The idea of marketing to a specialized
niche of very active customers and then using that base to recruit in a viral
way is new to the internet but one that goes way back in the non internet world
of marketing. It is well known that if
you create an elite group of dedicated customers, they will become a
recruitment army for your business and become your marketing team that works
for free without even knowing they are doing so.
This approach to marketing is not as focused
on email communications as many of our internet marketing efforts were ten
years ago. But that is a good thing for
two reasons. The first reason is that
dynamic marketing, meaning selling through a relationship model is far more
effective and yields a higher per sale basket total as well as a much higher
incidence of repeat sales than cold call selling and it is far less
frustrating.
The second reason is that using email as
the backbone of your sales program has become more and more problematic because
of the influence of spam and spam filters which have made the free flow of
marketing emails much more difficult to manage.
Because spam filtering has become so aggressive and so successful, email
delivery of marketing material is harder to do and takes a greater investment
of time and ongoing knowledge that pulls you away from your customers and from
your businesses. So the migration to
dynamic selling and away from cold call and mass marketing email techniques is
a natural evolution of the internet marketing model in the new century.
So the online experience of your customer
takes on a greater importance in your marketing plan. But you will find that devoting more time and
money to building a web "place" that your customers participate in
actively will be far more rewarding than any scattershot approach to email
marketing could ever be even before the eruption of spam which made email
delivery such a nightmare.
One way to give your customers the feel of
being part of your organization is to build a specialized membership area of
your web site that customers must make an extra effort to become part of. In fact, many online retailers actually
charge a small fee to be part of this membership site. That is effective because the fee gives your
members the sensation of being part of a closed community and the revenue is
good for your cash flow.
Your customers who chose to become part of
the membership area of your web site should get some special privileges and
rewards for their elevated status. So
you might create a discount card that creates a desire to spend more in your
online store only for those customers who are part of the elite membership
area. Your customers will think they are
getting something very special when in fact, all you are doing is exchanging a
small part of your mark up for greater volume of sales which is always a good
trade off for you as a retailer.
One of the big values of creating a
membership area is that those who populate that membership can become part of
the team to make contributions about future product or service offerings. This is tremendously valuable to your
development teams because the more you "pick the brains" of your
customers, the more you will offer products or services that are going to be a
success when they hit the market.
You will see a greater sense of brand
loyalty grow out of the people who enjoy exclusive membership in your reserved
area of your web site. Make it a point
to make that part of the site look elegant and luxurious. Its all just graphics but in cyberspace,
graphics have a reality all their own.
And don't take your eye off of the goal of using the membership area for
recruitment of new customers through referrals or to take marginal customers
and make them devotees as well. A few
gift memberships can go a long way toward accomplishing those goals.
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