When it comes to bringing in new customers, you can think of it in two ways. You can either treat everyone as a walking wallet where you come up with campaigns that try to grab as much money from them as you can. Or you can view them as human beings, with their own loves, likes, fears, and hopes. 

Essentially, the latter is what it means to be in the world of public relations. However, even PR pros can forget this and accidentally hop into the world of marketing which is focused more on simply drawing sales. We’ve all been there at one point or another.

A Real Connection 

The main difference between winning wallets and winning hearts is establishing a real connection between the company and its customers. Running a campaign that gets a sale is nice for the bottom line, but you want something that brings people back again and again.

For example, your current campaign is to send out guest blog posts to relevant blogs to announce an exciting new product. That’s great and will definitely get your company noticed. However, what about this is a real connection? You need to go a step further in some way to ensure people will come back for more.

So in the guest post you include a contest or promotion that leads to your social media profiles. Now you have a real crowd coming in. To keep it going, you make sure to respond to all the posts from these new people. Then you send them over to your blog posts on your website and respond to comments there.

Ongoing 

The last paragraph shows what the other big difference is between going after wallets versus connecting with people’s hearts. The guest post method mentioned above is a means to an end – you’re announcing to the world, “hey, go check out my new stuff.” It’s a one way street where the customer is the end of the road.

A PR campaign that truly connects with your customers, though, is a two way street: you on one end and your customers on the other, both able to travel back and forth. It’s also an ongoing, busy street, one that can never shut down lest you lose the connection with that customer.

As mentioned above in the example, you have the guest blog post that leads to social media that leads to a new engagement which leads to customers for your other products and so on and so forth. It’s a never-ending cycle of pumping out new material and talking to new customers and reconnecting with old customers.

And that’s the difference – once you establish a connection, neither party will want to give it up. The customer becomes a fan of a company that cares about its fans. They appreciate you’re not just after their wallet, you care how they’re getting along in life. In return, you never want to let them get away after investing so much time into them and their well-being.

How do you connect with your customers on a serious level?

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Grab your free 160-page copy of the Big Press Release Book – Press Releases for Every Occasion and Industry here: http://www.ereleases.com/offer/bigbook.html