Becoming transparent

Customers want to know that they can trust the companies they do business with. There are constant stories of scandal and company collapse, and this makes consumers wary of spending their hard earned cash. If you want to get customers, you have to be a paragon of honesty, and offer transparency to your customers. They want to look at your company and know that if they dig deeper and do research they aren't going to find any hidden secrets.

With today's marketing, the best way to gain a customer base that is loyal is to form relationships with them. Like any relationship, trust is vital. In order to establish trust with your customers, you have to be transparent. Consider the following:

Steps to surviving modern day marketing
1. Forget the campaign approach. Gone are the days where you can create a great set of words, and simply campaign to your market, and expect them to believe you and take you for face value. A campaign is not going to work, a relationship is.
2. Focus on relationships. Marketing has gone from a one way street, you talking to your customers, to a two way, you engaging them in conversations, and them responding. If you want to survive modern day marketing, you have to be willing to focus on the relationships you build with customers, talk to them, take their feedback, and implement changes to better meet customer needs. You also have to do this without being sneaky, or losing integrity.
3. Be more authentic and transparent. Customers have the internet at their fingertips to research you, your practices, and more. In order to gain customer support and loyalty, you have to be authentic (Only promising what you intent to follow through with), and honest. If you try to fool your customers you will be the one who suffers. If they find out, your name will be smeared across social media channels, and consumer forums, and you will be hard pressed to stay afloat. The point is, the more transparent your company is, the more people will trust you.
4. Think about your customer's needs. The customer is what drives your business, and if you want to survive modern day marketing, you have to be catering to their needs. Is your product new and improved? Does it improve their life in some way? As you create your marketing plan, be sure that it centers around meeting your customer's needs, and providing something that makes their life a little better or a little easier.
5. Be an advocate for something worth buying. There is a lot of junk out there, provide something that is truly worth buying, this is a huge part of transparency, because it means not needing a catchy gimmicky sales pitch, or fancy packaging, but instead honest to goodness value and quality in the product or service.

If you can be transparent, you will find that your customers are loyal and eager to share your business with others.