Value, Trust and Experience

Value, Trust and Experience are the three most important words to know when building a successful business and developing a winning marketing strategy. Know them, live them, and promote them!

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Value, Trust and Experience are the foundation of a successful business. They are the words that all entrepreneurs, business owners, and organizational leaders need to understand and deliver on, to ensure a successful start and sustainable growth for their organization. These are the words that are fundamental to reaching business goals such as customer satisfaction, increased revenue, and a strong brand reputation. 

HERE ARE THE DEFINITIONS OF VALUE, TRUST AND EXPERIENCE AS IT RELATES TO BUSINESS WITH TIPS ON HOW TO INCORPORATE THEM INTO YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY. 

Sometimes you can deliver on one, two, or all three of these goals with a single marketing tactic. To get the greatest impact for your efforts, be mindful of how you will incorporate these words into your marketing deliverables, including materials and messaging.

Value

In business, providing value means that you have a marketable product or service; something someone wants, and it is priced right; they believe it is worth the amount of money you are charging. 

HOW TO COMMUNICATE YOUR VALUE. 

• Showcase products with quality photography and videography - Use proper lighting and a quality camera to create high-resolution shots for your product pages and other marketing materials. Highlight the features of the product using a variety of angles, both close up and full-product shots. Provide lifestyle photos (product in action) for your website and social media profiles to help people see how it works. Most people enjoy watching videos, so incorporate them into your marketing strategy when possible, for both how a product works and how it can be used.

• Focus on the benefits, not features – By providing language in your marketing material that focuses on how the customer will benefit from your product/service will help them realize the value that they will receive if they purchase it from you. Features are important but emphasize the benefits.

• Share testimonials on your website– Find ways to share what people are saying about doing business with you. Positive reviews can reveal why someone purchased their product and whether or not they believe it was worth the investment. You can collect personal testimonials from client satisfaction surveys and publish them, with their permission, on your website.

• LinkedIn and Facebook offer the opportunity to have reviews added right to your profile page. Encourage your clients to add reviews

• Online reviews, such as Google, Amazon, Yelp, and Trip Advisors, are ways people leave reviews. People can find these reviews organically through search, but there are also website add-ons that provide a way to incorporate them directly into the site.

  • Research shows that, Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before feeling able to trust a local business 57% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more starts (BrightLocal, 2018)

• Share Success Stories – Every business owner needs to tell the stories of how they helped their clients improve their lives by doing business with them.

• Short or long, just tell the story. A success story can be a brief few words by the client or a longer case study. These should provide a background to the customer’s situation or challenge, the product/service they purchased and how they found it beneficial or solved a problem, why they chose to purchase from you or the benefits of working with you, and a quote (if possible). There are a few ways you can do this.

• Do a video series - Interview clients with a similar format. Depending on what channels your business uses will depend on the format and how you will share the content. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are popular social media platforms that support video content.

• Blog & YouTube – host it on YouTube and embed the video into a blog post on your website. Transcribing the script to text for the blog will help with SEO and capture the interest of the visitors who prefer to read the story. Create a category ‘Success Stories’ or ‘Case Studies’ so visitors can click on the link to see all your success stories. You can also create a separate webpage that can be added to your navigation menu to help find this content easily.

• Case Study, long-form – A longer-form case study is typically done for a large project that provides a great deal of value to the client and can be used as a client reference when submitting for future projects. This is typically created to include as a PDF which can be downloaded. It can also include a variety of supporting documents for marketing, such as videos, photography, and possibly graphs showing results or statistics. Make sure to have this professionally designed and consistent with your brand’s visual guidelines (e.g. include logo and brand colours)

  Trust

  Trust is something that is earned, which means you as a business owner have to show your customers, and other key stakeholders, that they can rely on you. Trust is built when you display trustworthy characteristics, such as the ability to deliver valuable products/services, consider and respond to their needs (e.g. return their money if a product is not delivered as expected), truthful, ethical and show integrity (e.g. during a crisis you take responsibility when it is due, do due diligence when sourcing products, fair employer, etc.).

  HOW MARKETING CAN HELP BUILD TRUST FOR YOUR BRAND. 

• Display your service level agreement (SLA) on your website – By providing potential customers with the information about what type of service they can expect when doing business with you, is the beginning of trust. When you offer value in the product/service you offer and your communication to them that you believe in what you have is valuable, enough that you promise customer satisfaction, your prospective client will be more likely to purchase from you. Just remember, you need to deliver on that promise to establish trust after their purchase.

• Create content that shows your level of expertise – Showing your customers that you know about the product/service, shows that someone can trust you enough to take your recommendation to buy the product/service you are offering. Examples of content that shows your thought-leadership or expertise, maybe to make a video of you demonstrating how to use your product/service, or writing a white-paper/blog explaining the value of your product/service.

• Customer reviews & testimonials – when people hear positive experiences that other people have when doing business with you helps build trust.
  Share your team’s expertise! – let people know that your team has the knowledge and understanding to provide you with the information they need to help make the best decision for their purchase. Building trust in your team helps to build trust in the business. Encourage them to share their background, awards, recommendations, and ongoing content explaining what they know. You can share this information on,

• LinkedIn – teach them how to leverage LinkedIn to be an influencer

• Website – the ‘About Us’ or ‘About our Team’ are pages where you can showcase your team.

• Social Media – Sharing thought-leadership content, and engaging with clients online, can help build trust with clients and other key stakeholders.

• Be honest & true to your brand

• Be consistent

• Give back to your community

  Experience

  There are multiple definitions of experience and all of them apply to how a business can affect a customer’s journey. In summary, a business aims to offer an experience for their customers by giving them, or allowing them to participate in, an event, moment, or a product/service, that, that person believes made a positive impact on their life. How much that impact made may vary from person-to-person, but at the end of the day, the business aims to provide something memorable; where the customer walks away having participated in, observed, or gained access to something that changed their lives for the better.

  HERE ARE WAYS MARKETING CAN HELP DELIVER EXCEPTIONAL EXPERIENCE.

• What do you have planned this year for your business? Create a calendar so you can plan your marketing tactics to support them.

  • Tradeshows

  • Sales promotions (e.g. retail > Christmas time)

  • Special industry, community, or national events that you support (e.g. Earth Day for businesses environmentally sensitive products)

  • Product launch

• Know your audience - When developing your digital marketing strategies, the first step to improving the customer experience is first understanding your target audience. Related Article: Know your Audience: Steps to Create a Target Audience Persona

• Create and deliver great content! Learn about how to evaluate or get started with digital marketing

  • Segment your audience,

  • personalize your content,

  • make sure the content is relevant,

  • make sure it is easy to find,

  • make sure it is in delivered in the way that your audience prefers.

  • Create interactive opportunities– gamification, augmented reality, polls, chatbots,

  • Tap into, and support, a positive emotion – inspiration, happiness, humour

• Make it easy for them to do business with you! – positive buyer’s experience (website content, navigation, buying experience, let them know how to do business with them)

• Give back! Customer appreciation! Say thank you. Go above and beyond! Even the little things matter.

• VIP Events

• Give a Thank-you card! On delivery in the box or mailed afterwards.

• Offer a discount for a future purchase at the time of purchase

• If you give back to your community, create a community page on your webpage to let you know how you are involved.

• Contest/Giveaway – This can be done to give back to your customer’s or to encourage new customers to get involved.