|
Many small businesses are finding it harder and more costly to attract new customers. Advertising strategies that worked well in the past are delivering smaller returns today. The market has changed in a fundamental way . This change has created an extraordinary opportunity for businesses to create a long term competitive advantage and dramatically increase their ability to:
- Attract new high-value customers, clients or patients
- Convert more prospects to customers
- Compete on value not price
- Increase same customer sales
The ROI of Advertising is declining but our poor economy is only partly to blame. Fundamental changes are taking place and we have reached a tipping point. Many advertisers will tell you that this is not the time to cut back on your adverting budget but a good opportunity to stand out by increasing your advertising budget. This strategy was successful in past economic downturns but it’s less likely to work today.
There has been a significant expansion in the number of advertising options. There used to be just a handful of TV and, radio channels now there are hundreds to choose from. Once we had a single printed yellow page directory. Today, there are several and within each directory, business classifications are becoming ever more granular. The same can be said for most marketing channels. The number of advertising options have increased but the effective reach of each medium has actually decreased. All mediums are competing for the same pool of customers at any one time. This means that you have to increase your advertising budget just to reach the same number of potential customers.
But the real news is that people don’t like unsolicited and irrelevant advertising. Tell the truth, you probably don’t open all of your junk mail and I bet you fast forward through the commercials on your DVR too! Today, consumers have greater control over the media that they consume and how they consume it than at any other time in history. Given the option to skip advertisements most consumers will opt out. Spam filters, do not call lists, DVR’s, pop up blockers and channel surfing are tools that most people use to ignore your ads. Increasing numbers of consumers pay a premium to listen or view commercial free media and often download desired commercial –free content to their iPods.
And if that doesn’t paint a bleak enough picture on advertising, would you be surprised to learn that 75 percent of consumers feel that advertising is less than truthful? So even if your advertising message does manage to reach a real prospect its lack of credibility reduces its influence. Advertising just doesn’t get a lot of respect these days.
But there is GOOD NEWS!
The single most powerful marketing resource is the voice of your customer. Prospects may not trust you but they do trust your customers and by a very wide margin. In fact, authentic customer recommendations and customer reviews are four times more influential than all other forms of advertising. After a decade of relying on customer reviews to make better product purchases online from sites like eBay and Amazon, consumers are looking for authentic consumer ratings of local businesses too.
This brings up another important change- consumers know when they need your service. Although they actively filter out your advertisements, they expend a great deal of energy to find local businesses when they have a need. Every month over 190 million U.S consumers use the Internet to find a local business like yours and 90 percent of them also look for consumer reviews. For competitive business these are your best and easiest customers to attract and at a fraction of your current customer acquisition cost. However, less than 25 percent of consumers find useful reviews for two basic reasons:
- No reviews exist for the service that they are seeking
- They don’t feel that the reviews are authentic
This represents a huge unmet demand for authentic ratings and reviews of local businesses. Virtually every major online retailer has adopted consumer reviews because of their effectiveness in driving business results and today’s customers demand them!
Authentic Consumer Reviews are Key to building Trust.
The threshold for authenticity is much higher for offline purchases of local services such as Physicians, Home Contractors, and Realtors compared to products purchased online because the cost and risk are much greater. Typically you can return items purchased online and get a refund, but once you select a home contractor to redo your bathroom or hire a caterer for that special event its often impossible to do it over.
Trust FX is designed from the ground up to produce a natural online reputation that is authentic. Our competitors allow anyone with an email account to rate any business with little or no checking. Trust FX starts with the business owner. We use a patent pending process where businesses that use Trust FX give each of their customers a unique key at the time of purchase. The key is required to give feedback on Trust FX. Each key can only be used once and it can only be used to give feedback on the business that issued it. This eliminates the abuse and fraudulent activity that plagues other rating and review sites. If you cannot trust the rating process, how can you trust the reviews?
Customer Loyalty Incentives Drives Participation
Your best customers are those who have already purchased from you. So give them a reason to make another purchase by adding an incentive to the review process and drive increased participation. With Trust FX you can give your customers a coupon, a gift card or anything that you wish when they provide feedback.
You know in your gut that authentic consumer reviews make sense and you wish you could use them yourself. For a limited time you can try Trust FX completely FREE and see for yourself the effects that trust can have on your bottom line. To find out more about TrustFX you can call as at 201.606.8110 or email us at info@trusfx.com .
|
