T is for Trust

Trust is the vital ingredient in web marketing. Yes, the T word, not the S words, spam, scam, spyware and all the other web words.

The only reason people buy professional services from you is because they trust you. Traditionally, they trust you because they have been told about you by a friend, or you were recommended by another professional. It works. How do I know? For 20 years every new client, every new assignment, has come to my partner and I by referral or recommendation. This has happened for us in Australia and again in New Zealand, without hard sell or heavy marketing expenditure. It has happened for most of my professional service business clients.

Has anything changed with the advent of the web and the shift to internet marketing? The clients' decision criteria have certainly not changed. They trust you because someone else told them that you are good at solving their problem, that you keep your promises, that you are professionally qualified and competent.

What has changed is the client's decision process, along with the way we reach out to wider audiences using new technologies. Our professional lives have become public property with the advent of websites and search engines and now social networking. The technology enables us to reach a larger potential audience, and to provide them with professional service at a distance. Our communication reach is so powerful but at the same time so vulnerable. Our privacy concerns grow by the day. Confidentiality becomes a greater issue as we rely more and more on electronic communications for private documents. We can do more, for more people, at greater distances, but our sense of security is threatened.

We are exposed to more scams and "get rich quick" schemes. The "list builders" and "ticket clippers" on the social networking sites make fantastic claims, and the extravagant hype simply reinforces our insecurity. What, or who should we believe? How can we stand out if we refuse to participate in the clamour of the hype merchants?

To answer this question, we need to go back to the basic decision criteria, because this is our shared point of reference. Now we need to structure our professional persona, our image, our services, the delivery methods in a way that builds trust; trust in who we are, what we do, how we do it and the professional standards we apply to our work. We need to integrate everything we put out there on the web so that we communicate a consistent message, and so that there are no chinks in our armour.

Then we have to rely on the common sense of our prospective clients. If we are truly in the business of helping people solve their problems we have to trust them to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to make good decisions in their choice of professional to rely on.

We need to help them make good decisions by providing them with good information. We need to show them the way to find a good solution. If we believe in the "pay it forward" concept, we have to show it by paying the trust forward. It took me a while to reach this conclusion, and I hope that my readers share the idea.

This is the philosophy that bizlearn has been built on, and I trust that my confidence in my customers will be justified.