If You're Building a Relationship With Your Audience, Act Like It
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We talk a lot about relationships in business. We talk about building trust, growing communities, nurturing leads, making connections, and staying top of mind. All of that sounds great, but lately I've been thinking about a much simpler question: Would we actually behave this way in a real relationship?
Imagine meeting someone at a networking event and having a great conversation. You exchange information, discover you have a few things in common, and agree to stay in touch. Then, every time they contact you afterward, they talk exclusively about themselves. Or they tell you the same sad story every single time you see them. Maybe they disappear completely for six months, only to suddenly reappear because they want something from you.
At some point, you'd probably stop answering.
And yet businesses do some version of this all the time. We spend an enormous amount of energy trying to get people's attention, without thinking nearly as much about the experience we create once we have it. We want the follower, the website visitor, the email subscriber, the lead. But those aren't just numbers moving through a marketing funnel. They're people deciding, interaction by interaction, whether they want to keep us in their world.
Your marketing is teaching people what it feels like to be in a relationship with your business.
That's brand experience. And it's relationship marketing.
Your Digital House Isn't Just Something People Look At
I've been talking a lot lately about the idea of your Digital House: the connected system made up of your website, content, search, email, social media, and all the other ways people encounter your business. The point has always been that these pieces shouldn't operate independently. Your website shouldn't just sit there while you're frantically trying to figure out what to post on Instagram this week. Your content should lead somewhere. Your networking should connect back to something. Everything should have a job.
But there's another layer to the Digital House metaphor that I've been thinking about lately. You're not just building the house. You're inviting people into it.
Now, to be clear, I have no aspirations of becoming the Martha Stewart of digital marketing. Think more Ina Garten with a martini in one hand and a leopard-print blouse that may or may not be appropriate for the occasion. But I do understand the basic principle of hospitality: when you invite people into your home, you want them to feel welcome.
You don't fling open the front door, grab their contact information, hand them a PDF, and disappear into another room. You welcome them. You have a conversation. You offer them something. You introduce them to people or ideas they might enjoy. You pay attention to whether they're having a good time. And if you enjoyed having them there, you give them a reason to come back.
Why should interacting with a business feel all that different?
Someone might first discover your Digital House through Google. They might read something you wrote, find you on social media, meet you at a networking event, or hear your name from someone they trust. However they arrive, that's discovery. It's important, and I've written a lot lately about making your expertise easier to find.
But discovery isn't a relationship. It's an introduction.
What happens next is where relationship marketing begins.
Every Touchpoint Teaches People Something About You
Think about the businesses whose emails you actually open or whose content you seek out. I'm willing to bet it isn't because they have the world's most sophisticated funnel. You keep paying attention because, over time, you've learned what to expect from them. Maybe they're useful. Maybe they're funny. Maybe they consistently make you think. Maybe they understand a problem you're dealing with or have a perspective you don't find everywhere else.
Those interactions add up. They create familiarity and trust, but they also create an expectation about what being connected to that business is going to feel like. That's why I think we need to stop treating marketing as a series of disconnected campaigns and one-off efforts (what I like to call Random Acts of Marketing) and start thinking about those individual touchpoints as part of an ongoing relationship.
Are you the person who only calls when you need something? Are you the person who dominates every conversation? Are you the person who tells the same story over and over, regardless of whether the person sitting across from you needs or wants to hear it again? Or are you the person who pays attention, brings something useful to the conversation, and occasionally says, “Hey, I thought of you when I saw this”?
There's a question in there that I think is worth asking about your own marketing:
If my marketing were a person I had a relationship with, would I want to keep hearing from them?
The answer tells you a lot about the brand experience you're creating.
Social Media Can Introduce You. It Doesn't Have to Carry the Whole Relationship.
This is also one reason I've been talking so much about staying visible without living on social media. Somewhere along the way, small business marketing became almost synonymous with social media, and I think we’ve put far too much pressure on one channel. And look, I don't hate social media. I use it in my own marketing, and I absolutely think it has a job to do. It can help someone discover you, keep you visible, spark a conversation, and reinforce a relationship that already exists.
But you're operating in someone else's house. The platform controls the algorithm, and you're competing with friends, family, news, memes, advertisements, cat videos, and approximately eleven million other things for someone's attention. Then we pile even more expectations onto it and ask social media to get us discovered, educate our audience, establish our expertise, build trust, generate leads, nurture those leads, and make the sale.
That's a lot to ask from one channel.
Everything in your marketing should have a job. Social media doesn't need all of them.
This is one reason I care more about email than algorithms. When someone gives you their email address and says, in one form or another, “Yes, I'd like to hear from you,” the relationship changes. You aren't simply hoping an algorithm decides to put you in front of that person again. They've given you permission to continue the conversation directly.
There are numbers behind this, too. Current benchmarks vary by platform, industry, and audience, but email still gives small businesses a meaningful opportunity to reach people who have chosen to hear from them. Constant Contact reports an average open rate of 30.8% across industries for the first quarter of 2026, while Mailchimp's current benchmark is 35.63%. Those numbers deserve some context; privacy features such as Apple's Mail Privacy Protection have made open rates less reliable than they used to be, so I wouldn't obsess over whether your number matches an industry average.
What matters more to me is the relationship behind the number. Someone gave you permission to show up in their inbox. Even if 18% of your list opens a particular email, that's a group of actual people who chose to spend some of their limited attention with you. Compare that with publishing something on social media and hoping the right person happens to see it while they're scrolling.
That's a different kind of access, and I think it comes with a responsibility not to waste it. With great power comes great responsibility and, apparently, a thoughtful nurture sequence.
A Lead Magnet Isn't the Relationship
This is where lead magnets (aka free resources, opt-in resources, free downloads) come into the picture. Before we make this more complicated than it needs to be, a good lead magnet is simply a useful next step for someone with a problem you help solve but who isn't ready for the full solution yet.
It could be a checklist, guide, assessment, template, workbook, audio file, or something else entirely. The format matters far less than whether the resource is genuinely useful to the person downloading it and logically connected to the work you actually do.
But here's the important part: the download isn't the goal.
When someone exchanges their email address for your resource, they've told you something. They're interested in this particular subject because they have a question, problem or goal related to something you know how to help with. And they've given you permission to stay in touch.
If your response is one automated “Here's your download!” email followed by six months of silence, you haven't really created a relationship. You've collected an email address.
There's a difference.
Nurture Is Just Continuing the Conversation
I have to admit, I've never loved the word “nurture.” It feels a little gooey to me. And “nurture sequence” sounds like Marketing Speak for something requiring 17 pieces of software, a whiteboard covered in arrows, and at least one person on the internet telling you that you're leaving money on the table. In reality, we're talking about something we've all been doing our entire lives: continuing a relationship after the first conversation.
First, deliver what you promised. Then help the person with the thing they raised their hand about. Give them an opportunity to understand your perspective, your expertise, and the way you approach the problem. And when there's a logical next step that could genuinely help them, make an invitation.
That invitation doesn't always have to be “buy my thing.” It could be another article that takes the idea further, an assessment that helps them understand where they are, a workshop where they can start doing the work, or simply an invitation to reply and tell you what they're struggling with. Eventually, yes, it might be a service or offer. You're running a business; you're allowed to sell things.
The difference is that the invitation makes sense in the context of the relationship you've been building.
Relationships Need Somewhere to Go
This is the part that gets lost when we treat lead magnets, email, content, social media, networking, and our website as separate marketing tactics. The goal isn't to march someone through a sequence until they reach the end and buy something. It's to build enough connection between the pieces that the relationship can always continue naturally.
Someone finds you. You give them a reason to stay. You continue the conversation. You help them. They learn how you think and what you can help them with. Then, when it makes sense, you give them an opportunity to take another step.
DISCOVER → CONNECT → NURTURE → INVITE
And what happens after the nurture sequence? You keep showing up. That's where a regular email or newsletter comes in. It doesn't have to be a roundup of company news that nobody asked for; it can be a consistent way to share your perspective, point people toward something you've written or created, talk about what's happening in your world, and invite them into other parts of your ecosystem when it makes sense. Maybe that's a new article, a workshop, a resource, an event or eventually an offer. The nurture sequence helps begin the relationship; your ongoing email gives you a way to keep it going.
I could put that into a funnel diagram, but I think it makes more sense to think of it as a relationship. Relationships develop. Some develop quickly; others happen over months or years. Some people will join your email list and hire you next week. Someone else might read your emails for a year before the exact problem you solve lands squarely in their lap. Another person may never hire you at all, but forward something you wrote to exactly the person who will.
We can't control all of that, nor should we try to. What we can control is the experience people have while they're in our world and whether we've built a marketing system that makes it easy for the relationship to continue.
Be Someone Worth Staying Connected To
Relationship marketing doesn't mean you have to become everyone's best friend, and it certainly doesn't mean every email needs to contain a deeply personal story. You don't need to manufacture vulnerability, turn your business into a reality show, or perform authenticity because somebody told you it converts.
It means remembering that there's an actual human being on the other side of your marketing. That person has limited time and attention, and they've chosen to give you some of it. Be useful. Have a point of view. Pay attention to what your audience actually needs. Show up consistently enough that they remember you, and make thoughtful invitations when you have something that could genuinely help.
And yes, sometimes you'll get it wrong. You'll send an email that doesn't land, disappear longer than you meant to, screw up a link, or communicate something badly. Relationships aren't built by being perfect. They're built by paying attention, owning things when they go sideways, and being willing to get back into the conversation.
Maybe that's ultimately what relationship marketing means to me: Act like there's a relationship there, because there is one.
Your website, email list, content, social media, and everything else you're building aren't simply a collection of marketing assets. Together, they create an experience of your business and give people ways to deepen their relationship with it over time.
Your Digital House is the system. Relationship marketing is how you behave inside it.
And personally, I'd like mine to be the kind of place people want to come back to.
Preferably with a martini. Leopard print optional.
Want to Build Your Stay-Connected System?
If you're reading this and realizing there's a gap between “they found me” and “we actually stayed connected,” that's exactly what we're working on in this month's Digital House Workshop Series.
Stay Connected Long After They Meet You is happening September 23 at 3 pm PT. We'll develop a lead magnet concept based on what your audience actually needs, map a simple email nurture sequence, and connect those pieces to the rest of your marketing. The goal isn't to build some giant automated funnel; it's to create a thoughtful, sustainable way to continue the relationship after someone raises their hand and says they're interested.
You'll leave with the bones of your stay-connected system, plus worksheets and AI prompts to help you keep building it.
90-minute live workshop + replay | $97
Because getting someone's attention is nice. Building a relationship is better.