Why Should Anyone Buy From You?
AUTHOR: Justin Basini
Fighting the collapse in trust, an article by Justin Basini, author of ‘Why Should Anyone Buy From You?’
As The Murdoch’s were sat evading and denying in front of the Parliamentary committee grilling them about the hacking scandal you could almost hear another pillar of trust cracking in our collective faith in business. We are living in challenging times, people are more demanding and more cynical than ever before.
The bottom line is that thanks to scandals such MPs expenses or the behaviour of sections of our media, bankers’ bonuses, Enron, Tyco, BP, Toyota, our collective trust in business and brands is in serious decline. Ask the average man on the street about business and most reply that business is for lining the pockets of the fat-cats and bankers. This is a serious issue for our economy and for those that can legitimately claim to be trustworthy because with a lack of trust transaction costs go up and it is harder to answer the question “WHY SHOULD ANYONE BUY FROM YOU?”
Marketing and brands are at the heart of rebuilding the trust that is so important to the smooth functioning of a market-based economy. Marketing is all about connecting with people and that means helping them deal with the many serious issues that they are facing. Re-establishing and commanding trust is central to any successful business and brand.
In “WHY SHOULD ANYONE BUY FROM YOU?” you can find a deep, well-researched, readable and practical understanding of trust and how you can systematically harness trust to become a more effective business and brand. Here are some ideas for harnessing trust for your business and brand:
1. Understand the foundation of trust in your business. Trust is easy to say but difficult to decode. There are many forms of trust: think about the functional trust that a customer places in your product or service; then the affective trust that you build through the relationship you have with your customers; finally think about your different customer groups – are they high or low trusters?
2. Identify the gaps between your “brand reality” and your “brand aspiration.” Most marketing and advertising presents the ideal of a product or service but does your brand reality really live to this ideal? Are you mismanaging expectations and destroying trust in the process?
3. Embrace the age of mass interactions leaving behind the age of mass communications with confidence. The communications model has fundamentally changed; hyper-connected consumers means we are now living in an age of mass interactions. This means you have the opportunity to move from communications based on command-and-control, to unleashing the authentic communications power of your employees and customers.
Those brands and businesses which can truly, authentically and engagingly answer the question “WHY SHOULD ANYONE BUY FROM YOU?” will be the winners in our increasingly low-trust society.
Visit www.basini.com for a free introduction and videos about the book.
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