Proven strategies for success

 

Winning trust for your brand is the equivalent of striking gold.

Trust brings customers to the point of sale, keeps them there, builds their loyalty, and keeps them returning. Trust also means they will spread the word and recommend you.

That makes for continually increased success, growth, and, perhaps most importantly, growth of the value of your brand and therefore your company.

The brand value can become so powerful it is worth far more than the company.

I always assumed Coca-Cola to be a far more valuable brand than Pepsi. Yet, I was stunned when early on in my career, I discovered that in blind tastings, Pepsi was far outperforming Coke.

In other words, when it comes to buying decisions, brand carries more weight than quality.

This was a lightbulb moment for me.

I immediately set about building brand value in the company I had at that point. PR was a huge part.

However, success, I knew, hinged on people trusting the brand. Along the way, I discovered that it takes time to build trust and losing it can happen a lot faster.

These are the key strategies I used. And they did, indeed, give me a brand that was worth more than the company.

1) Service not Sales

When I recruited, I would come across people with a great attitude but a horror of working in sales.

“I want to help people”, they would cry. “I want to work in customer service, not sales”.

The irony was that this was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted our “sales department” to have a customer service attitude.

The distrust of “sales” people runs deep. We think salespeople are there to foist goods on us whether we want them or not. But that approach does not work.

Instead, when salespeople approach their work with the mindset of serving their customers and ensuring they get the best possible help, everything changes.

For example, imagine telling a customer not to buy something from you. It sounds crazy. But if buying that something would be wrong for them, and you tell them honestly, there is no more powerful way to win their trust.

Honesty pays every time.

2) Commitment to customer happiness

The commitment to customer happiness has to be the priority in every single thing the company does and for every person who works there.

The support throughout the journey from sales to delivery and after-care has to be outstanding. Customers need to feel cared for and that you genuinely want what is best for them.

The real test comes when things go wrong. The customer service there has to be exceptional. Nothing less than transparency will do. Speed is essential, but honesty is even more so.

The majority of customers know that things go wrong sometimes. What they won’t tolerate is being ignored, lied to or resented.

Never be afraid of feedback. Even an angry customer can be your best source of learning.

Show you care. Be Brave. Be honest.

3) Transparency

Transparency is crucial.

While openness and honesty are vital in serving people or holding your hand up when things go wrong, true transparency is broader than that.

For trust to flourish, transparency has to soak through every aspect of your sales and marketing.

It starts with your permission marketing. Sending out emails or, even worse, calling people continually without their permission is an all-out abuse of trust.

Segment your marketing permissions so no one is ever contacted without their permission, but in addition, so that they only receive communication on the channel that suits them. That is the first step in creating trust.

These are the next two crucial areas for transparency:

• Pricing: None of us wants nasty surprises when we get to the bill. Not so long ago, I put my car in for repairs at a local garage. When I came to collect it, everyone smiled broadly apart from me. The invoice was about double what I expected. I heard the reasoning in silence. I don’t know if it was justified. But they should have asked me before they did the work. I won’t be trusting them again. Always be transparent on price.
• Specifications: if you have ever bought something that failed to do what you expected or used a service that was virtually useless for what you needed, you will know the frustration. There is a lingering feeling of being ripped off. The more accurate and detailed your specifications, the more trusting customers you will have.

Your customers need to know every detail of what they are buying, what it will and won’t provide them, and exactly how much they will be paying for it — before they make up their minds.

Lack of transparency kills trust stone dead.

4) Genuinely useful content

Clearly explaining to people what they are buying is important. Make it easy for them to see all the benefits and exactly how it would work for them comes next.

Showing people those things used to rely on some florid text and some photographs if we were lucky.

VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) are the brand builder’s new best friends, allowing interaction with a virtual world or laying virtual objects into the real world.

VR and AR enable potential customers to taste exactly what they are buying. No nasty surprises.

It is becoming easier and cheaper for everyone to make use of these. Try InstaVR, which people with little or no coding knowledge can use and makes it possible to create a VR app in minutes. To get started with AR, try out WebAR.

5) Personalization:

The more tailored a message is to an individual, the more likely it will land. This, too, is becoming easier to achieve.

With personalization, you get more engagement, higher levels of lead generation, shorter times through the funnel, and growth happily follows.

But the sub-text here is still all about trust. Personalized messages make people feel listened to and understood and relationships strengthen.

Personalization is all about mining the data and leveraging A1. The segmentation of your email list has a crucial effect, so the platform you use is critical.

I have always found Mailchimp a little clunky on segmentation, but they are the Big Daddy of email lists, and it could be a personal preference. Among the alternatives are Constant Contact and MailerLite.

Another tool that combines personalization and automation is Sender. You can easily automate Emails and SMS and incorporate segmentation and personalization.

With tools like these on the market at reasonable prices, you can afford to join the converts to personalization and reap the rewards.

6) Peer Recommendations

Understandably, people will tend to trust the word of someone else who has bought from you much more than however fantastic you say you are.

Social proof matters.

Be proactive. Make it as easy as possible for customers to leave testimonials and reviews.

Put the request on order forms, follow up afterwards, and do Google reviews. Ask customers if they would contribute their opinions and check if you can quote them.

Try adding Proof to your landing page or website to show a live count of what other users are doing on the site, be it landing or ordering samples or demos.

Encourage customers to become involved by contributing their content and telling of their experiences. Customers who become involved and identify with your brand and values become fans.

Consider using partnerships that, by association, transform your credibility and standing. For us, this worked beyond all expectations.

Social proof is a colossal and crucial part of building brand trust.

7) Be real

People trust people.

Social media and the net are golden opportunities for you to share the human side of your brand.

Build trust with consistent messaging, so people get to know who the brand is and what to reliably expect.

Be proactive and very responsive. Talk to people, and hold real live conversations, that allow your audience to connect with live people.

Automation is an incredible time saver and has its place, but I have yet to find a bot I put my trust in.

Make human connections, and develop a community that turns into your fans.

Prioritize keeping that trust

Growth is great. However, the problem for many business owners is that as they get busy, they step back.

Suddenly, there is no choice but to entrust your customers to other members of your team.

Customers mostly understand that necessity, but they also need to see you surface in person occasionally and, most importantly, know you are accessible in a crisis.

When you shut yourself away in an ivory tower, you risk losing all that hard-won trust. And that would be a tragedy.

Never forget you are building the value of your brand.