What It Takes To Gain The Customer Trust!

In a digital era, addressing your challenges must start with building a foundation of trust. And how does that happen?

Consumers not only hold the power to make your brand, they can destroy it too and never has it been so easy. With so much power in hands i.e. Social and mobile technology, in our everyday lives, we can voice our opinions freely and communicate the message more efficiently and effectively.

The biggest challenge for the brands today is to determine how to leverage customer reviews and opinions and channel those in the best possible way.

Everyday challenges for every Business

Whether you are engaged in a Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), a startup or a huge consumer brand, you are likely to struggle with the same challenges: maximizing the website rankings, generating more leads, attracting new prospects, preserving the connection with existing customers, maintaining brand loyalty and boosting the conversion rates. Gaining and securing customer’s trust solves all the challenges and fix all the problems at once.

As easy and simple it may sound, but winning trust doesn’t come easy. Here are three important touch points to incorporate into your marketing strategy:

·  Adding a touch of Personalization in communications- In the age of big data, there’s no shortage of customer insights and information available and no excuse not to personalize your marketing related communications. However, it is being reported that marketing communications account for 70 percent of today’s spam complaints. By targeting customer specific segments, you can cater to different demands of an individual with information that is suitable for them. Personalized communication helps in making customers feel valued and respected and makes your business seem more approachable and professional.

·  Nurturing credibility- This especially stands true for online businesses, which rely mostly on online reputations to build a foundation for their success. When customers can easily check the reputation of any company with a quick Google search, and make the buying decision based on website rankings and customer reviews, reputation management becomes paramount.

·   Create fans- Sports team will always know what it means to have that fan support. How do sports teams create lifelong fans? Ideally, fan base are made based on different traditions, community or admiration. Whatever may be the reason, the common connecting link among these reasons is built on loyalty. Giving your customers a voice or making them feel that they can create opinions, you also give them the liberty to influence others or get influenced.

Combining all these three, comes trustworthiness, transparency and credibility for a business to grow, which in turn builds long-term trust. Maintaining trust is a lifelong effort requiring consistent customer engagement, feedback and action.

The Power of Trust

In today’s era, modern marketers understand the value of customer data to do personalizations in marketing campaigns and churn out leads. However, many of them overlook the value of that customer feedback, not only for attracting prospects, but also for retaining customers.

Collecting customer feedback is a valuable first step, but to maintain ongoing trust, you must act upon that information. By responding to the negative feedback, you can show that you care and value your customers and are committed to improving their experience. And being responsive to the messages and addressing to their complaints shows that you are transparent about the process and that you are actively engaged.

It’s a proven fact that consumers are heavily influenced by the experiences of their peers and routinely consult customer reviews to form opinions about a business to make purchasing decisions. By leveraging those reviews, engaging with customers and acting on their feedback, you have the opportunity to create the most powerful brand marketing message there is: trust.