How Will We Determine Reliability…
Marketing is wonderfully intriguing. In the past, a company would place an ad, buy a billboard, put a post in the newspaper, place their phone number in the yellow pages or send out a welcome-to-the-neighborhood-please-come-and-see-us letter. A business could garner attention simply by doing what was right. Business could be great, and great businesses tended to grow because they were great, and the clientele told others about their greatness. The best businesses showed forth because they were intrinsically incredible, and they continued to work towards becoming even better. Real life, one-on-one interaction with the small business created an environment where judgement of the service, product and business could occur. A positive judgement by the customer was do or die for the small business.
Today, a small business can attract hundreds of thousands of people to itself through the web. A business or individual can be something or say something without ever having been that or said that before. This is wonderful! Why? More and more people are starting to turn their ideas into moving and interacting small (and eventually large) businesses. You have the opportunity, now more than ever, to push your concepts out the door and tell them to get to work because it’s time for them to start paying rent!
The challenge for us will entail how we go about building reliability and thus credibility. As more and more hard businesses turn soft there will be less and less face time, less and less one-on-one judgement time for the consumer. How will your customers judge you? What tools will they use to guide their judgement? How will you build reliability, trust, credibility and loyalty? What will make customers tell other potential customers about your strictly on-line business or network as opposed to another? People will ask, “Why should I trust what you say you do in a blog or LinkedIn?” You will have to respond.
Many people say and write much, but very few actually do. Is your business saying a lot yet doing very little? Those that do what they claim will be the most profitable. Integrity. This fundamental has yet to change. People will love you if you do what is right and provide them with accurate and superb service or products.
