Do The Right Thing – Persuading People To Show You Some Love

“92% of us trust recommendations from people we know” - Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising Survey (2011)

In a troubled world economy where so many of us are struggling to keep our heads above the water, trust is key to business success. Trust is all about liking the cut of a business’ jib. When you appreciate a brand’s honestly, find it likeable and feel it’s honest, you’re well on the way to trusting them. And when you trust a brand you’re more than happy to pass on the good news to other people so they can enjoy the experience too.

What can recommendations do for your business from a Social PR and digital point of view? Advocates are the holy grail of marketing because they’re people who love your brand so much they tell everyone and his dog how great you are… and you don’t need to hand over a penny. You get more exposure, your reach is wider and people are more likely to convert from prospects to paying customers.

How Do You Generate Advocates?

Here are our top tips for persuading people to fall in love with your brand.

First and foremost, you need to treat potential customers and paying customers the way you like to be treated yourself: with efficiency, transparency and honesty. When you get it right and create a respectful, warm, polite, cheerful, considerate and professional personality, through thick and thin, you build a framework that openly encourages and promotes advocacy. It’s all about doing the right thing every time.

Doing the right things involves responding to enquiries as quickly as possible. If you do it faster and better than your competitors, you’ll score an advantage and attract more advocates.

Remember every problem is an opportunity in disguise. When you resolve an issue for a customer or prospect satisfactorily, they end up feeling much more loyal than if they never experienced difficulties in the first place. That’s human nature for you!

It’s important to ‘fess up when you’re in the wrong. The worst thing you can do is lie, obfuscate and deny when you’ve ballsed things up. The best thing is to be open, honest and admit your failings. Think about how you’d feel as a wronged customer and you’ll get the picture straight away.

Take Tesco, who fielded a brilliant Social PR response to the infamous horse burger incident. Their Facebook apology is a beauty, a marketing triumph when so many brands would eat a dog rather than answer a straight question or answer to their customers. That’s the way to do it.

When you make it clear what you’re going to do, when and how, you manage people’s expectations beautifully. When we enjoy the quality of experience we’ve been led to expect, we feel good about it. When our expectations aren’t managed properly we can feel disappointed and lose respect for a brand.

If there’s likely to be a delay or problem, humans like to know up front as soon as possible. If you’ve ever sat on a static train in the middle of nowhere, wondering when it’ll get going again, with no information about what’s happening, you’ll know exactly what we mean!

Going the extra mile is an excellent idea too. When you go out of your way to help, you win people’s loyalty and affection.

How Do You Know When You’ve Done The Right Thing?

Customer reviews are an excellent way to identify whether or not you’re on the right track. Econsultancy has found that reviews can deliver as much as 18% extra sales. In their experience a massive 61% of customers read online reviews before buying and 63% of us are more likely to buy from a business whose website includes customer reviews. It’s a trust thing.

If you want people to review your products or services, ask them. And make leaving reviews a simple, enjoyable matter.

It’s important to publish poor reviews as well as positive ones because it proves you’re honest.

You can incentivise feedback but there’s no real need. You are more likely to get genuine positive feedback when it’s given freely, without obligation.

It’s vital to use reviews to improve the user experience – when you change the way you operate in response to people’s feedback, then tell them what you’ve done directly or via your blog, you’re well on the way to creating loyal advocates.

Have you got any examples of great advocacy? Let us know and we’ll cover them.

By Dan Flanagan, Don't Believe the Hype