To me, the difference between an acquaintance and a friend is the level of how far one is willing to go for you.  You may have a friendly relationship with someone, but do they really care about you and your success?  Would they be there for you in your time of need?  Are they willing to lend that extra helping hand?  In order to build a strong customer base, you need to create strong personal relationships with your clients and convince them that when it comes your specialty, they can trust you to help out in their time of need.

All month long we’ve discussed our Hourglass marketing plan.  This post we’ll wrap up the customer cone.  You see, your customer relationship shouldn’t end at the sale. Just as you led your potential client down through your sales funnel, you must also lead them down through each level of the customer cone and nurture a strong customer base.

*Create a bond between you and your clients through personalization. Pay true attention to your customers and provide real value throughout.  Integrate personal touches within your communications and external facing media.

*After you have fulfilled your sales commitments and followed up by suggesting other products or services that may benefit your client, maintain contact with your customers by providing them with personal enrichment and value from knowing you.

*Take the time to find out what problems your clients face and provide solutions for them.  Pass along news of interest.  Become the reliable go-to for your product or service.  Provide education and an expert voice in your industry.  All of these things will establish you as an expert in your field and gain the trust of all those you’ve assisted.

*Let your clients know you are looking out for them by inviting them to events from which they may derive benefit.  Hold your own seminar and invite your whole customer list.  Determine the best atmosphere to foster cross learning between your current clients and potential clients mixed together and go from there.

*Pass along your client’s name when networking or when an acquaintance mentions he or she needs a service your customer offers.  Consider what other reciprocal relationships could you build to strengthen your customer base.  Can you link two of your customers together?  They’ll thank you for it!

*Provide strong web content and tools. What has importance to your customers? Why should your clients keep coming to you for information as an expert?  Keep your website relevant and updated with information regarding the latest industry trends and you’ll give your visitors a reason to keep coming back.

*Furnish a list of resources and links for your visitors.  What sites do you access a lot?  Provide this for your clients who would use similar products, programs, and /or services.

*Stay in contact with your customers post-sale through social media.  Both your existing and potential clients hang out in social media so you’ll need to network and engage with both groups. Your personal relationships online will attract more people to your list.  The bigger your list of followers, the more followers you’ll attract, and so on.

Keep it up and really nurture those personal relationships.  Soon your customers will be telling their friends and coming back for more, generating lots of warm leads and income for your business!

For more great tips:

For more great tips to help bring structure and automation to your marketing system please check out our free Hourglass Marketing System Brainstorming Guide.

Also, please stick around, because all November long we will cover Online Marketing Automation Strategies with our Hourglass Concept marketing strategy as the framework; dedicating a blog post to each level of the program.

As always, we welcome your comments and feedback so please feel free to ask questions or leave your tips to share as well. We plan to get all of our outlets involved so be sure to check us out not only here at the blog (or make it easier and sign up to get the posts as they go live!), but on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, and Google+…and YouTube!

Share your thoughts, stuck points, and successes!  We are here to Unbound you from the overwhelm online marketing presents!

About the Author:

John DuBois writes content and copy as well as helping plan strategy for Unbound Virtual Administrators.  John and his partner, Tara, can’t wait to share the step-by-step social media e-book they are currently putting together that will get you up and running on all of the major platforms.  There’s also a book in the works on Unbound’s Hourglass Marketing System to help you build a system for your own business.

Please connect with John on Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.