Trust is a Process, Not an Event — Learn to Date Your Prospects

Building a lasting customer relationship is like dating — the next date depends on the experience of the last one.

As people are exposed to an average of 3,000 media messages per day, they now block most interrupting advertising — preferring instead to turn to sources they trust to learn about products or brands.  In most cases, this means friends or information sources on the social web.

For marketers this means the game has changed — to capture someone’s attention, you must first secure their trust. To secure their trust, you must be willing to engage on their terms — not yours.

“Give to Get” — Become a Thought Leader

(1) Content Strategy: the foundation to establishing a dialogue with buyers is having something relevant and timely to say — and this means a strategy (personas, topics of interest, editorial calendar, frequency, media format, media channels, writing style/voice, staffing, and more).  Connecting with buyers and establishing your brand as a thought leader through education, problem solving, expert opinion, etc. is the first step in building trust that can converted later to a sale.

(2) Online Engagement: getting found by the right buyers means developing a SEO strategy tied to the unique selling proposition associated with your brand.  Everything you publish online (articles, blogs, video, pictures, etc.) should be designed and tagged to align with key search terms and topics for which you are trying to rank.  We’ll help you organize a plan to integrate SEO, SEM, and social media so that you are reaching your target buyers and engaging them to develop inbound leads.

(3) Offline Engagement: engaging with buyers offline should also align with your brand USP and SEO strategy for message consistency.  We can help you identify, develop, and execute tactics for connecting with buyers in your local markets: speaking, events, grassroots, and cause-related marketing. We’ll show you how to digitally capture these interactions and re-use the content to compliment your online efforts.

(4) Feedback: we’ll show you how to monitor brand conversation throughout the process and track your brand promoters from brand detractors.  This includes using social monitoring tools (free or fee-based), as well as capturing valuable data from brand interactions with your existing customers.