We all need a faithful friend. The big screen has reflected it with the case of Andy and his favorite toy: Woody, from the famous Toy Story movie. However, the relationship fades over time as the needs and hobbies of the early childhood child change as they become a 17-year-old.

Thus, both the manufacturer and the distributor should have adjusted to this new social reality and personalize their message to accompany the consumer in another phase of their journey, and thus maintain that loyalty for different generations. The adoption of relationship marketing would have been of great help to them.

In itself, marketing is "the ability to build profitable relationships between the company and its consumers; this means a win-win relationship, in which we both put and receive", in terms of Andrés Ochoa, director of Mk – Think, guest of the webinar "The importance of relationship marketing for SMEs", organized by Pymes Go Digital.

In his opinion, the adoption of relationship marketing translates into that process of awareness of building a relationship of value and long breath with my clients. "For this I must leave aside the idea of that transactional stage in which the sale takes place, which is simply a consequence of that relationship," he says.
For him, customer satisfaction is the reason why we have to make relationship strategies. It is not a question of arbitrarily sending an email, debugging a database or carrying out a mileage program, but of defining what is the strategy with which I am going to relate to my clients and how we can make it become the heart of my business.

Why is a relationship marketing strategy important for SMEs?

A fundamental element of the adoption of relationship marketing is the establishment of alignment projects between marketing and sales. For this we have customer relationship management (CRM).

This software is used to enter and manage important information of each client, an essential knowledge for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which comprise the largest number of companies in Latin America.

In Colombia, for example, where there are at least 2.5 million SMEs that generate about 67% of national employment according to the Colombian Confederation of Chambers of Commerce (Confecamaras), this model has been gradually incorporated.

In 2016, a report by the Universidad del Rosario in 2016 revealed that while 55% of national SMEs invested in loyalty programs, 45% focused on the design and development of a customer management information model.

What does that allow me? Know what the client is called, their family composition, the last time they bought me, with what margin, and thus design more successful marketing and sales strategies, in addition to automating processes.

"Since SMEs do not have a budget as vast as that of large companies to implement and develop great advertising or communication strategies, CRM strategies become an easy tool to access," says Ochoa.

In this way, we can dynamically and closely build our buyer persona and know what information to create and share at the right time. Hence the need to direct specific strategies and efforts to create an atmosphere with several audiences.

Steps to a Relationship Marketing Adoption Strategy

In that sense, the important thing is to define what we want to do and what the objective is. From this, we can generate a strategy of adoption of relationship marketing that allows us to measure everything from the beginning to the end.

• Step 1: Define the strategy according to the company's goal: get more purchases or keep the most important customers?
• Step 2: Identify the customer. Obtain detailed information and classify it into groups according to your journey as a consumer and your frequency and type of purchases.
• Step 3: Make close contact. It is about maintaining a permanent interaction with customers to get to know them and make themselves known.
• Step 4: Act with the right and timely message. Break that line of inertia through strategic e-mailing and publication on social networks that allow you to undertake that relationship and maintain customer loyalty throughout its life cycle.

A well-known concept is that of business intelligence, associated with the corresponding software. However, intelligence lies in the person to proceed understanding what the customer wants and leave a clear message: we are not alone at the time of a sale, but we accompany you constantly, like a faithful friend.