Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today, we're talking about personalising your customer relationship. What are we talking about? Tell them what it means. Make it make sense.
Melanie
Well, this time we thought it might make a bit more sense if we could actually build our relationship with our customers a little bit closer. And that's not necessarily always through storytelling, but by actually physically connecting with people through maybe gifts as a start. It could be downloads, it could be anything that we give them as extra value. So this can happen any time of year. And I see some businesses doing this for their annual, so it's been like two years in business or five years in business. Some of them do parties as well, don't they?
Esther
Yeah, they do. They do either online parties or physical in-person parties and send invites out to their customers, especially their most regular ones. Something that I've noticed recently as well is that they're starting to bring back gifts for their customers on their birthday. For example, a coffee shop would give you a free cup of coffee or a cup of tea on the day of your birthday or around that date. So you're not tied into just going to see them on your birthday. But maybe for about a week afterwards, you've got this special offer going on exclusively for you. And it does make you feel special, doesn't it?
Melanie
I would definitely. In fact, I remember one of the most important birthdays of the year, naturally is mine, is every six months I get a present, which is great. I'm so lucky.
Esther
Are you the queen that gets two birthdays?
Melanie
Well, no, it's Christmas and my birthday. It's like every six months. It's great. I play I play an online game, and I felt really happy when I got a little message from one of the characters I follow. It's okay, it's a game, but it meant a huge amount to me, and I got a hundred primogems as well. I was so happy. So you can please people in the weirdest and wildest ways as well.
Esther
Absolutely. It doesn't have to be a massive big gesture. It can just be something simple, a simple message, an email, a simple, we see you, we're grateful for you, we're thankful. It can be, like you say, on your anniversary or something, like here's a 10% discount for all our customers. Thank them for helping us get to year whatever in business. It can be a welcome gift if you are buying for the first time and it's a subscription-based, maybe a little packet of sweets. I remember I bought something recently. Tiktok made me buy it. And I wasn't expecting to get a couple of extra things, and one of them was a tiny little bag of sweets, which my kids stole, obviously. But the thought was nice, and I'll remember that person and we'll buy from them in future. Not for the sweets, obviously, not just for the sweets. But there was little details.
Melanie
I can hear some of the listeners audibly groaning here because they're cashing this all out in their minds. And, oh, so they've got to pay for this and I've got to set aside a budget for that. And I do appreciate that this all sounds a little bit costly. I do appreciate that. But you don't have to do all of it. You can just do one of it. And there's a good chance that if you set aside this money on a monthly basis, you can do it as a bit of a splurge once a year. And it just makes you a little bit more memorable. People compare us all the time to our competitors. It's just human nature. We do it all the time. For them to feel that extra bit of value and that closer resonance with us, that's gold. It is something you're going to have to work into your marketing budget, definitely.
Esther
Yeah, but I also think it's not every business that has to have an outlier. You don't have to go out and buy a bottle of wine for your suppliers each and every Christmas. They might not even like wine. I like wine. But that's not the point. We're not talking about me. We're not talking about what I want. But you do have lots of businesses that would receive things that maybe are useless to them, and they would prefer the 10% discount or the 30 minutes free time to pick your brain or something else that you could give that won't cost you money. It might not make you money in the short term, but it won't cost you anything in the short term either.
Melanie
Also, as Esther said, and I did like the idea of maybe giving away 15 minutes free time or 30 minutes free time, something like that. You could also say, Look, I'm only able to give away 10 of these or 15 of these, and you need to book it in before the end of a certain month. Then it spurs people on, not dragging it out throughout the whole year. It gives people a sense of urgency. People respond to that urgency faster. So, yeah, that's a great suggestion.
Esther
Yeah, and an easy way to do that is through your email list, if you have them segmented into customers, previous customers. You could even use these incentives and these personalised touches to entice former customers back to your store or back to your service. So that's something that if you look at your email marketing list, which we're all nodding our heads that we have, right? We all have our marketing lists, then it's something that it's easy to go in and you already have it segmented because you segment as you go. And it's not time consuming to find that list. It's not time consuming to go through thousands of names just to pick out the ones that you do want to work with, because you wouldn't want to be giving these personalised touches to every Joe blogs that hasn't bought from you. But you want to really focus in on your customers and their experience, because it's easier to maintain a customer than it is to get a new one.
Melanie
Yeah, completely agree. So I would start... I mean, it's not something you have to do immediately. It's not something you have to do at all. But maybe start thinking, how else can I give extra value to my existing customers and possibly entice people to become my customer as well? Because I'm waiving this either 15 minutes free consultation or if you go all the way through my sales funnel, obviously you can call it that, but if they go all the way through the sales funnel, maybe they get a voucher or a discount or something Because people have to earn it at the end of the day. And we've said this before, features tell, benefits sell. So if you can help people understand the value that you're offering and then maybe go above and beyond it in some way, they feel quite grateful that you're building this more meaningful relationship and it becomes more a one to one, two way conversation.
Esther
Absolutely.
Melanie
That was confusing.
Esther
I understood you. And at the end of the day, people buy from people, as we've said in many occasions. And once they have that personalised relationship with you, they're more likely to also recommend you to their friends and family, to other people in their industry, outside of their industry. They will sing your praises from the rooftop because you go that extra mile, whether it is with your 15 minutes of free time, whether it is with a special little thank you note that you might send them once they sign up with you, or if you have physical products that you send a little something extra with them. The woman that I bought the thing off in TikTok She doesn't know that I'm talking about her right now, but I am. And I have told other people in real life who she is and what she does, and hopefully they will buy from her, too, because we all love little free bags of sweeties and wine. Remember that.
Melanie
Would you stop with the wine now?
Esther
I'm just giving you suggestions for my Christmas present, and birthday present, and anniversary present, and... I'm joking. I am so joking.
Melanie
I remember I was attending an online webinar, not that long ago, actually, and I did not expect to come through the post a notebook, a branded pen, and a tea bag, a branded tea bag, no less, and some branded Bickies from this event. I was completely blown away with it. They knew that we were going to be sitting there for a while, and they wanted to make sure that we were getting ready to enjoy the whole conference. It was a whole day. And yeah, they got all this branded stuff, and it just felt a bit more personal. I was completely blown away by it. Completely unexpected.
Esther
And what else happened when you were at that conference? You took pictures of it and you posted it to your social media praising them for these extra little touches. So it's a win-win for both you and them in that you get to enjoy the goodies and they got free publicity from you posting about how fabulous they are. Think about it, guys.
Melanie
It really was an excellent ploy.
Esther
Yeah. We do love of getting those extra little things. We love that little special something, the if you go that far. And we just want you to think of ways, whether it costs you money or whether it doesn't cost you any money, think of ways that you can make your customers feel special, feel appreciated, and feel a more personal connexion to you. No matter what size of company you have, you could a one-man band with 10 clients, you could be a 10-man show with a thousand clients. They all deserve to feel special.
Melanie
I hope this is giving you something to think It's something to work towards. Again, we're not expecting you to do all of this, but if you can excite and surprise people and just make them feel a little bit more thought of on a more personal level, at whatever level you can afford, and I'm sure they'll appreciate it. I know I certainly did. So that's all from Esther and I for today, but we'll be back very soon with another podcast.
Esther
Bye, guys.
Melanie
What was your most memorable gift coming from somebody, Esther?
Esther
Oh, you've put me on the spot there. You know I'm going to say wine. That's actually a notebook, actually. It was some notebooks that were personalised to the business.
Melanie
I've had a pen before arrive, branded pen, and they wanted to sell me getting the pen branded, but at the time, I couldn't afford to do it. But yeah.
