Skip to main content

The Trust Gap in Marketing



Have you ever given thought to "Why do you buy the things you do" ? Do stand in front of the mirror and give a thought to how you make choices about your own purchases. 

 Trust is one of the main drivers of that process. Higher the trust, more likely it is that someone will do business with you or you will do business with someone. This is one important point many business owners fail to recognize, especially in service industry. One of the biggest challenges is – how to get someone to try your service for the first time ? You need to offer ways to get them to try it, without risk. Often, this is perceived as giving away something for free. Yet, it does not address the issue of trust. 

 Many companies and their websites offer a Free Consultation of their potential customers’ business needs / problems, to try to get a foot in the door. If they simply focus on price, as an incentive to make that first purchase, they are sure to miss something crucial. Price can be a legitimate reason for many but for most, it is a case of a tremendous trust gap. This means that a minimum amount of trust has to be earned before your potential customer will consider buying from you. The trust gap can be fairly wide for many services–based businesses. The gap may be as wide as the Indian Ocean. So, simply focusing on price as the only gap, is a serious case of marketing myopia.

 Let’s look for other ways to decrease this trust gap. Any potential client, really wants to get to know and trust the company before making a buying decision. For a start, if you post / share on a regular basis, great tips / tricks / traps, on a blog or eMail (which is subscribed for), then the potential customer has a much better chance of knowing the company. Can you reduce the potential customers’ hesitation by doing some of the above or even a sharing small eBook about the subject ? They key is to have content that will be useful to the customer and not something that you want to push. 

 Putting a Free Consultation Offer ! on the back of your business card, is a gimmick, most will see through. You go to a networking event, not with the goal of bagging client, but with goal of building relationships. The goal always needs to be engagement. Business will naturally result. The same applies for solopreneurs – the one–man army company. Only a solopreneur knows how much overworked he is. He knows that he needs all the help he can get. Yet, while going for your product, he is bound to be protective about any potential damage. He won’t let a person who offers a 1–Hour Free Consultation Offer !, influence his decision. 

 Companies need to understand that their entire focus, when trying to attract new clients should be on how you they can build trust to reduce that gap ? 

 We can work together on this, if you like.

 About the Author
Dr.  Sunil Pevekar  is a PGDM from IIMA and  a PhD from USA. He is an expert on  10X Business Growth and Non–Traditional Marketing Tools & Techniques. He can be contacted on marketing@drsunilpevekar.com or +91 7983826309.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Compelling Value Proposition

Value is defined as the worth of something for which something else can be exchanged.  This exchange is by free will. This exchange, in marketing, is with the money that the customer is willing to pay. Many marketing professionals confuse the value proposition, with the value statements that they make from from time to time. One of them - the (dreaded) elevator pitch. 😠 Dreaded elevator pitch makes the other guy in the elevator, press the "emergency" button to get off the next floor, even of he was not intending to get off there. 😠 😠  Even some experienced marketing professionals believe that a value proposition is merely a single statement or a sentence. It is not so. It a comprehensive way to define value, especially from the point of the customer. Thus, an elevator pitch, a Unique Selling Proposition(USP), a Unique Value Proposition (UVP), a Minimum Value Proposition (MVP) are just parts of the value proposition. You can call them the subsets of ...
5 comments
Read more

Being a Responsive Manager

These days, I hear a lot of people talking about making responsive websites. I started wondering whether there was some way we could also have responsive managers !! Do they teach this in the MBA Colleges ? Or even in the Corporate World ? What would being responsive mean ? Is there a way a manager can learn to become responsive ? Many such questions !! I thought I would share my thoughts here. U nresponsive people drive me crazy - sending an eMail to someone and then waiting days to hear anything back, is at the top of my list. I have to admit that this happens to me also. Yet, I replay withing 4 - 5 days, even in such situations. What is horribly sickening is not hearing anything at all. A simple question I ask, in job interviews, is “Do you consider yourself a responsive person ?” For me, this is a must-have-attribute . Naturally, everyone says, “yes.” But the way they answer, the speed and the conviction, is obviously the answer to my question. This makes realize...
5 comments
Read more

12 Ways to get Referrals and Fast - 1A

Referral business is and can be a great barometer of your company’s business health. When you get referrals, it is a clear indicator that your customers accept and believe in your offerings – to the extent of putting their reputation on the chopping block. They are driven by the need to be known among friends and colleagues, for being able to share their good experience and in turn sharing it as a good advice. In a way, they are comfortable and even willing to make your company and product a part of their inner circle. The question is – how can you tap into that existing goodwill and make it a little more stronger, a little more predictable ? I have tried to highlight 12 ways (there are many more) : Create and Celebrate Milestones with Customers People do not remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. To be remembered in a positive way, you must become a part of their moments of triumph, their moments of celebrations. With a customer (or even a qualified ...
2 comments
Read more