used effectively by the companies for communicating new offers that consist of new opening of show rooms, new product launching, or some other schemes that are beneficial for the customers. This campaign work in an effective manner at the time of early mornings, holidays as most of the users are free at this time to read the messages of the company. The main intention of using SMS marketing is to involve the customers on regular basis. This also helps in retaining the customers. It is not sure that the customers will check the message. Most of the customers ignore the messages as they receive this type of messages from various companies. In today’s time, social media is widely used relationship marketing strategy by the companies. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedln, and Google plus, as well as other social media strategies can be effectively utilized for the promotion of the company. The Corporate FM page helps in informing about the significant appointments, events that are relevant to the industry. This strategy fails when too much attention or too less attention is given to the social media (Peppers & Rogers, 2016). It is obvious that the FB pages also receive queries, comments, as well as suggestions that are required to be attended on the regular basis. When the company fails to give proper attention, company is not able to build the long-term relationship with customers. It also requires the large amount of fund to be paid for the promotion of such postings in order to reach the new audience. Due to the inclusion of huge fund, small company fails in building the long-term relationship with customers. Besides all the relationship-marketing strategies, several big companies hold the consumer campaigns in order to get in touch with the consumers (Soltani & Navimipour, 2016). For example- company of an electronic appliance holds the consumer campaign to encourage the customers to bring the defective products. Credit card campaigns, banks, magazines, and online marketing firms also use the referral campaigns to get the more and more business. In this campaign, those will refer the relatives; friends will be rewarded in gifts, cash for increasing the future purchase on the part of customers. One of the most famous examples of Ikea is that when it changed its font in the form of catalogue.
The strategies of customer relationship marketing serve the various advantages to the company. Firstly, it helps in enhancing the experience of customers. It is seen that many customer leave the brand because of the poor services faced by him. For instance, relationship marketing helps in providing the superior customer service. It leaves a good taste in the mouth of customers. Besides this, it also helps in getting the feedback about the company. It is true that feedback helps in building as well as breaking the image of the company. The social media helps the customers to receive an opportunity to provide the feedback about the product or brand. However, it is not necessary that customer will always give the correct feedback. Sometimes, they also provide the fake feedback that can hamper the growth and image of the company. Getting the new referrals make the customers happy which is followed through adopting the “customer relationship building” strategy.
Relationship marketing offers the several advantages and disadvantages to the company. People in recent time always leave the feedback when the results are beyond their expectations. Many times, there are negative reviews also when their expectations are not up to the mark. When the marketing of the company focuses on the value proposition, then it is possible for the company to always increase the expectation in some positive manner. However, it is not always possible that the relationship marketing leave the positive impression on customers. It also helps in creating the personal connection with the customers. The marketing efforts help in connecting the customers with a brand. The output is that it helps in making the connection with employee as well. For example- the businesses of mortar and local brick, owners as well as mangers become the representative of the brand. As a result, if a customer interacts with the person, then it is also interacting with that brand. This helps in increasing the chance of future purchase from that brand. It sometimes create the problem for the organization too when customers become too much friendly with the brand. Sometimes, these customers create the problem for the organization when they make the wrong use of the company benefits. Relationship marketing also helps in creating various opportunities to solve the problems. When the relationship marketing efforts are made in correct way, it gives the organization a chance to retain the customers. From the use of relationship marketing strategy, businesses can get the various advantages (Khodakarami & Chan, 2014). By using social media, brands can make the immediate impact on the customers. Companies can also use social media pages as well as accounts to retain the value proposition that are being offered. It is true that even a small email that hardly takes seconds to write can leave the positive and long lasting impression in the mind of customer. Face time, Snapchat and Skype are some of the example from which the businesses can reach out with representative to retain the value of brand.
There are various other relationship building strategy that helps in maintain the storing relations with customers. The first and foremost strategy is to show the customers that they are being valued in the organization. Listening to customers and responding them accordingly also assist in maintaining strong relationships with customers. Companies can use the monitoring tools related to social media in order to reply to their complaints or comments. Providing the free information to customers is also one such strategy that is admired and praised by the customers. In today’s time, various firms provide the informational videos about the products that are being currently purchased by the customers (Taylor, Roberts, Oram, Gupta, Itani, Baroudi, & Smith, 2015). Frequent communication is also one such tool that helps in building the strong relationship with customers. It is important for companies to communicate frequently via email, social media in order to become successful. Relationship marketing strategies holds an significant position in the organization. It helps the organization in gathering the customer feedback time-to-time. According to that feedback, companies can make changes in its working and come back with that product or service that will be appreciated by the customers. It enables the company to make better decisions in order to build a strong relationship with customers. It is true that more the customers will be happy; more will be the chances of publicity of company’s product or service. When customers will have better experience with the product, they will have better to share with others (Hassan, Nawaz, Lashari & Zafar, 2015).
There are various cons of relationship marketing. The first drawback is that new customers are mostly treated as the secondary commodity. It is true that companies can retain the best customers and at the same time. It also needs the new customers in order to meet the company’s budget goal. With the strategies of relationship marketing, businesses first put focus on the retainment and support of its current customer base. In this case, many times the new customers are ignored which is one of the most negative aspects of this strategy. Choudhury & Harrigan (2014) also stated that any negative information received on the part of customer could ruin the relationship marketing campaign. Sometimes, only one negative experience of the company results into the failure of marketing. As a result, those customers do not look for getting the long-term benefit. Although it is true that relationship marketing helps in building the effective marketing relationship with the customers but it take very long time to build that. Some of the customers want such relationship with the brand that will be able to give some time to them. It means there are various customers who want to receive the direct feedback from representative and employees rather than finding the information by their own. It is true that having a strong relationship with the customer is a good thing for the companies. The relationship that sometimes become close to intimate can proves to be a bad thing. Relationship building is good for the company but when managers give more attention to the customers, they started giving less attention to the reports of the company that are essential part (Felix, auschnabel & Hinsch, 2017).This results in disturbance of proper functioning of the organization that might hamper the growth of the organization. This can result into the loss of successful relationship marketing campaign. It is also stated that only a business or brand cannot alone implement the “relationship marketing strategy” without such culture of the organization that support this strategy. The negative review comes from this brand when customers expand their money and vote the brand. In addition to this, the disadvantage of this relationship building strategy is when customers want the better treatment on the side of brand because they are expecting more return from other purchase. They want such discount that goes further than the normal offer or sale that is part of marketing effort. Without the extra benefit, customer may say that they will move to some another brand (Proctor, 2014). These customers are not the target under relationship marketing effort. By knowing the benefits and limitations of relationship marketing, it is clearly stated that the efforts of business and brand in order to connect the current customers can increase the avenues. It also helps in improving the reputation of the brand (Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp & Agnihotri, 2014).
In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that relationship marketing plays an important role in the organization. It helps in building the long-lasting and positive relationship with the customers in an effective way. In today’s time, various substitutes are available for the customers in order to switch the brand. Therefore, it becomes essential to serve the customers in an effective manner so they stick to their brand for long-time. It is only possible when the offering of firm is matching to the demands of customers. Various marketing strategies are there that helps in maintaining the positive relationship with customers for long-time. Among all the strategies, social media is most prevalent that are being used by successful companies. Almost all the people in today’s time are addicted to social media that is checked frequently by the customers. In this way, companies might get success in building the relationship is they will succeed in attracting the customers through their promotion on social media. Discount is also one such strategy that attract customer in an effective manner towards the brands. In order to attaching customers with the brand, the firms are providing discounts.
References
Basin, H. (2018). Three factors for success of relationship marketing. Retrieved from: https://www.marketing91.com/factors-success-relationship-marketing/
Choudhury, M. M., & Harrigan, P. (2014). CRM to social CRM: the integration of new technologies into customer relationship management. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 22(2), 149-176.
Eduba. (2018). Stratagies of relationship marketing. Retrieved from: https://www.educba.com/what-is-relationship-marketing-its-strategies/
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126.
Hassan, R. S., Nawaz, A., Lashari, M. N., & Zafar, F. (2015). Effect of customer relationship management on customer satisfaction. Procedia economics and finance, 23, 563-567.
Khodakarami, F., & Chan, Y. E. (2014). Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 51(1), 27-42.
Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2018). Customer relationship management: Concept, strategy, and tools. Springer.
Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2018). Customer relationship management: Concept, strategy, and tools. Springer.
Peppers, D., & Rogers, M. (2016). Managing customer experience and relationships: A strategic framework. John Wiley & Sons.
Piercy, N. F. (2016). Market-led strategic change: Transforming the process of going to market. United Kingdom: Routledge.
Proctor, T. (2014). Strategic marketing: an introduction. United Kingdom: Routledge.
Quezado, M.A. (2017). What is relationship marketing and what are its benefits?. Retrieved from: https://pipz.com/blog/relationship-marketing/
Rahimi, R., & Kozak, M. (2017). Impact of customer relationship management on customer satisfaction: The case of a budget hotel chain. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 34(1), 40-51.
Soltani, Z., & Navimipour, N. J. (2016). Customer relationship management mechanisms: A systematic review of the state of the art literature and recommendations for future research. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 667-688.
Taylor, J., Roberts, J., Oram, C., Gupta, A., Itani, M., Baroudi, S., & Smith, R. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 8,972,876. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Trainor, K. J., Andzulis, J. M., Rapp, A., & Agnihotri, R. (2014). Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), 1201
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