How to Build Customer Trust?

About the Guest 

Sam is a strategic marketing leader with over a decade of experience. She is actively engaged in developing multi-channel demand generation programs right from concept through execution. She has demonstrated success in the development of integrated campaigns that include paid and organic social, web, and in-person events, direct mail, email, SEO-driven thought leadership content, business development outreach sequences, partner co-marketing, and more.

Connect with Sam Nohava 

Key Takeaways

•   The keys to building trust through marketing are storytelling, proof points, and relationship-based marketing.
•   Marketers need to have a fundamental understanding of how search works and the human behavior surrounding it.
•   Companies create value for their customers by being transparent and honest about successes, and leadership should be looking for opportunities to showcase them.
•   Sam shares that buyers are 57% down the sales path by the time they engage.
•   Customers want to feel connected to a brand, a story, an identity, and this should drive the marketing engine.
•  It’s important that we lean on each other for support during times like these.

Quote

“Organic search research and SEO are the most effective and most authentic ways to earn people’s attention rather than buying it.”

Highlights From the Episode

How Do You Keep a Pulse On Your Audience?

I point to the pandemic as a reason companies need to thoroughly analyze their customer data and “triangulate” their attention so as to benefit their customers despite hard times. I think you can do this through organic search and SEO as these are the cheapest and most effective ways to learn about search behavior.

How Do You Tangibly Prove Your Value to Customers?

I use proof points for this. In order for customers to trust you, they need to see evidence that real-world problems are actually being solved with your products or services. This can easily be done by sharing stories of successes that act as proof points. As a reminder, the attention here should be focused on real scenarios and providing real value.

What is Relationship-Based Marketing?

Research shows that customers are already halfway in by the time they engage, but the driving factors are not the same as they always were. Companies of course need to look for ways to adapt to what is going on in their customers’ minds. Customers routinely want to know, even if subconsciously: 

• Do I like you?
• Could I work with you?
• Can I learn from you?

I think that if you can answer yes to all three of those questions, you’ve got your work cut out for you. It’s on the businesses to take that information and create a culture worth connecting to for the sake of their customers.

Recommended Reading/Resources

This Gartner article on building customer trust provides a lot of insight into the world of relationship-based marketing.

Shout-Outs

Arlyn Knox – VP at Blue Yonder

Jenn Vande Zande – SEO at SAP

Victoria Rochard – Head of Thought Leadership at SAP