Mediators Wanted: Building Brand Trust
I was on a conference call Friday afternoon when the phrase came up again around marketers “have lost control of the message.” (Hat tip to our dear friend Walt Boyes)…but Walt went further and described the “Wac-a-mole” scenario which made laugh…then cry. Actually, I thought it was a pretty accurate depiction of the state of some communication strategies, which goes something like this : Once a company acquires a new contact, they wack ‘em with endless email communications, and just keep wacking them over and over..just like the game. Now while this image is funny, it’s not too far from the truth as to what companies are doing today for the communications strategy. Tsk..tsk…we need to remember that this is why some companies can really mess things up when it comes to social media and building brand trust.
Why? Because email communications are a far cry from “dialoging” with your customer. And taking a “telling” or “megaphone” approach in all your marketing programs will not build trust, instead people will leave skidmarks and remember those who really annoy them. Remember, in our survey we published in the e-newsletter, the #1 annoyance factor for many buyers is too many emails.
But also, the role of influence has changed, as has how trust is built. I liked how Eric Fulwiler described a new “horizontal” flow of trust that exists now with social networks. We can very quickly get the opinions of others without much effort, and typically bypass the company itself. And if you are on a web site to purchase a product, we can look at customer reviews and see what others are saying before buying.
This makes marketing more challenging, because influence which was once more a trickle-down type effect, is now amorphous and comes from any and all directions.
That’s why another thing Walt said that resonated with me is this: Marketers and PR folk need to act as mediators vs. moguls of information. A mediator enables communication, they listen, and are instrumental in helping build and maintain trust (especially in difficult situations). In the social world, mediators serve to help connect people with the right subject matter experts in an organization, and act as traffic directors to find answers to the questions people are looking for online as well as mitigate problems. As more companies loosen the reigns and invite their subject matter experts to participate directly in social networking, PR and marketers will need to find a new “place.” The days of owning relationships, especially in the media/editorial world, are over. Social networks remove those barriers. A mediator can gain tremendous insight by listening for customer and buyer queues, help make the right connections, and facilitate dialog where possible with the right people. Now this is what builds real trust. We couldn’t agree more.
One of the ways to eliminate that “whack-a-mole” feeling on the part of your customers is to give them enough value with each contact that they are happy to be “whacked.”
The next problem is that marketers are often in deep denial about what constitutes real value. Value isn’t what the marketer is offering. Value is what the customer is willing to pay. Value is what the customer wants.
That’s the real lesson of pull marketing: you can’t give the customer anything they don’t want you to.
They’ll just pull their heads down into their mole holes until you go away.
The shift from megaphoner to mediator requires substantial changes in company culture and organization to be effective – not to mention tons of patience. Managers who still think of revenue generation as the job of sales, and marketing as an overhead that produces brochures, trade shows and the website will have a tougher time of it. Even companies where lead generation is marketing’s responsibility will continue to face challenges as long as marketing is measured by how many names they produce rather than the quality of the leads they turn over to sales.
With the growing availability of information and opinion, customers in most B2B industries have fundamentally and irrevocably altered the way they shop. A lot of managers and business owners have yet to internalize this sea change, so it’s no wonder that they simply take the new tools and apply the old approaches.
Thanks Walt and Michael for your insights. Walt’s point that you can’t give your customer something they don’t want, this is huge problem. It speaks to the power of influence and where people can shop for information. Some companies produce e-newsletters with content that satisfies the company and not the audience. The value is just not there from the reader’s perspective. The results are evident too, in the CTRs especially.
Michael it’s true, a shift to mediation does require patience and time. B2B buyers have altered the way the shop, that’s for sure and marketers who are sleeping at the wheel will miss this critical shift.
Lead generation is still a priority in marketing, but it requires new innovation and creativity and must include goals that are focused on quality and conversions, not clicks.
All too often companies assume what types of information is valuable without consulting their audience and then spend time to make changes based on assumptions that may or may not useful or necessary. Hence, wasted activity in things that don’t matter. Meanwhile buyers are off in another direction and the marketer/brand misses the opportunity.
There’s often no real incentive to change, either. If growth projections are being met, sales targets being nailed, it is very hard to justify changing the game plan. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
There’s a nearly unity correlation between companies that make fundamental changes in their business model and companies that have their backs to the wall. The C-suite officers will be a lot more willing to take real risks if the alternative is clearly the unemployment line.
There’s an old Yiddish proverb, “A fish stinks from the head down.” This is the problem most marketers face. Most marketers are middle or upper middle managers and they can pull and push their company’s business plan until they turn blue from exhaustion and they won’t move the behemoth an inch.
So how do we get top management to change _before_ they hit the end of the road, or is what we’re seeing just the normal lifecycle of a business or a channel?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Juliann Grant and Michael Selissen, Missy Knight. Missy Knight said: RT @julianng: Mediators vs. megaphones: Thanks @waltboyes @mselissen for your comments, just added my ten cents http://bit.ly/dtsEL9 [...]
That’s a great question Walt, and its true that change is difficult – the larger the company the harder it is to turn that ship around.
I would be happier if more companies used all these new tools the right way, and not for general broadcasting. Listening for example, is a new powerful tool that so many are ignoring.
I do think it this learning curve will end up being another cycle, but not until they realize that their business-as-usual approach is not sticking to the wall anymore. Usually that’s about the same time they are hitting (the wall) with their head because their results are in the tank.
Personally, I’m hoping change happens sooner, because the longer the old way persists the more painfully obvious it will become.