The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING (RM)

Application: Marketing Communication, NPD/NSD, Sales

The Concept

Relationship marketing (RM) is a relatively recent addition to the more established marketing theory. It suggests that companies can have a relationship with their customers, whether businesses or consumers. By understanding their customers in a systematic way, and by managing deepening levels of interaction with them, revenue and profit will increase. For many firms (particularly in business-to-business marketing) this has codified intuitive approaches that have been at the heart of their business for many years.

RM is an approach to marketing based around ongoing relationships with customers. It is, or should be, radically different from the “four Ps”-based, throw it out there, broadcast marketing techniques of the mid 20th century. This focuses on the buyer as a human being and gives attention to the interaction between human beings in transactions. It suggests that organizations seek to understand their buyers’ motivations and purchase habits through, among other things, research and analysis of buying data. They then create communications programmes directed at these buyers which are more targeted, personalized, and relevant. As buyers respond to these, the supplier can adjust their plans further, creating a virtuous circle of improved profitable engagement.

The approach is based on ...