Steve Olenski wrote an article for Forbes this week on trust between marketers and consumers. The article references a study of consumers that breaks down which advertising tactics elicit more trust and which don’t. Things like third-party validation and free trials were the more credible tactics while limited-time sales and celebrity endorsements were the less trusted ones. The essence of the results: consumers want real. They want to be sold to in an authentic way.
Olenski starts to expand upon the point that the way to a consumer’s heart today, in 2017, is to communicate with them as a person. Not a user or a target segment. A human being, with thoughts, opinions, wants and needs. To do this, marketers need to engage in a more personalized way, but there are also limits to how intimate you get. Here is a quick and dirty checklist to consider how you are building your credibility as a marketer with your customers and prospects:
Are you using ad frequency management to ensure you are not sending out too many ads too often?
Do you properly message customers across channels in a cohesive, well-cadenced way?
Are you paying attention to actions customers take on one channel to inform your communication to them in another?
Are you reviewing audience segments to see when members have increased or decreased the value of their shopping carts or otherwise changed an attribute so you can move them to a new segment as needed?
Are you analyzing your audiences both before, during and after activation in media to continually optimize your strategy?
Are you notifying consumers in or around ads that are informed by interest-based advertising and disclosing how their data is being collected and used?
Are you following advertising best practices to ensure your ads are as least disruptive as possible such as making video ads skippable and avoiding intrusive rich media?
What else would you add to this list?
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