Eugene Varricchio, CEO, Franki Global Inc.
Trust is the social lubricant that keeps our global economy running. In fact, every business transaction is founded on mutual trust; if customers don’t trust that your product meets their needs, there won’t be a transaction.
But, I’ve found that establishing business trust is only the beginning. You also need to maintain it over the long term in order to benefit from repeat and referral clientele.
The role of marketing, when it’s done well, is to establish, build and maintain trust between brands and customers. Unfortunately, I see too much of what passes for advertising today as damaging the trust that it’s meant to strengthen.
Despite regulation, industry codes of conduct and tools like spam filters, we continue to see unscrupulous brands using deplorable tactics to promote themselves. Spam and junk mail still plague both direct mail and online advertising.
Negative Impressions From Intrusive Content
In today’s atmosphere, cluttered communication can generate a lack of trust, potentially tarring all marketers with the same brush. Annoying and intrusive content can leave a lasting, negative impression not only for the disreputable brands who unleash the spam but for all advertising and associated businesses.
When a communication channel contains more noise than signal, the public tends to tune it out. Without authenticity and consistency, there’s a risk your messaging will be drowned out by the babel of online spambots.
Generating Trust Through Customer-Centric Approaches
To generate that vital referral business, you can take advantage of a customer-centric strategy that respects your existing and potential customers’ time and attention. Your approach should focus on providing value to customers while building meaningful relationships with them through personal interaction.
Generating trust is especially challenging for a brand-new business. Entrepreneurs face a kind of Catch-22 where they need trust to attract new customers, but they need to attract new customers to establish trust.
One way you can break that vicious cycle is through effective outreach. We all appreciate both novelty and familiarity, but each of us balances these two pleasures differently depending on our temperaments. Some of us are adventurous, early adopters of the latest new business in town, while others take a more wait-and-see approach.
Personally, as I’ve matured, I’ve become a member of this latter group that defers new experiences until we have recommendations from people we trust. We’re less inclined to take a chance on novelty without a reliable referral, so we may not be your brand’s best target.
Target Explorers And Early Adopters
In the early stages of building a business, in order to start building trust, I believe that the best outreach strategy is to target the explorers and early adopters psychologists call neophiles. These people are more open-minded and curious, seeking new experiences and ideas to feed their passion for novelty.
Location can also play a role in balancing novelty with familiarity. Since travel time to an unfamiliar place is part of the novelty risk, it makes sense to target your local community ahead of potential customers beyond your neighborhood. Find those passionate locals who want to try places first and provide insights to their friends.
Word of mouth can be a spontaneous and organic process that can also help local businesses. A few intrepid pioneers notice the new establishment and try it out. They’re pleasantly surprised by what you have to offer, and they spread the word. Then their more cautious friends and colleagues join the trend. Now that they’re hearing good things from people they trust, they’re curious to see what the buzz is about for themselves.
The goal of your outreach strategy is to help nature take its course. Instead of simply being patient, you pave the way for recommendations to spread more efficiently.
Successful outreach uses incentives to encourage influential, local early adopters to give your business a try. For example, a brand-new local restaurant could invite their local foodies and community food columnists to drop in.
Another approach is to directly encourage word-of-mouth recommendations. Get to know the customers coming in your door, chat with them about what they enjoyed and incentivize them to share positive feedback with others they know. Make it as easy as it can be for them to spread the word.
On top of this, consistently exceeding customer expectations is vital to maintaining your repeat and referral business.
Taking Your Business For Granted
The enjoyment of new and exciting experiences can wear off as time goes by. While you may have effectively built trust and the quality of your product or service may not have changed, your customers can still start to take your business for granted and look for the next big thing.
You can help avoid that by building a sense of community with your customers. Encouraging your customers to get to know one another, both at your location and through social media, is a great way to keep your clientele engaged.
These days, the hot trend in social media engagement is video content. Video has a way of humanizing your business, enhancing the sense of connection between staff and customers and making your establishment feel like a home away from home.
Video is also an effective way to encourage customers to tell their stories and provide testimonials. Sharing experiences through video has become a popular way to foster a sense of belonging and community among your customers.
Trust Is Your Company’s Most Precious Asset
Your customers’ trust is your company’s most precious asset. Although genuine trust needs to develop naturally, there are ways to cultivate it and encourage repeat and referral business to unfold more rapidly and effectively. By employing these outreach techniques authentically and consistently, I believe that you can lift your company to the next level of success.
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