January 2004

3 tips for building trust

You want your customers to trust you. So how can make them do that? Today many leading U.S. companies are assigning the task to marketing--with bigger budgets and newly created CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) positions, says a recent B2B news report. The hope is the new officers will help them identify new strategies that build trust and give a competitive edge.

Popular wisdom about what works tends to vacillate. Advertising used to be king. The Internet's cheap, instant publishing challenged that. Direct mail spawned junk mail--which drove legislation to control list-mongering. Telemarketing created boiler rooms, automatic dialing and dinner-time rage--we finally got the "don't-call" law. Email marketing, extremely effective for many industries, has given birth to spam. Now the government threatens more regulation.

Search engine marketing is hot today--and yes, it can help generate business. But now the "sponsored listings" (read: ads) at the tops of pages grow more numerous. Is that the pendulum swinging back to advertising?

Well, that's okay, but remember, not everyone can be ranked on page 1. Others deserve to stay in business, too.

And fortunately, they can. Because every one of these formerly overused marketing techniques is still effective --if created, delivered and followed up on properly. No matter what your choice of medium, these 3 tips can help:

• 1. Be brief. Respect your prospects' time! Offer genuine value when you ring their phone or appear in their mail or inbox. Refer them elsewhere for more information: your website, your newsletter, your blog, your sales rep (if they ask).


• 2. Be moderate. Don't deluge people with messages in any form. More is not necessarily better. As often as you have something of value to offer is how often you should consider sending messages.


• 3. Be authentic. Tell the truth. Skip the corporate speak--write in your true voice. People find authenticity irresistible.
  This kind of communicating isn't rocket science. But it takes attention and energy to do it well.