Buzz vs. Trust: Marketing For Meaningful Engagement
In Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh reflects on Zappos’ customer service-centric business model, noting that “[a] common trap that many marketers fall into is focusing too much on trying to figure out how to generate a lot of buzz, when really they should be focused on building engagement and trust.”
While Zappos’ early growth was built on word of mouth and repeat customers, word of mouth recommendations are a nebulous force in a marketer’s realm. There is a reason that we categorize it as earned media, after all.
In contrast to owned and paid media, where the brand message is managed and paid for, earned media exists outside of a marketer’s direct control. But as Hsieh suggests, the prospect of positive earned media responses can result as a happy corollary from an organization’s dedication to improving the customer experience with meaningful engagement.
Hsieh goes on to clarify his point about the superiority of a trusting and engaged customer relationship: “I can tell you that my mom has zero buzz, but when she says something, I listen.” A maternal relationship is probably not the dynamic most marketers hope to elicit with a customer, but Hsieh’s point is that prioritizing customer confidence in your brand or product pays dividends down the line. Hsieh is arguing in favor of an “if you build it, they will come” approach to marketing and the customer experience – and one that does not stop after the first sale closes.
We’ve often written about the challenge of managing ever-multiplying marketing channels, but the elusive beauty of social networks and digital communication is that if you “wow” one customer with impeccable service, his ability to share that positive experience is equally amplified. From Yelp reviews to real-time feedback on social media, organic brand advocacy – and criticism – has taken off, and proactive marketers are increasing the potential for organic customer advocacy by prioritizing customer engagement.
According to Nielsen’s September 2013 Global Trust In Advertising And Brand Messages report, referrals and recommendations from within one’s circle of trust are the most credible source of brand-related messaging. Among the 29,000 consumers in 58 countries that Nielsen polled for the study, 84% reported that earned media is the most trustworthy form of advertising, followed by branded websites (69%), consumer opinions posted online (68%), editorial content/newspaper articles (67%), and ads on TV (62%).
Again, organic referrals are a difficult phenomena to engineer; however, Nielsen’s study also returned promising results about consumers’ growing trust in digital marketing efforts.
From 2007 to 2013, text ads on mobile phones showed the largest gain in reported consumer trust, rising 19% overall, from 18% in 2007 to 37% in 2013. Online banner ads, ads in search engine results, and email campaigns also saw significant gains in trust, improving 16%, 14% and 7% respectively.
Even more interesting, Nielsen’s results showed a general correlation between gains in trust and respondents’ self-reported willingness to act on marketing metrics. Unsurprisingly, word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family topped the ranks of the survey regarding self-reported action, with 84% saying they would act on a recommendation from someone they know.
However, online banner ads, search engine result ads, mobile text ads, and email campaigns had the highest positive differential between self-reported action and trust (highlighted in the chart below), indicating that many consumers are even willing to entertain digital marketing content of somewhat questionable quality.
The upward trend in customer trust across many digital marketing channels bodes well for marketers. Digital tactics are prompting responses from their audience, and those who are marketing for meaningful engagement are capitalizing on the opportunity to set the groundwork for a mutually-beneficial customer relationship.
However, a separate study conducted by the Chief Marketing Officers Council found that even companies that internally prioritize customer engagement and the addressing of customer concerns may need to overcompensate even further.
The study, titled Profitability from Customer Affinity, found that while 85% of vendors believe that they are getting better at understanding and addressing customer needs, nearly 45% of customers disagreed. The key findings from the report noted that “B2B technology buyers and specifiers, at least consciously, rank brand fairly low on the totem pole in their evaluation and selection of vendors,” while “levels of competency, caliber of service and support, customer commitment, demonstrated quality of thinking, and consistency and quality of communications are factors that matter much more.”
Image via CMO Council
While the CMO Council’s research focused on B2B technologies (for reasons they explain eloquently in the report), this disconnect between a company’s perceived dedication to customer pain points and the customer’s reported experience belies the impact of even the most customer-centric businesses.
As the CMO Council concludes in their report, when evaluated individually, many marketing metrics may serve to reinforce marketing tactics that elicit customer response, but won’t deliver a wholesome understanding of customer affinity. A proactive marketer will endeavor to know the difference.
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Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
