Posts Tagged ‘trust’
What’s the best way to win advocates for your brand? TRUST. What’s the best way to win trust? Be helpful. What’s the best way to be helpful? Give consumers useful information they wouldn’t expect to get free. Information that will save them time, save them money, make them smarter, make them happier, make them feel better about themselves – and you.
Since its inception, the Nordstrom brand has centered around being helpful, right? Like a phone call telling you they remembered you were looking for shoes to go with the suit you bought last month, and they just got the perfect pair in. Or how about the American Express openforum.com, a free website with tons of information that claims huge success in helping business owners succeed. Oh, and its content contributors are donating their brains and talent at no charge to American Express.
It’s easy to talk about big brands like these, but how about the success some smaller brands are enjoying due to their helpfulness? Like Kellogg Garden Products, with a website full of gardening tips from soil calculators to fun kid gardening activities. Their website Analytics show a huge percentage of visitors time being spent on the pages they’ve built simply to be helpful, and their brand recognition confirms this.
Big or small, these brands understand they must give in order to receive. Paying it forward may end up being the most successful marketing mantra for the 21st Century. The question is, is your brand ready?
Catchy headline, eh? And what does it have to do with the gift card photo? Everything.
Here’s a quick example. I just had a small family owned air conditioning and heating company, Fisher Air, come out to my house to service our heater (yes, we still use them sometimes in Southern California). They showed up on time, did a nice job, and charged about $75.
Three days later we get a thank you card in the mail with a really nice, credit card quality, $50.00 gift card for their services. But it wasn’t for us. It was to give to a friend or neighbor. And, they noted in the thank you card, when our friend or neighbor uses it, Fisher will send us another one for $100.
Since I already had a feeling of TRUST with the company, I didn’t see this as a scam. I saw it as a genuine effort for a small business to build quality relationships with their customers. So maybe they’ll give up $150 in labor to retain our business and earn another household’s. But how much word-of-mouth (and mouse) might they get in return? A lot more than $150. And a lot more than a $150 ad in some local circular. But remember, they had to have a QUALITY PRODUCT for me to earn their TRUST. And their product was integrity, honesty, kindness, knowledge, efficiency and, oh yes, a reasonable price.
So, you want to save money advertising? Give your customers a gift they didn’t expect. Don’t be cheap. Make it count.
I added it up. I now spend an average of 32 hours a week online, mostly after hours (thus the bloodshot eyes) and mostly in my own self-made school of learning from the social media gurus who kindly share so much great information at no cost. I eat it up. And yet, with almost every blog post I devour or podcast I listen to, I am constantly intimidated by all that I don’t know. Compared to Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Mitch Joel, and CC Chapman (just to name a few) I am in social media pre-school.
But that’s OK. Because I still share their greatest power – and so do you. It’s the understanding that truthfulness, transparency and sincerity work. That’s really it. They know it, they preach it, and they’re creating some of the greatest business success stories in history with it.
How we ever went so far away from truth in marketing and advertising, I’ll never know. But with 28 years in the business I have to admit I’ve probably donated to the dark side. In fact, I can clearly recall conversations with clients over the years where transparency was considered too risky and, besides, did we really need to be sincere when we had (insert celebrity name here) doing our next commercial?
No more.
Thanks to too much media, too much razzle-dazzle, and too much abuse of consumer trust, those days are long gone. We’ve come full circle back to a wonderful place that is the nucleus of social media’s marketing power.
So next time you feel overwhelmed by all you’re hearing, reading and seeing about social media, don’t fall into the insecurity trap of “I don’t know code so I’ll never understand Social Media”. Go to your gut. Think of a world that does business by sharing the truth. Use that as your foundation for learning. Everything else will fall into place.
