Define your personality<\/h2>\n
Before you can connect with an audience in any fashion, you need to determine your brand personality. This shouldn\u2019t mirror your CEO or the marketing intern, it should reflect the personality and ethos of the company.<\/p>\n
A modern brand is more than it\u2019s color, name or font, according to Fifteen Design<\/a>. Do you want to present yourself as a professional outfit 100% of the time, or let your customers peak behind the curtain and show what fun you have in the office? How playful or serious you are with your language is important.<\/p>\n Your audience isn\u2019t stupid. If you\u2019re trying to build a relationship with someone, it’s important not to make them feel like an idiot or lied to. This is why you should avoid dishonesty in your dialogue. Build your marketing dialogue around truths about your business. If you try and mislead your audience they will find out, the information is too readily available. Sacrificing this trust will ruin your entire relationship marketing strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean let your social media team go wild slandering the company on Twitter, but keep things positive and through your dialogue, show you\u2019re listening to concerns and questions from your audience (this is a great time to include social listening<\/a> in your strategy).<\/p>\n Similarly to how you need to define your personality, you need to decide where you\u2019re going to say it. An online retailer may be best served by building a dialogue with customers through automated emails, which requires an entirely different kind of tone to replying to a Twitter message. EverBrave highlights how unique all the social media platforms<\/a> are in their customer expectations.<\/p>\n Considering the channels you\u2019re going to pursue these relationships through will help shape your dialogue choices and save you time writing out the perfect quirky social message when a simple reminder to follow up on an order will do.<\/p>\n Communication with your audience doesn\u2019t need to be sell, sell, sell! You also don\u2019t need to apologize and solve their problems all the time. Your dialogue can simply be conversational. Try to not always speak at your audience, engaging with them and give them the chance to provide the dialogue for you.<\/p>\n Speaking to your audience about what they are interested in, and like or dislike about your company won\u2019t just make them feel more at ease talking to a brand, but expand your marketing knowledge in the process.<\/p>\n Your audience expects a lot. They want you to give them something special. They want you to give them something exclusive. They want you to exceed expectations. Most importantly, they want the experience to be personal to them.<\/p>\n Personal dialogue is the closest thing an online business can offer to face to face customer service. Tailoring a follow-up email or marketing campaign to a customer\u2019s name, location or preferences based on recent activity helps to build a strong relationship. Using their name is a no-brainer, but taking the time to delve into analytics and find a way to appeal directly to their habits offers a stronger sense of understanding.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not looking to use your marketing strategy<\/a> to sell them anything even better! A quick email wishing them a happy birthday or a thank you for being a loyal customer goes a long way to building a customer-brand relationship. See this as an extension of customer service, and great customer service often leads to positive referrals<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brand communication and building a customer relationship is a much-discussed topic, but so many businesses still can\u2019t build a meaningful one or rush into being too forward that ultimately drives off potential life customers. It\u2019s about finding the fine balance between appearing genuine and engaged, while not breaking the initial premise of the relationship.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here are a few ideas on how to create a dialogue that will help you build a relationship and strong foundation with your customers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":19565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2676],"tags":[3242,3251],"class_list":["post-11925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-mouth-marketing","tag-relationship-marketing","tag-relationship-marketing-tips"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Megan Mosley","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11925"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25412,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11925\/revisions\/25412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Avoid dishonesty<\/h2>\n
Consider your main channels<\/h2>\n
Have conversations<\/h2>\n
<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n
Be personal<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/image1-1.png\" "\\"\\"")
Rodney Laws is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. He\u2019s worked with the biggest platforms in the world, making him the perfect person to offer advice on which platforms to build your website with. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you\u2019ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business. Connect with him on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio.<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"