Creating Customer Trust through Modern Marketing Best Practices

According to Forbes, ‘94% of consumers would be more loyal to brands that practice transparency, while 56% claim that brand transparency would make them “loyal for life.”’

Today’s market continues to change and advance at rapid speeds. And in such times as these, customers are seeking out brands who offer stability; brands who share their values, brands to which they can be loyal.

With that in mind, loyalty requires trust. If a customer trusts your brand, they’re likely to not only continue their buying journey with you, but also share their positive experiences with others – and sometimes word of mouth is the most powerful tool of all.

At redk, we’ve outlined four of those key levers that are particularly critical for building trust in customer marketing.

In Forrester’s words: ‘Organisations should build and continuously reinforce trust to establish mutually beneficial relationships with customers; attract and retain talent; and nurture an ecosystem of partners and other stakeholders that contribute to growth, retention and advocacy.’ Forrester has identified seven key levers in building trust between customer and provider: accountability, competence, consistency, dependability, empathy, integrity and transparency.

Competence

The clearest way to recognize an organisation’s qualities via existing partners and customers. As buyers place a great deal of importance on other customers’ opinions, your organisation can take advantage of consumer reviews and peer-to-peer discussions.

In order to promote positive insights, customer marketing teams should seek out customer advocates who are willing to spread the word. Customer advocates are those who share their insights on social media, in forums or during in-person events. And they can be a valuable asset.

In Forrester’s words: ‘Customer marketing should work with the product management and portfolio marketing teams to identify strategic stories.’

These stories can then be used both online and offline to truly highlight your organisation’s expertise. The role reviews play in B2B sales should also stay at the forefront of marketers’ mind when producing customer advocate strategies.

Consistency

 This lever dives into customers’ expectations that the organisation will remain consistent throughout the buying journey and beyond, requiring getting organised both internally and externally.

In order to do so, your business must start with consistency from within. Investing in the effort to define team and individual roles and responsibilities clearly will improve your teams’ ability to meet customer demands as a unit.

Another way to ensure consistency is through multiple mechanisms for customer communication. Customer-facing parts of your organisation’s website should offer a wide range of communication channels. Keeping communication organised and consistent requires implementing an effective, high-value CRM software system like Salesforce. We here at redk can help your team digitally transform and stay consistent across the board with our Salesforce services.