Trust – The Unwritten Agreement Between Brand and Consumer by Kevin Dwinnell

Trust is a powerful tool in the business arsenal. It’s the enabler to the value exchange that a business seeks with its consumer. With trust, businesses can weather some pretty bad situations. Without it, you’re in a very bad situation. Fortunately, we live in an optimistic society and most companies are given a fair chance to prove themselves.

The Internet has leveraged this trust with its beta releases. It’s a way to test a product in the production environment prior to being production ready. There’s an inherent trust for a user to try a beta product that by its beta name admits will have issues. The expectation is that those issues will not be serious to the user. Because of that trust, the user gets a first look at something new and cool, and the company gets to see its product perform in a real-world environment. That’s the value exchange that trust enabled.

Advertising works not because consumers love it, but because the value exchange of free content for viewing ads is apparent. If the message becomes too much about the advertising, the consumer moves on to a different choice. I’ve canceled magazine subscriptions when I couldn’t find the table of content for the sheer number of ads. Digital is even less forgiving.

You’ll find this mantra in social media guidance. You can’t just sell. It’s boring, offensive and you’ll wind up social all by yourself. If you’re interesting and relevant, people will want to hear what you say and hang around more. You’ve earned their trust.

So, how do you earn and maintain trust?

Be True to Your Word

Wal-Mart offers Always. Low Prices. You can always go into a Wal-Mart and get a very good price. Not always the lowest, but consistently in that vacinity so most consumers are forgiving if they’re not.

Admit When Your Wrong

Facebook continues to test the boundaries of their privacy policy. They’ve made some missteps and retracted the changes – keeping the trust of their consumers. The fact that they continue to stumble in this area, based on consumer reactions, will show the strength of that trust overtime.

Be Open and Honest

If you’re open with your customers, that’s an easy way to gain trust and respect – even if you can’t meet their needs.

These are pretty standard things for any relationship. But that’s what builds trust is that ongoing relationship. So, each touchpoint between you and the consumer is an opportunity to build on that trust. The more trust you have, the better the position for the rest of your business.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: advertising, business, Consumer, online marketing, web apps | No Comments »

The Digital Marketing Mix – The Why’s the Limit by Kevin Dwinnell

Last week, Kendall Allen discussed remaining innovative with marketing in tough economic times. See her post “Relationships And The Progressive Digital Mix” on MediaPost’s Online Spin. Andrew Chen, who supplies supporting analysis with most of his posts, covered part one of his thoughts on “How desktop apps beat websites at building large active userbases” in his post yesterday. I think they’ve both made some important points and their posts are worth the read.

While I love to see others endorse the marketplace where Brand Thunder plays, however, it’s not been the value proposition that’s been the most consistent objection. It’s the perceived limitations of how much a company can do and can offer their customers at one time. The most consistent objection we hear is “I’m already doing this. Why would we need that as well?” Because when you can meet your consumer where they want with little expense and time, you should do it. Doing only one thing this year is leaving too much opportunity on the table.

I’m wagering that most companies and customers can handle more than one digital media initiative a year. I understand the issue of resource constraints (believe me! I understand) but there are a lot of low cost options for you to release a bonanza of new media programs without a significant drain on your time or resources. In most cases, if you have your logo digitized and have initiated a handful of common practices, like RSS feeds for your news, you can launch a number of these programs within weeks — and that’s whether you use one of the self-serve wizards available for a number of digital media tools, or a low-cost, low-touch option like Brand Thunder brings. You can bring several tools to your audience in a reasonable amount of time.

If you’re launching one, you may as well launch more. The promotional and hosting commitment is going to be the same. This is where I see potential upside for companies. With the influx of advertising networks, it’s easier to be in a “sold out” position for promotional real estate and house promotions are the general casualty. Leveraging promotions to drive users to a single download destination on your site will make better use of the limited inventory and you can offer them a robust range of applications.

So, as you look at your digital marketing road map, I encourage you to reshape the questions being asked. Instead of why your customer would want it. Ask why you wouldn’t give them what they want. The difference can mean a lot in terms of how often you’re connecting with your audience.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: advertising, brand thunder, custom browsers, Customer value proposition, desktop widgets, Digital media, marketing, MediaPost, toolbars, web apps, widgets | No Comments »