Relationships are the key to good marketing. From serving as a starting point for a viral launch to allowing word to spread from consumer to consumer, a good relationship is the foundation of many types of marketing. Alice Seba hits this idea on her blog today. Seba points out that before you begin making your plan for your next product launch or your new viral marketing campaign, you need to stop and ask yourself if you've taken the time to make inroads with your target audience.

Seba explains:

Seba makes an excellent point.

See, it's easy to write off relationships as a pre-requisite for marketing because most companies honestly believe that they do have a relationship with their customers. Unfortunately that "relationship" usually consists of the bills that the company sends each month or the occasional customer service issue.

But you've got to take it further than that.

You don't need to personally befriend every single person that might want to buy your products or services, but you do need to work on building relationships with key influencers. With viral marketing becoming such an integral part of any marketing campaign, businesses need to learn how to identify the people that are capable of spreading the word.

The same way that PR firms once wined and dined media moguls, businesses must now learn to initiate conversation with bloggers and social networking community members.

So I'll leave you with Seba's own ending...

Have you made any friends in your target market lately?