As customers expect to be treated like real people, brands will need to collect more data for delivering real personalization. Will we really trust them?The 2018 Salesforce annual conference (Dreamforce) wrapped up in late September. This event was billed as the largest software conference in the world, and according to Marc Benioff, Co-CEO of Salesforce, 171,000 people were in attendance. If for any reason you’re not sure what Salesforce does, or the concept of a CRM, then you’re in luck, because that’s not what this article is about. According to the Future of Business Survey, attracting new customers, increasing revenue and maintaining profitability are among the most common challenges businesses face today. All three of these common challenges can be improved on, in some part by increasing customer loyalty. The 2018, Salesforce Research, Trends in Customer Trust report states, “Historically, companies relied on differentiated products and services to drive customer loyalty.” It was often these levers that companies pulled to tap into customer loyalty and caused them to buy more products and services. However, the report goes on to state, “Today, the commoditization of products and services—along with unprecedented access to information—has dramatically expanded customers options and elevated their expectations.” As a result, businesses should look to company culture, values and motivating employees as levers to drive customer trust and earn access to more personal data, in turn, offering customers deeply personalized experiences. 54% of customers don’t believe companies The Trends in Customer Trust report positions the importance of a customer’s trust around the idea that we’re all now in a new business era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Setting aside the full macro details of this interesting concept, how true does this statement feel to you? “As lines between digital and physical worlds blur, today’s customers demand deeply relevant, personalized experiences across devices, channels and interactions.” – Trends in Customer Trust, Research Brief, 2018 To put this into focus, the same report provided compelling reasons to believe we’re at a tipping point for trust as, “Fifty-four percent of customers don’t believe companies have their best interests in mind.” The report then goes on to layout findings that support the business value of customer trust and how personalization of customer experience is connected to data, and the importance of transparency. This report itself is a tactical example of how to build customer trust in the Salesforce product. Mad Money’s Jim Cramer interviewed Marc Benioff at the opening of the 2018 Dreamforce conference. One of the topics covered was about how trust is the highest company value at Salesforce. This is the key point of this article—trust. The values of a company should now be aligned with trust. Marc Benioff put it this way, “If your employees don’t trust you, if they don’t like your values, they’re going to walk out.” It’s my belief that the same goes for customers, too. As businesses tackle the very important challenges of attracting new customers, increasing revenue or maintaining profitability, they would be wise to look at their company culture and ask if they have really made trust their highest company value? It would come as no surprise to me at all if, one day, Salesforce renamed its CRM product—Customer Trust Management (CTM) software—just to make a big point to the business world. AuthorWilliam Hetrick is a problem-solving marketing manager who has a passion for blending insights with flawless creative to produce meaningful customer experiences. WE'RE DIFFERENT because - we're telling you we're learning just like you are.Our marketing services business—NeighborLytics—is evolving. We now have a better understanding of how to describe exactly who we are. To give some context, elements of this post were originally published in three parts on the 1.0 version of NeighborLytics.com, and now it's been updated to match the current 2.0 version of the site. If you’re asking what's changed, the answer is our brand is more focused, more authentic and built on a mobile-first web template. You're reading this on your smartphone, correct? In the About Us section of NeighborLytics.com, we introduced our service goal of helping businesses manage cost effective marketing solutions. In this post, we'll define them and explain the “Why” that drives our efforts of helping clients self-manage their online marketing solutions cost effectively. We want to understand you and your small business. This interest in knowing starts to unpack the "Why" that's driving our purpose. And, that involves Learning and Restorative actions. In his book Strengths finder 2.0, Tom Rath provides lengthy descriptions of both. Learning can be understood as, "...energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence," and Restorative, is very simply put, the love of solving problems. We're not interested in telling customers we have all the answers, in fact we're still learning what works for us. What we can do is share what we've learned about brand, communication, social and creative mediums. Getting into the TACTICSLet’s drill down into the tools NeighborLytics uses to manage creative marketing efforts. Currently the tool of choice for building websites is Weebly.com. However, we now have a number of great platforms to choose from—Wix.com being one of several. On the email side our platform of choice is MailChimp.com, but ConstantContact.com is also popular. Both website and email tools can be operated by non-designers—however they do require a good level of commitment in setting up. We don't prescribe any social tools—as you likely know the main players. However, a quick note on social tools, please don't ignore them for your personal brand or business. Try to lean into them, as they are very powerful marketing tools! One quick point on sending email to your customers: your emails could be violating the CAN-SPAM Act or be crossing into junk mail territory if you're not using an email platform like the ones we mentioned above. And, because building an email database is a smart way to own customer data and connect with them directly, it's worth time to set them up. Now, regardless of your comfort level, NeighborLytics would love to work with you to help manage your online marketing properties. If training is needed, NeighborLytics can explore setting up training classes or go full service and manage them for you. strategic planningWhat we're talking about is the planning of your marketing efforts to maximize a return on your goals. Most small and medium-sized businesses are working to address one or all of the following challenges: attracting new customers, increasing revenue or maintaining profitability. We see this in data provided by the Future of Survey partnership. You can discover more information about how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rank common challenges, available for FREE at the Future of Business Survey. Most definitely worth a look, as the website is fantastic. Discovering a marketing plan that works best for you is a process of getting to know each other and trust. (Yes, it's structurally a lot like dating.) Your business: How does it make money and service customers? What makes your business tick? Insights gained from a good conversation about your business will help ensure a strong return on the goals you’re looking to achieve. NeighborLytics offers solutions based on the realities of running a small business, because—that's us, too. We're a side business, small and lean, but growing in confidence. The reality is that all small businesses need smart, easy-to-use marketing tools. And, we're spending our time discovering them. To drill down a bit more on marketing planning, just having your business information available online, in and of itself, adds value. Driving traffic to your online resources is a good next step. You can write blogs on your site and post them on your social platforms, driving traffic back to you. You can respond to influential and relevant people’s social posts to elevate your visibility. You can launch a podcast and YouTube video blog, these last two get spoken about a lot by Gary Vaynerchuk. They're next on our list to do for NeighborLytics. We can help you add marketing value by taking a look at how your business works and helping to improve your customer relationships using tools like mobile friendly web templates, mass emails, blogs, videos, social and other tools. The end result will be that you can maximize the return on your goals. But we can’t do it without you. You’ve got ideas. We’ll sit down and listen to them. And, then we’ll discover how to transform those ideas into a strategy. Contact NeighborLytics today to talk about how we can help you grab your business by the brand! AuthorWilliam Hetrick is a problem-solving product marketing manager who has a passion for blending insights with flawless creative to produce meaningful customer experiences. |
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