Trust has always been an important aspect of business. Consumers buy a product because they trust or believe that it will fulfill their needs. However, consumers have increasingly lost trust in business, culminating in the situation of today’s society where we have an inherent distrust for business-to-consumer marketing and advertising. Social media has intensified the loss of consumer trust by creating a new channel in which consumers no longer need to trust businesses, they can simply trust each other.
Social media allows people to grow their own communities to supply resources, one of which is consumer trust. If we are interested in a new product, we don’t have to trust what the ad on TV says, we can sit at the computer (or phone) and in 5 minutes access a community of thousands of reviews and suggestions. Businesses must acknowledge that their traditional channels of trust may be broken. Their branding and marketing voice may no longer be a trusted source of information for their consumers. People may be hearing your ads and marketing pitches, but they might not be listening to what you have to say anymore.
If the channel of B2C trust is broken, then the channel of C2C trust has replaced it. Instead of trust flowing vertically from business to consumer, trust flows horizontally from consumer to consumer. This reality has serious implications for marketing. There is no longer a higher ground in the battle for trust. Your position as a brand is no longer a source of trust for your consumers. Companies must come down off their corporate podiums, and start creating a trusted voice within their consumer communities. Brands must abandon the broken channels of vertical trust, and reposition themselves within the horizontal channels. This new position will create an invaluable source of trust that flows not only among your consumers, but from your current consumers to potential future consumers.
*****
(Shout out to Jay Falls at Social Media Explorer whose post on inbound marketing inspired this thought.)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
7 Comments
1 Zachary Adam Cohen wrote:
its like we”ve all been zeroed out…didn’t tyler durden predict this?
2 EF wrote:
im gonna have to watch that movie again. sounds about right though.
3 Owen Greaves wrote:
You are scratching the surface here, you have touched on a topic dear to my heart. As a futurist I’m always looking at change, trust is one that is not only being re-created but re-shaped.
We are moving to an Open & Free Business Model that is and will be built on trust. We really must come to terms with one thing, we have to change our belief’s on how the world is. The value of money has to be re-determined, a world connected scares companies & Businesses Owners. This paradigm shift is a painful one because our brains are wired to be in control, do not trust anyone. Being open means out of control, KAOS! Imagine that?
So what we know today as open, it’s not even close to what is coming. I just wrote a piece on the topic, I touch a little bit about it. Please see my Blog to get my jist.
Great post, thanks.
4 EF wrote:
Owen, thanks for your thoughts. I like the thread about the loss of control. But what is more fascinating is that I don’t believe these corporations ever really had control. It was simply an illusion based on the lack of any other trust channel besides the vertical B2C. With the growth of the horizontal C2C channel they have essentially lost a control they never truly had. And that is certainly hard to come to terms with, even if it is inevitable.
Thanks again. (liked ur post by the way, left a comment of my own)
5 Owen Greaves wrote:
Control is an illusion for all of us, we have no control over anything really. We can’t control when we will die, who will like us and who won’t…it’s all up for grabs.
Thanks for your comments, there’s so much to say : )
6 D. Matthew Carter wrote:
Eric,
Love this post. To say that trust is currency isn’t to cheapen it but to more aptly describe the exchange of value between company and customer.
Did a post that re-examined “engagement” as a pledge of trust: http://bit.ly/5jcAww Thought you might enjoy!
7 EF wrote:
Matt, I checked out your post, and you were right, loved it! I left some thoughts for you there. The trust as a currency idea is interesting, and, i think, complex. Currency has to be quantifiable. Maybe we should be thinking about what metrics we can use to prove trust in the business world, especially with social media.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.