The most important parts of almost every persons life is their relationships. That is just a fact of being human. We value our relationships with our families, our friends and God more than anything else in life. In fact, almost every person you know, will list relationships of some type or other as the most important thing in their life.

So why don’t we use this in our marketing? In most marketing I have seen, businesses market about price or services or product, but they seldom use their marketing to build relationships. I have seen some evidence that this is changing.

For instance, a few times I have seen businesses tell their story and occasionally they try to get their customers involved in a community like a special membership or to get them to an event.

The truth is even if people tell you the reason they do business with any company is price or value or service, the relationship they have with someone in that company is a huge part of the real reason they do it.If you think about it, much of the reason small Mom and Pop businesses can compete against the huge chains is that people feel like they know the owner and therefore they trust them.If you want to build a loyal following of customers who only want to do business with you, then it will help a lot if you spend some time and money working to build relationships with your customers. You see most people are looking for the “guy” they can call. They don’t want to go through the hassle of screening a new contractor every time they need something done. They just want to be able to call one person they trust to do it for them.

If you can become the “go to” guy for enough customers, you will never have to worry about where your next paycheck is going to come from. Loyal customers will almost invent a reason for you to do business with them.

I will tell you from experience that these customers are easier to do business with and they will not be as likely to shop around as new customers will be. Not only will they do business with you repeatedly, they will send all of their friends and relatives to you.

I want to encourage you to work hard and spend a good percentage of your marketing budget on building relationships with your customers. Your competition will not be likely to do it, so you can dominate your market after only a couple of years of doing this successfully.