needed to offer the right product or service to the right customer at the right time.  However, in today’s economy, that’s not necessarily enough – who we are and whether the consumer trusts the promises we make in our marketing materials is also critical to making the sale.  Charles H. Green, of Trusted Advisor Associates, has said we’re in a ‘trust recession’ and today’s empowered consumer relies far more on their own research and other consumers’ feedback than almost anything the company tells them. Building consumer trust is both more challenging and more critical than ever before to keep a product, brand and/or company alive. What is Consumer Trust and How Do We Build It? Consumer trust is all about the consumer’s confidence that we’ll deliver on the promises we make – that the product or service functions as promised, the brand has the cache and values as promised, that the offer really is a good one, that we’re understanding and helpful when something goes wrong, etc.  Consumers who trust us are both more likely to pay attention to our marketing messages and as a result, are more likely to buy our products and services.  There’s much we can learn from the survivors of one industry that’s suffering a ‘trust crisis’ and that’s banking.  According to Ago Cluytens, Global Head of Marketing at ING Private Banking, ‘bankers are the new lawyers,’ and out of adversity, they’ve learned three things that can help us all. 

1.       Get to know your consumers as intimately as possible so you can provide them relevant products and services Gather consumer data however you can - via surveys, feedback forms, customer service call transcripts, marketing campaign response data, web data - and use it to match the right consumer to the right product or service at the right time.  This means resisting the temptation to ‘blast’ every offer to everyone and instead demonstrating your understanding of each consumer by being relevant in each conversation you have. 

2.       Follow proper privacy and data protection practices Make sure you adhere to the key principles of privacy whenever you collect and use an individual’s data.  This means giving notice about why you’re collecting data and what you plan to do with it, asking consumers for consent to use their data for marketing purposes, allowing individuals to access and update their data as appropriate, storing their data in a safe and secure environment and using each individual’s data in accordance with their wishes. 

3.       Keep your promises and if you can’t or don’t, admit your mistakes Trust is built on truth and integrity, and nothing destroys it more quickly than what the consumer perceives as misrepresentations made during the marketing and sales process. So we must consistently resist the urge to over-promise no matter how tempting and be truthful about what we can do and what we can’t.  The good news is consumers don’t actually expect us to be perfect – what they do want, however, is for us to admit mistakes when we make them and do our best to set matters right again. 

It’s Just Common Sense, Really We are very fortunate in Asia that we still have significantly high levels of consumer trust - especially when compared to the U.S., Australia and EU countries.  As a result, it’s critical that we marketers act like environmentalists and do our best to protect this enormously valuable natural resource.  And we must all work together because each time even one marketer violates the principles of trust, they damage the marketing environment for us all. Just like clean air and clean water, once consumer trust is lost, it’s not impossible to win back.  However, it will not only take an enormous amount of money to do so, it will also require the co-operation of everyone in the marketing community over a very long time to regain what we are lucky to have today. So, please, as the marketing communities of Asia, let’s pull together, resist the temptations of ‘too good to be true’ offers and improper marketing practices and come through these tough times with the advantage that money just can’t buy.  It will work for all of us – trust me.    

Source: Masso Quarterly Writen by Lisa Watson, founder and managing director of Ibis Intelligence Services and chairman of the Direct Marketing Association of Singapore.  She sits on the International Advisory Board of the US DMA and is a frequent speaker at industry events on four continents as well as a contributor to trade publications around the world.