5 Relationship Marketing Power Principles Business Bloggers Must Know

This is a guest post by James Hipkin.

Is traffic to your blog important to you?

“Sure it is. But, with so many blogs competing for traffic, how do I get some?”

There are lots of things you can do. Many, many blog posts have been written about generating traffic. In fact, Michael has written about this, and even created a free course called Blog Traffic Fisher. But there’s a secret most don’t talk about, a secret to more blog traffic, to high quality blog traffic, and the secret is about to be revealed.

Content is King. Or is it?

Most believe that high quality content is the key. It’s true, content is very important. But lets face it, content is table stakes. Without high quality content, content that appeals to your target or niche, you just can’t compete. And we’re not talking about competing, we’re talking about winning.

Traffic is Important. Loyal traffic is More Important.

For a moment I want you to stop thinking about generating new traffic and start thinking about your current traffic. What are you doing to keep your current visitors coming back? Your current traffic is an untapped opportunity to grow your traffic.

“How so?” you ask.

Well, how easy is it to fill a leaky bucket?

Are you more likely to buy from a store that has treated you well?

Have you ever told a friend about a product or service you are loyal to?

“But they come back for my great content.”

I’m sure they do, but remember, it’s table stakes. There are over one million blogs created every day. (I wasn’t able to find a reliable source for this statistic so if you know of one please let us know in the comments.) And every single one of them is using the tips in the how-to-generate-traffic-to-your-blog posts to try and attract your visitors to their blog. And fess up, your content might be very good, but you aren’t the only smart person writing about your subject. You need something else.

Your current traffic can be of huge value to you. Keep them coming back and you’ve plugged the leak. Keep them coming back and you can sell them stuff. Keep them coming back and they will tell others about your blog, either through Google and improved page rank or directly by talking up your posts. Treat your current traffic with the respect it deserves and they will become loyal visitors.

“Cool. Now what? What do I need to do to accomplish this?”

Relationship Marketing for Bloggers

Lets define our term.

“Relationship,” doesn’t mean your visitors become friends with you blog. It means they feels a degree of affinity toward the blog and that, all things being equal, they will choose to visit your blog over other options because, over time, your blog has delivered more value.

So what do I main by “value?”

I’m not talking about functional value, i.e., your content, I’m talking about value that goes beyond the value of your content. This value can be practical, it can be emotional, and it can be both. It’s value that build relationship equity and it’s the secret ingredient to sustaining and building high quality traffic.

The following five relationship marketing principles for bloggers will help you as you consider your blog’s visitor communication strategy.

1. Focus on frequent visitors and commenters. Use a plugin like What Would Seth Godin Do and customize the message to encourage repeat visitors to subscribe to your email list.

There are typically a small percentage of visitors who contribute the majority of your comments. Respond to them in the Comments. Send them an email to say “thanks.” Comment on their blog if they have one. Encourage them to subscribe to your email list.

2. It’s a commercial relationship. It is easy, and often useful, to associate the principles of inter personal relationships with relationship marketing. Be careful. This can be misleading. The relationship you develop with your visitors is a commercial relationship, your visitors expect to exchange value for value, they expect to exchange their time for your content.

Because it’s a commercial relationship, you don’t need to be timid. Tell them about what’s new and exciting on your blog, tell them about your new products, your new course, your new ebook. They won’t mind. Track their interests by what links they click on. Record their interest in a simple database and send them a follow-up email if they don’t take action. They will probably appreciate the reminder. Say thank you if they do respond.

3. Build the relationship. Relationships don’t just happen. You have to work at it. Relationship equity is created by adding value, by creating value beyond your blog’s content.

Don’t be passive, take action.

Get your new subscribers involved. reach out to them, let them know you care. Give them soothing extra.

Say “thank you.” It goes a long way.

4. Relationships are dynamic. A relationship goes through stages. This is true in terms of both the stages and the degree of intensity. This will be obvious from your experience with inter personal relationships. Commercial relationships also go through stages and each requires different emphasis on communication channel, contact frequency and content.

Use the following labels to think about the stages: Consideration, Prospecting, Connection and Loyalty. Keep in mind, the pivot point is in the middle not the end.

Map out your blog marketing plan with the stages in mined. Social Media works best when focused on Consideration. Tease them, intrigue them, get them to visit. Use the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin to welcome them. But don’t assume that, just because they’ve visited once, they are loyal visitors. They aren’t. The key event is when they subscribe to your email list.

This is the Connection stage and it’s the most important stage in terms of ROI and probably the least exploited. Reach out to new subscribers and give them something special to establish the connection. Surprise them, delight them.

You will have noted that I’m suggesting the email list is more important than the RSS feed. To peruse relationship marketing it is. I’m not suggesting you abandon the RSS feed. It’s an effective way for casual visitors to keep up with your blog. But you want your loyal visitors to take the extra step, to subscribe to the email list so you can keep in touch with them, so you can create relationship equity.

I’m not aware of a way to uniquely capture an email address from RSS subscribers. (Again, if you know of a way to do this please tell us in the comments.) Offer your subscription incentive on your email list not the RSS feed. Or consider the Better Feed plugin from Planetozh. You can use this to, among other things, invite RSS feed readers to subscribe to your email list.

5. Maintain the relationship. Once the relationship has been established maintaining it becomes vital. It isn’t hard but it requires more than your content. It requires your active involvement.

One of the five relationship marketing principles is “Good customers expect to be rewarded.” Note, it’s “rewarded,” not bribed. There are lots of ways to “reward” your loyal visitors: talk to them, include them in your thinking, ask them for their help, tell them about stuff you think they will find interesting. Invite them, through email, to contribute ideas to your blog.

And don’t be afraid of sending them sales messages. In fact, targeted, relevant sales massages can be seen as added value. How cool is that, your sales message can build relationship equity. How? Because you are telling your loyal visitors about something that they, based on their interest in your blog and past behavior, will find interesting. Remember, it’s a commercial relationship.

Use the five relationship marketing principles for bloggers to plan your visitor communication and you will build and sustain a loyal visitor base. Your traffic generation efforts will be even more effective because you won’t be constantly trying to fill a leaky bucket. Your sales efforts will be more effective because your loyal visitors understand your value proposition and, speaking practically, they are more likely to open your emails.

So, how do you created added value for your loyal visitors? How do you build commercial relationships? Tell us in the comments!

James Hipkin uses his multi-disciplined background and broad exposure to major B2C brands in Europe and the US to help businesses, big and small, navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape. For more of his thoughts on marketing strategy, customer relationship marketing and innovation go to Hipkin’s Hip Shots. You can also follow James on Twitter: @JHipkin.