Honesty is Indeed the Best Marketing Policy

Tuesday, 12. 8. 2009  –  Category: Enversa

Nobody’s perfect.  Let’s establish that from the outset.  You and your product, no matter how hard you try, will not be everything to everyone.  There will always be limitations or competitors that keep you from being alone at the top.  As a result, it is natural for companies to talk up their competitive advantages and sweep away those unappealing nuances.

With a real-time news cycle and an ever decreasing sense of privacy, it is likely that all of those data points you want to keep hidden will surface eventually.  As a result, many companies (and individuals) are now feeling the pain of not being open and honest up front with their followers.  Before you find yourself in a position of playing catch up to a story with your company, here are three reasons to consider opening up an honest line of communication with your customers and prospects.

There’s No Financial Reason Not To
Maintaining a running dialogue with your customers, prospects, employees, media members and more is not as expensive as it seems.  Social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook provide a free way to announce new products, notify everyone of an issue and respond to feedback.  Plus, with social aggregators like Ping.fm, you can take a single post and disseminate it to all of your platforms.

Having implemented these platforms also acts as an insurance policy on your public relations.  Should you have a situation that requires a quick response, you will already have mechanisms in place to do so in a timely fashion.

You Can’t Control Information Flow Anymore
The days of driving a particular conversation in the public eye are fading.  Now, instead of you creating the topic to discuss, consumers are having the conversations they want—with or without you.  While you can’t control their actions, you can certainly step up and be the voice of your brand.  This allows you to be part of the communication and share thoughts that may not get brought up by the rest.

Monitoring the dialogue allows you to not only respond to criticisms and questions, it provides you an opportunity to capture important feedback on your product.  You can ask your customers for suggestions and offer surveys to gauge interest.  Sometimes, you can learn things about your product that even you didn’t know.  Most importantly, it shows that you are willing to listen (even if you don’t always like what you hear).

No Such Thing as Fine Print
If you want to know the dirty little secrets of a business, check the fine print.  Companies love hiding all the significant details and indemnification in the small print possible, often on the back of a paper that few customers actually review.  They figure (rightly so) that customers won’t bother reading the fine print and they will not have to answer for their specifications.

The fact is: What they don’t know won’t hurt them…it will hurt you.  When something occurs that requires you to reference the fine print, hiding these details creates a level of distrust between the company and the customer.  However, with comment and review sections on websites, plus the social networking sites discussing above, consumers now have the easy ability to take those hidden details and broadcast them to the world.  Therefore, before you decide to bury something in the five point font, remember that those details might be the most engaging pieces of information for a possible consumer.

David Fleming works for CornerWorld Corporation, parent company of Enversa.

Tags: communication, David Fleming, Facebook, marketing, public relations, Social Networking, Twitter