Last week, our marketing operations coordinator, Alex Farkas, and director of customer marketing, MK Getler came together to talk about building a community and why it’s crucial for your business’ success today. You can check out the recording to the webinar here!
Everyone knows customers do most of their own research before they ever contact you, and that a good portion of that research involves flipping through your customer reviews.
For those companies treating their customers the right way, by forging mutually beneficial relationships based on a personal level, this can be a secret weapon that helps drive more business.
At the best of times, this is difficult.
Under today’s circumstances, it’s even more challenging.
There are three elements to building a community:
- Social Structure
- Sense of Belonging
- Geographical based activities
But there’s a fundamental element to building a community that’s incorporated into all three of those elements: Trust.
As marketers and sales professionals, buyers trust Baristas more than they trust us, which makes our jobs a little hard.
So who do buyers turn to when they make a purchase? Online reviews.
85% of consumers say that they trust online reviews. And the way to drive more online reviews? Create happier customers.
There’s been a shift, where we used to sell TO our customers, now we have to sell THROUGH them.
Which means that as marketers and sellers, we have to focus on a new metric: Time to Trust (T2T as we call it).
The way that you build trust in any situation can be done through the 3 R’s:
Relevant.
Respectful.
Relatable.
If you can focus your efforts around the 3 R’s, you can decrease your time to trust with your customers.
Stay Relevant
One of our customers, Bandwidth, ordered a ton of unicorns to bring to an event that was inevitably cancelled.
And they were stuck with all these unicorns. So they ran a campaign to stay relevant and engage with all the conversations they could have had at Saastr, now just over the phone.
They met their customers where they were at.
Look for moments where you can connect and delight the prospect or customer you’re talking with to catch onto moments you can leverage to build trust.
A campaign like this is an example of how you can create those moments at scale for your team!
Stay Respectful
Most companies out there use “personas” to define their audiences, they tap into what motivates and drives someone during the 9-5, but that’s only half of that person’s life.
There is a whole other set of personality traits, things that drive this person that are unrelated to their job. We call it their 5-9.
Combining the 9-5 and the 5-9, especially now, can help you build more trust between you and your customers.
Adjusting meeting times to be family friendly and checking in on customers to see how you can help will go a long way.
Stay Relatable
Your customers need help, not your entire email list.
Blasting out your COVID-19 plan can feel like a good strategy for communication, but adding some segmentation to your email lists and making sure you’re updating the verbiage for your different segments, and even excluding some, will go a long way to respect your customers inboxes.
If you’re interested in learning more about our Phygital series, check out our earlier episodes, with episode 1 linked here and episode 2 linked here!
Mary Matton
Mary Matton is the Growth Marketing Manager for Alyce, and is obsessed with all things inbound and demand gen. Outside of work, her #5to9 interests include perfecting her mobile photography, the quest for the perfect iced coffee, and spending time with the people most important to her.