Regardless of the trade, a successful business is one that can display their product or service as being relevant to their customers. This can be achieved in a two-pronged strategy –- personalized marketing and employee loyalty.

Build Employee Loyalty

It is, after all, your employees who develop the relationship with the customer that is so important. They are the ones who directly represent your company to the marketplace. How they behave and how they work to satisfy your customers’ needs is what ultimately will shape your business’ reputation.

So it is imperative to have good, loyal workers who have a vested interest in the success of the company. Of course, it starts with hiring good employees in the first place, but it doesn’t end there. You also need to provide ways to develop and nurture their loyalty.

Larry Alton, author of Why the Best Employee Benefits Don’t Stop With HR, describes how you can do this by offering them financial incentives, tangible as well as intangible benefits, and showing your concern for them with regular enhancements of existing benefits.

As Alton points out, people are motivated by money. Being rewarded for providing the customer with a little bit more shows that you are grateful for their service and dedication and they will be inclined to do even more.

Personalize Your Marketing

Next, create advertising and website content that establishes the relevance of your service or product to the lives of your customers. An article titled Personalized Marketing And Technology: 4 Ways To Make It Work For Your Business offers ways to do this. For example, contributor Steve Olenski suggests that you customize your products, cater your website to the particular interests of your customers, use data to create relatable content, and create personal responses to customers’ messages sent to your business’ Instagram or Facebook page, email account, or snail mail.

Enlist the Help of Influencers

 Now attract the help of an “influencer” to promote your business. An “influencer” is one who provides personal and trustworthy information of interest to the social media set.

Rhett Power, author of 4 Effective Tips On How to Reach Influencers, notes that an influencer is very effective in spreading your story. According to statistics tapped by Power:

  • Brands are mentioned 3.3 bullion times a day in America.
  • 92% of people seek referrals from sources that they trust.
  • 81% of social media users search online for recommendations before deciding.
  • The top 20 “brand-friendly” YouTube beauty and style channels have between 1.59 million and 41.2 million views each month.
  • Word-of-mouth influencers can generate more than twice the sales of paid advertising, and these customers have a 37% higher retention.

A good influencer has already developed a substantial following of people who trust what he or she suggests. Getting one to talk up your brand or business can prove to be invaluable in attracting the customers you so desperately want to reach.