What is Relationship Equity and…
Why it is so important?
Building your Relationship Equity with your prospective clients or customers is imperative.
Why?
Because gone are the days where you simply advertise your product and someone would see it and purchase.
The buying psychology of purchasers has changed. Many buyers have become “shop browsers”. These people search their desired products online, then view them in the shops and return online to access the best deal and then purchase.
And in the case of non tangible goods such as services they will spend a considerable amount of time online comparing similar services before they make a decision.
In fact NewsCred stated that a potential purchaser ‘googling’ will hit 21 different sites or options before making the decision to buy.
Up until a few years ago you would be able to advertise your service or product, lead them to a sales page on your website and get them to buy.
This is not possible anymore for 4 reasons:
1. It is a highly competitive market. Your average person will be hit by 3,000 bits of advertising material every day. And everybody and their dog can build a website and quickly have their products online.
2. The market is working at a much faster pace. There is an abundance of choices and your ability to compare choices is far easier.
Video on the Illusion of Reality is at the end of this Blog – keep reading 🙂
3. Psychologically our brains are attuned to be able to generalise, distort and delete. We take in more than 2 million bits of data every hour and so that we can manage this barrage of information, in simple terms, we “sort and filter” it, resulting in most of the information being dumped . We retain and remember only what we choose to, that fits within our value system. Our brains are very well adapted to delete advertising and any material we are not interested in.
4. A considerable amount of information, especially in the services, training and software industries can be obtained off the internet completely free.
You need to build Relationship Equity. What is Relationship Equity?
What?
Well just like the equity in your home, the more equity you put into your property, the more holding you have on that house, the more value you invest into the home, the greater the value or equity.
In a similar vein, you could build an extension on your property that cost you $15,000 but actually adds $35,000 in value to your home.
Relationship Equity is similar, it will cost you time and money to build the relationship equity, but the value when they become your customer or client will greatly exceed the initial costs. Furthermore you will have a genuine relationship with an actual person, not just a number on a spreadsheet.
Relationship Equity is building a relationship with a prospective client or customer by giving freely, valuable content or products to assist that individual, without remuneration.
Building Relationship Equity with your prospects is simple. You need to do 3 things:
1. Offer high value content, where you can be seen as the authority in that field.
2. Offer simple ways that your prospects can engage with you so that you can build trust and they can then follow you.
3. Build an automated system so that you can “touch” or “nudge” your prospects several times, 3 or 4 times before you ask for anything even an email and certainly any offer
Relationship equity is like lego, one piece at a time and you can build a magnificent structure.
I see a lot of clients get this wrong, you can’t build this type of equity instantly. Imagine for a moment that you have just bought a new puppy. Would you expect to be able to teach it to sit, stay, walk by your side and not chew the furniture in one day. Well of course not!.
You know that you need to build a relationship with the puppy, gain its trust and love and then they will learn quickly and easily.
Think about it, what do you offer the puppy to achieve this? You give food (high value content), love and patience (free trust building content) and you expect nothing in return until you feel that the puppy would benefit from learning something. Maybe teaching it to sit on command so that you know, it will never run into a road or get hurt when you are around, whatever it may be that will benefit that puppy.
I am not for a moment suggesting that your prospects are puppies, but I am saying that you need to give them love and respect so that you build trust and engagement. Then, when you offer them something that will benefit their lives they are more open to receiving it and therefore will gain more from that offer.
Relationship equity is about this trail of trust. Never advertise to go straight to your sales page or product, for cold prospects. Instead use advertising that takes them to content – high value content.
For instance you could take them to a blog and on that blog there could be a free download. By free I mean ungated, which means you are not asking for anything not even their email. It also means that they can get immediate access there and then.
Examples of ungated content:
1. Blog posts offering information and tips or that are part of the content from a premium product. Here for example is a link to “3 Steps to Grow Your List” positive information on how to grow your email list.
2. Stats, tips, quotes, or ideas shared via social media or on your website
3. Preview chapters of a book or ebook you have written
4. Reviews of products, apps or software
5. Infographics or “mini graphics” part of the infographic
6. Videos and video tutorials - There is a free video at the bottom of this that explains how we generalise, distort and delete information, as I discussed earlier. Video
7. Part of your product, or gated content, splinter off part and use to illustrate a few points of the whole.
8. Checklist, tables or worksheets.
Once you have started a relationship with a new prospect and they have been ‘nudged’ two things will happen, they will now be aware of who you are and they will have sampled some of your high value content.
The next time they see you post on social media there will be some recollection, the next time you post a blog or more un-gated content the more likely it is that they will click and engage with that content.
You are building Relationship Equity.
The next step is to offer a piece of gated content. Offering a lead magnet in exchange for an email and perhaps a first name too. This Lead Magnet must be high value, great content. You are building credibility as well as trust with this content, showing you are experienced and an expert in that field.
You lead Magnet should be:
1. High value great content
2. Easily consumable (no one has the time to read a 100 page document to find the essential points)
3. Have a clear Call To Action – what step or engagement do you want to achieve next.
This checklist explains 16 points to 4x your leads.
Once you have secured their email with some great content you can place them into an automated email sequence where you will be offering further free content, tips and news and sporadically your product/s or service/s.
Build your relationship equity at every level until your potential customer or client is safe and secure, that you are a genuine authority in your subject, that your content is of such good value that they..
a) would not want to miss it, and
b) they want to share it with others.
The wonderful part about Relationship Equity is that, just like a great friendship, it grows over time and importantly, it stays for a long time.
Once built you do not need to be barraging your list every day, because they will know when you do offer something it will be good value and worth the view, read or purchase.
Here is the Video on the Illusion Of Reality that I promised you above. The video will explain in part how we humans cope with the immense amount of information we imbibe every day and still stay sane!
