Dan Willis explains relational marketing: brands shift from pushing messages outward to having two-way conversations with customers on social media. McDonald's referenced Kanye, Taco Bell engaged directly with fans. The strategy is to find where your audience hangs out, join conversations, give real value, then mention your brand only when it fits naturally.
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So you want to know how to use relational marketing? Stick around, I'm going to help you out. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, go ahead, click that subscribe button down there, the little bell next to it. You'll get notified when the next video goes live. Putting out 312 videos this year. Today though, what we're talking about is relational marketing. Now don't be surprised if you haven't heard about relational marketing. There's a lot of different marketing techniques out there right now, and this is one that I'm a huge fan of. Um, I've started using the term. I'm not sure if others are out there using it actively yet or not, but it's something you're going to hear about in a big way this year. So let's get into this, figure out what relational marketing is, how you go about using it, and whether or not it's right for your business. Let's go. All right guys, first up, let's tackle this. What is relational marketing? So traditional marketing works like this. I put up an ad, a post, a billboard, something somewhere that spews my message, product, brand, service onto you. Okay, everybody's used to this simple example. Here we go. Abercrombie, right? You buy their shirt, it's got their logo on it, that's spewing their brand. This is traditional marketing. I'm a walking billboard here, right? Now, relational marketing works differently. This is a one-way street. Abercrombie speaking to you, you can't speak directly back to Abercrombie. Relational marketing works on the concept that we are in a market now with social media, with video, that we are able to directly speak back to brands, and brands need to recognize that fact. So this works like this: McDonald's puts out a post saying, come to us for dinner because Kanye eats here. Taco Bell reads all these posts about, oh yeah, that's a great idea, and goes, no, no, no, no, no, we want to speak directly to the customers. And so what they do is they take a shot at Kanye, and then everybody afterwards that speaks to them and says, that's awesome, they start reaching out and saying, you know you want Taco Bell for dinner. What they've done is they've reached in and recognized traditional marketing has tried something. They stepped in and started having conversations with the people on the ad. That's relational marketing at its finest, creating conversations within your community because you're a part of the community instead of blasting your message out to the crowd. Alright, so we've covered what relational marketing is. Now, how do you go about applying it? The easiest method to it is this, guys: be engaged in your community. And I know that sounds like it's super simple, but in reality, that's what it's about. Find conversations, and instead of just spewing your content onto it, your brand into it, what you want to do instead Instead is actively engage in the community, be a part of the conversation, talk, give, take, be a part of what's happening, and if the opportunity arises for you to input your content, input your brand in an organic, authentic, and transparent way, so be it, but it's not all about where can I plug, when can I plug, how can I plug. Instead, it's about finding the community where they are. Look at the conversations they're actively having. Create and craft content around those questions. Create solutions for that community. Engage, enjoy, and be an authentic part of the community. When you do this, guys, it is transparent. The community recognizes you as one of them and it becomes a relationship. Once you've got a relationship, now you're into the realm of relational marketing. Now we come to the last part. Does relational marketing work? The answer is this: if you've got two people pushing something on you, let's say you walk down the street, okay? You're walking past a McDonald's and the manager of the McDonald's runs out and says, "By McDonald's, you want a Big Mac for lunch?" Are you gonna go in? Chances are you'll probably jump back a little bit and I don't know what's going on. Now, same scenario, but let's say the guy inside the McDonald's is someone you know. He runs out and says, "Hey man, you want to come in for lunch?" The odds are a million times better that you're gonna. Stop, go, I recognize I have a relationship with that person. Hey, I, you know, maybe I've got time for lunch. At least the consideration is there, and more often than not, it's gonna be a yes. Essentially what relational marketing does is it takes traditional cold marketing, scraps it, and says, let's find ways to actively create warm markets inside of our niche because we're members of this community, we're actively involved, and when we have something that we want to give People want to take it, not because we're pushing it, but because we're already there and we have a relationship built. It's going to go a lot further, guys, but that's relational marketing 101. Let me know down in the comments below what you think of relational marketing. Does it hold potential for your company or is it just another thing? Love to hear your thoughts, guys. I'll be back tomorrow with another great video. If you know somebody that's got a business or is an entrepreneur struggling to get that yes, maybe relational marketing is what they need. Send them the video. Catch you tomorrow.
