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Relationship Marketing Tips for Your Jewelry Business
Relationship marketing means building long-term friendships with your customers. It involves focusing your business efforts on your customer’s wants and needs rather than your own. Relationship marketing is a successful way to operate your business, because it’s much easier and less expensive for you to sell your work to your existing customers than to constantly try to drum up new single-sale customers. You don’t have to go through the preliminary steps of building trust and rapport with your existing customers, because the foundation of a good relationship has already been established. Of course, you’ll also continue to seek out new jewelry customers. But by keeping relationship marketing in mind and focusing on developing a long-lasting relationship with each customer—new and old--you’ll be able to: - reduce the time and money you spend on marketing your jewelry business, - gain a wealth of referral business when your customers send their friends, family, and other opportunities to you, - grow your business to fill your customers’ needs, - keep your jewelry sales rolling in without much effort on your part, even when the economy is slow, - have your finger on the pulse of what jewelry and jewelry-related services your market wants to buy, - have increasingly profitable shows, sales, and home parties, - develop a really great collection of customer testimonials to use on your website and other marketing literature. Think of each new jewelry sale transaction as the beginning of a long-term relationship. Learn about that customer with sincere interest, and treat him or her as a friend. Here are tips for good relationship marketing in your jewelry business: - Listen to your customers. Approach them caringly with “what do you need?” instead of “this is what I do”. By discovering and delivering exactly what your customers want, you’ll be tailoring your business to fill your market niche perfectly. - Focus your business on solving your customers’ problems, not on selling them anything. They’ll come back for repeat purchases when you position yourself as the solution to their problems of gift-giving, accessorizing outfits, maintaining their jewelry, and so on. While big companies focus on selling, you as a one-person business are in a perfect situation to deliver a personal touch and present the solutions your customers’ needs. They will return often for your service and refer their friends to you, too! - What jewelry do they want to wear and buy—what colors, styles, stones, sizes, etc? What’s hard for them to find elsewhere? Ask them and listen carefully to their answers. - Don’t sell your customers something they don’t need. And if you can’t fill their needs, refer them to someone who can. They’ll appreciate and remember your honesty, caring, and assistance that are the hallmarks of both friendship and relationship marketing. - If your customer has a business, become one of their customers and refer your friends and contacts to them. - Stay in touch with your customers by holding special “customers only” discounts, “earlybird shopping” events, or open-studio sales before gift-giving holidays. Send them notices of your upcoming shows, and include coupons for preferred customer discounts at the show. - Give back to your customers; relationship marketing focuses on giving. Offer your customers free services: free jewelry cleaning and repair, lifetime jewelry warranties, free shipping for website orders, free delivery for in-town orders, free gift wrap, etc. Anything that fills your customers’ needs and makes their busy lives easier is a positive step of relationship marketing. - Offer to customize jewelry for your customers—if a bracelet you have in your display is too long or too short, offer to customize the size at no extra charge, and deliver it to them for free. The wonderful outcome of your relationship marketing efforts is that, by focusing on building relationships rather than on selling jewelry, your business will grow quickly and effortlessly. Your customers remember you as a friend who makes their lives easier because you provide exactly what they need—and they’ll return to you again and again. Here are more articles with ideas for increasing your jewelry sales: How to Start Accepting Credit Cards Tips for Adding Body Jewelry to Your Line Making Jewelry Your Customers Want to Buy Tips for Selling Gift Certificates for Your Jewelry Relationship Marketing Tips for Your Jewelry Business Learn the Art of Making Add-on Sales How to Teach Jewelry Making Workshops Coming soon--more ideas for increasing sales. Enjoy getting to know your customers better and creating new ways of serving them with relationship marketing. Return to Home Jewelry Business Success Tips home page.
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