Trust. A simple word with great power in all facets of our personal and professional lives. Trust is defined as a firm belief in the ability, reliability, truth, or strength of someone or something. In business, this definition infers that trust is the acceptance of the value or quality of a brand, product or service without evidence or investigation.
While the importance of trust between a business and its consumers is not a new concept, its importance has certainly escalated with the rapidly accelerating adoption of social communications.
This shift from traditional to social communications has allowed online communities to become the customer advocate; essentially cutting through any smoke n mirrors marketing or PR campaign that businesses used to deploy to present their brands trustworthiness
Traditional marketing seemed to operate under the assumption that consumer trust was a given. Maintaining it was the challenge. Over the last 20 years however, consumers trust in big businesses, the government, the economy, the military and even organized religion has been shaken like never before. Consequently, trust is something not easily earned. In fact, businesses must change their thinking from trust being something that is earned to something that is granted to them by their customers.
The Currency of Trust
Your marketing team can blow millions of dollars marketing facts and figures, and your PR team can spin evidence of quality or endorsements all they want, if your consumers dont grant you their trust, your business will grind to a halt.
To illustrate this fact, Ill highlight results of a 2009 Concerto Marketing and Research Now study that sought to identify the results of consumer trust. The findings proved, of those consumers who indicated that they granted trust to a brand:
- 83% recommended the business to others
- 82% would use the businesses products more frequently
- 78% would look at the business product first for the things they want
- 78% would give the business new products & services a try without hesitation
- 50% would pay more for its products and services
With the increasing availability of real-time data & consumer feedback through social channels, a brand cannot use distance or clever marketing to mask bad products or mistakes made by its employees. Business can no longer focus on the monetary transaction between themselves and their customers as a relationship metric.
Certainly the goal of every business is to generate revenue and profit, but clearly, the currency of todays economy is trust. Generating revenue today is directly related to how well a business earns and is granted trust from its customers and influencers. That is the transaction that will drive todays economy.
But how does a business encourage the consumer to grant it trust if not by promoting facts & figures or broadcasting testimonials and endorsements?
Building Trust
My experience in building brand trust with consumers can be broken down into 4 main practices:
- Defining Value Proposition. The business must deliver practical value to the end user and be differentiated from competitive products. Simply having a great product is not enough, you must be able to directly link the purchase of that product or service to a want or need demanded by the client. It must resonate both on a cognitive AND emotional level.
- Relationship Building. The business must establish a relationship with consumers, which is built through open and frequent 2-way conversations. The business must offer content that shows they are listening to the consumers opinions, wants and needs.
- Establishing Transparency. Consumers must be welcomed into the business operations and allowed to collaborate on new product development, be acknowledged quickly for positive AND negative feedback, and be publicly rewarded for loyalty and referrals. The business must take a forward-leaning stance to their audience and actively engage them on their terms.
- Demonstrating Vulnerability. A business must show its humanity by not posing through its communications. It must take responsibility for their product or service and to for the customer satisfaction through honest, open and real-time dialogue. And where it fails to meet expectations, provide a genuine apology and show their interest in making it right publicly.
And make no mistake; individually these tactics will not earn your business the trust required. All four are required to successfully achieve results. Further, the business must have the cooperation of the executive, marketing, PR and customer service teams to successful.
Trust: A True Measure of Influence
With all the furor over what is and isnt influence in todays social economy, I submit that the real measure of a brands influence is the amount of trust its consumers grant it. As outlined in the trust study results above, the stronger the sense of trust in the brand the more likely a consumer will recommend & purchase whatever you are selling regardless of competitive or economic forces.
Businesses seeking to leverage todays social economy must understand the currency of trust, the impact of trust on influence and how to re-orient their businesses so that consumers freely grant it their trust. No easy task for sales-focused businesses, but one that is critical to understand as we move through this new paradigm shift in business-consumer relations.
How does your business trade on the currency of trust? What is it doing to earn or leverage the trust youve been given? Get in on the conversation by posting your thoughts below.
By Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
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