I often look to other seasoned marketers for guidance and insights and one of those mavens is Marcia Yudkin. See below for what she had to say about building trust with customers:
Around the world, 83 percent of well-informed, well-heeled,
college-educated people rate a company’s trustworthiness as
extremely important.So say the remarkable 2010 results of a survey conducted by
Edelman, a PR company with 52 offices worldwide.Trustworthiness ranked higher in importance than having
high-quality products or services, offering fair prices and
being a good corporate citizen.A hefty 75 percent of these respondents said frequent
communications from a company contribute to its reputation.Whereas the 2005 and 2006 versions of this survey noted a
trend of trust shifting from authorities to peers, in 2010
experts and academics were rated as extremely credible by
64 percent, versus 44 percent for “someone like me.”My comments on what you should do in the light of the data:
* Enhance your expert status through publishing and
publicity.* Make sure reality matches your claims and promises.
* Seek endorsements from trusted experts.
* Communicate often with customers and be talked about by
credible sources. Respondents in the 2009 Edelman survey
said they needed to hear something about a company three to
five times before they believed it.
You can subscribe to Marcia’s insights here:
The Marketing Minute
by Marcia Yudkin, Marketing Expert and Mentor
http://www.yudkin.com/markmin.htm
Building trust is another reason why a solid social media plan and policy is critically important to a company’s growth. What are you doing to reach out to your customers on a consistent basis?
