Repetition, Transparency, Multi-channel Communications Help Rebuild Trust

by | Sep 7, 2011 | Blog, Blog Archive, Industry News | 0 comments

How often to you have to hear something before you believe it to be true?

One of the daily challenges for marketing is building trust among consumers. It’s never been easy, but it’s gotten harder over the last two years. Luckily, multi-channel marketers have a clear path to reaching out to the public through web, social media, PR, and trusted local agents or managers. Building trust in difficult economic times is all about repetition, transparency, and multi-channel communications.

Messages must be heard more often now than two years ago.

Consider the three tables included in this blog post, all from Edelman’s 11th Annual Trust Barometer study, released earlier this year. 

Then there’s this table — where consumers look first for information.  It may be a little misleading because Google will (naturally) turn up social media data as part of its search.  YouTube videos and blog posts are especially likely to turn up in the first few results on Google, so social media may be quite a bit more influential than it first appears, and so are other online sources such as online news sites and community forums like Yelp, Yahoo!Local, Angie’s List and other ratings services.

Where would you go first when researching a company or brand? (U.S. consumers aged 25-64)

According to the Society for New Communications Research information passed along by friends (online or off) was rated as the most trustworthy by 84% of U.S. residents, and 70% of all global survey participants. 
  • 59% of respondents used social media to ‘vent’ about a customer service experience.
  • 72% of respondents researched at least sometimes companies’ customer service policies online prior to purchasing products and services.
  • 84% of respondents considered the quality of customer service at least sometimes in their decision to do business with a company.
  • 74% chose companies/brands based on others’ customer service experiences shared online.
  • 84% of respondents considered at least sometimes the quality of customer service in their decision to do business with a company.
  • 81% believed that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice in customer service, but less than 33% believed that businesses take customers’ opinions seriously.

How often do you repeat your messages?  How many channels do you use to get the message out?  

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