Relational Marketing Versus Transactional Marketing – What To Choose ?

Marketing a product, service or even a business is highly important. Proper marketing automatically creates a difference and choosing how you market is what can make or break your company. Relational marketing versus transactional marketing is definitely a tricky choice since everything depends on business and product type. At the same type, you have to think about the customer type that you want to attract. If you just make a one-time sale, you need to go through a different marketing technique when compared to attracting a customer that will return for various different purchases while also wanting to remain loyal to the business. The truth is that in most cases marketers will actually combine transactional marketing with relational marketing. There is a pretty strong possibility that this is what you want to do.

Transactional Marketing

The transactional marketing campaign will focus on your sales process for the item that you promote. An emphasis will be put in making a sale. This does include all aggressive sales techniques, even those that can alienate customers. As a really simple example, we can focus on the transactional campaign that promotes a time-share vacation home. In this case the salesperson will have the main focus put on making the sale.

Relational Marketing

This type of marketing campaign tries to build a relationship between the business or salesperson and the customer. Due to the creation of the relationship, a customer will be tempted to buy more in the future since loyalty is created. When looking at really large purchases like a home or a car, relational marketing is extremely important. However, the pure relational marketing campaign can also have the risk of creating a really strong relationship while not closing a sale.

Using One Or The Other

Obviously, you will want to use transactional marketing campaigns in the event that your main focus is put on a one-time purchase since hard sales are necessary. You do not have an expectation that the customer will come back and offer repeat business. The problem appears in the hard sales tactic used since it can easily annoy your customer and will usually discourage repeat business. A gentler technique is needed when you want repeat business situations.

Finding A Middle Ground

Many businesses will use a combination of transactional and relational marketing and whenever this is possible, it is what you want to do. We basically talk about a salesperson trying to build a good relationship with the potential client while the sale is still attempted. In this case communication is highly important. The customers can come in with different expectations. Many are delighted when they are addressed by name while others may just want to be anonymous. Effective positioning automatically includes reading a customer properly.