Shady or Trustworthy-Which One Describes Your Marketing?

People do business with those they know, like, and trust.

Imagine this scenario:

You sign on to Linkedin. The little red message notification badge lights up. Someone wants to talk to you. You get that hit of dopamine. You suddenly feel important.

You open the messenger and see it’s from someone you don’t remember connecting with, and whom you’ve never spoken to.

The message says something to the effect of:

“Hey you, I’m selling this thing, do you want to buy it? Click the link to book a call.”

• You’ve never spoken to this person.
• Their message isn’t personalized.
• It doesn’t even include your name.
• There’s no evidence this person has looked at your profile, your website, or knows a single thing about you.

Your excitement has been replaced with disappointment.

It’s the digital equivalent of a stranger approaching you on the street trying to sell you something.

Now take a second to think about someone whose email list you subscribed to.

You probably subscribed because they gave you something valuable for free. Then they continued to send you more emails full of valuable content.

They prove over and over again how knowledgeable they are.

And every once in a while, at the bottom of the email, they make an offer to book a call or buy.

Their focus is always showing up and providing value without asking for anything in return.

Not the call-to-action.

Which of these people are you more likely to buy from?

The second one of course!

Why?

Because they built your trust.

They put time and effort into providing value. And showing up regularly over time. They stayed on your mind. After a while, you probably started to feel like you knew them.

The first person didn’t do anything to build your trust. They’re just playing the numbers. Making as many cold pitches as they can.

Those messages are annoying. Sometimes I reply to those people to tell them how poorly they’re doing and offer to help them do it better.

They never reply back.

Just more evidence they’re not worth doing business with.

Marketing is changing

People are bombarded by marketing and advertising. They’re numb to it. Gone are the days of citing experts, and statistics, and immediately pitching people and expecting them to buy.

Millennials are particularly skeptical of salespeople so going straight to the pitch is likely to be even less effective with them.

As expectations of marketing continue to change, the old sales mantra of ‘always be closing’ is dying. It’s being replaced with always be helping.

Find ways to help people, and build trust.

When you build trust, your sales process becomes that much easier.

Originally published at https://thefrontera.agency on April 15, 2022.