Community Marketing – Relationship Series pt. 3

The market as we know it has been changing, and rapidly. The real question is, who’s fault is it? Is it the consumer, the businesses, both? Well in reality, it can be easily attributed to both. 

As marketers we have to realize the difference between marketing to a community or marketing to an individual business. This has become a major difference in B2B marketing and B2C marketing. 

When you’re looking to seek out the community your relationship becomes, not less focused, but re aligned, per se. When looking for the community you must not only take into account one business or one individual, but the whole market for that community in itself. Where does their trust lie? With you with another competitor or are you looking into such a niche community that there has yet to be anything like what you’re offering?

These are times of treading carefully, with so many options of marketing and products and services, building your relationship before pushing yourself into the market is a huge consideration. People need to understand that yes, you have in fact been around for a while, that you understand their wants and needs and that your offer is right up their alley because you understand them. You don’t want to jump in blindly and have no idea what your market is looking for and hope for the best. You would be setting yourself up for immediate failure. I’m not saying build surveys and spend a lot of budget in case-studies. That’s a little too concrete. 

• Be on Twitter, connect, participate in the conversation revolving your community.
• Interact – don’t just be a link pusher, and repeat what everyone else is doing.
• Innovate – are you doing what it takes to stick out?
• Trust them, they will trust you – Relationships are mutual, stick to what you offer and don’t back out.

Image by khalid almasoud

Posted via web from Greg’s posterous