Customer Relationship Marketing

History has shown that businesses often reduce – or completely eliminate – spending on marketing and advertising during an economic slowdown. That places a premium on customer relationship building and creating a vast referral network. [Read More]

Reaching the female consumer is an art form that brands such as Starbucks, Neiman Marcus, and Target have mastered. And because of it, they’ve reaped category leadership, sales, and even a cultish customer loyalty.

Unfortunately, a [Read More]

For serious customer relationship–building marketers, unlocking the key to the buying decision would be something like finding the goose that lays the golden egg. Trouble is, the goose of consumer behavior is an elusive and [Read More]

Every day, customers fire employees by taking their money elsewhere. It is that money, after all, that pays for employee salaries, vacations, 401(k)s, rental cars, and everything else, says best–selling author Jeffrey Fox, founder of [Read More]

Who is your customer? Perhaps the better question is, who isn’t? As a longtime marketer, strategic communications expert, and brand identity specialist, Mary Lou Quinlan has noticed that most people think a customer is only [Read More]

Even the smartest, hardest-working entrepreneurs depend on other people — be they employees, vendors, customers, or someone else — for their success. The trouble, asserts Ty Freyvogel, founder of MakingSenseOfYourBusiness.com, is that entrepreneurs [Read More]

Perhaps the biggest demand from consumers these days is to have a say in how they engage with companies. Permission-based marketing was a good start, but it’s now insufficient. “Permission doesn’t get you to disclose [Read More]

Dealing effectively with dissatisfied customers requires special skills and behaviors. To help you maintain calm when others are out of control, Lydia Ramsey, a relationship marketing expert and the author of Manners That Sell: Adding [Read More]

While it certainly makes sense for a company to focus on its main product, Behar believes much of Starbucks’ subsequent growth and success can be attributed to the fact that it became a people-centered organization, [Read More]

From a small bank in Oklahoma that offers customers a park to relax in, complete with walking trails and a gazebo, to retail outlets that deliver highly customized music and video presentations, companies across all [Read More]