Market Trust

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Many believe a marketing program is successful if it raises the public's awareness of your product or service. Coach Roland in a May 31,2009 blog posting points out that we all have become saturated with messages trying to raise our awareness. Awareness alone won't lead to sales. He asserts our messages need to communicate what we intend to do to earn the market's trust. We have to do more to really get their attention.

Mature successful firms get most of their business from repeat customers or referrals from satisfied clients. Trust has been earned in prior dealings. Here the driver of continued success is the customer service staff. They are the guardians of market trust and need to be in close contact with the marketing staff. Social networking is providing marketing with a new generation of tools to measure customer service effectiveness and satisfaction. These departments work together to preserve existing trust.

Newer and smaller firms, more likely to be run by an Active Investor, may not have this kind of staff and or large base of past customers. Trust needs to be developed. How can a business reach out to the market in such a way that both trust and awareness are developed? A system dynamics approach is to look at trust as a resource, that is a stock of something that has a level that can go up and down, and then consider what are the drivers that will increase its level. Some rather universal drivers of trust are:

- Credentials: Are there authoritative "seals of approval" we can display to verify quality or competence?
- Appearance: Is our offering presented in such a way it creates an assumption of worth, or do we look mediocre?
- Recommendations: Do we understand and develop a history with those who may not purchase but still be in a position to recommend us?
- Concern: While Active Investors are typically always concerned for their customers, is this expressed in a way they can appreciate it? Do they feel we have really listened?
- Familiarity: Can we be remembered? Familiarity breeds business.
- Integrity: Is trust built into our business and personal decision making? Nothing develops trust more surely than personally being trustworthy.
- Assurances: Is there historical data or performance guarantees to factually support any measure of trust a prospect is considering granting us?

Each business is unique with its own ways to build trust. They are to be found at decision points where there is an opportunity to do the right thing or to be expedient. When you have first convinced yourself you'll always be doing what's best for your customer, you'll know what to do to further develop market trust.

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• Customer Service Is the New Marketing (futurelab.net)
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The Active Economic Stimulus

What we already have: Billions of dollars thrown at other people in the hopes something good will eventually happen. Critics also pointing-out a lot of it going to those with a history of creating economic disasters, not recoveries.

It's a passive stimulus. The investor, our government, is giving the money to others. The Active Investor, a business owner, personally works their own economic stimulus.

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, has a started a great example stimulus program for Active Investors. It's the National Make A Referral Week. Jantsch and his allies have a goal to create 1,000 referrals for 1,000 deserving businesses during the week of March 9 - 13. 

A good referral is priceless. When someone refers business to another, a thank-you or a referral fee is nice; but it's not what drives business referrals. Doing the best work possible for that client gives the person who made the referral prestige and credibility. There's the payback! Quality not quantity makes the referral system work.

The pledge to participate in the National Make A Referral Week is to personally make 1 referral that week. Imagine the economic value of this happening across the nation thousands of times. Consider the worth of the personal returns in terms of prestige and credibility. This is an economic stimulus everyone can believe in.

Can there be any reason not to stop here but to continue developing our own Active Economic Stimulus programs?