We marketers like to speak a lot of trust. We discuss how we can build trust with our audience and ways we can earn trust, foster trust, and command trust for our brand. But we don’t talk much about the other side of that coin: Trusting our audience.
It’s just as important as earning trust from our audience.
Why You Should Trust Your Audience
It’s important, if you want to earn your audience’s trust, that you first put some trust into your audience. Why do I say that?
Your audience wants to buy from you. They want to trust you. But they also realize that trust is a two-way street. And they will sense if you don’t trust them. If you don’t trust your audience and your audience senses that you don’t trust them, that will throw a wall up between you and you’ll have another hurdle to overcome in reaching that audience.
So, on what matters should you trust your audience? Try these, for a start:
- Trust your audience to know what they want. Yes, sometimes people do not know what they want, but many times they do. Don’t assume that your audience don’t have a clue.
- Trust your audience to communicate their desires and needs. If you ask, they’ll tell you. Let the market speak.
- Trust your audience with their preferences. Sometimes it’s a matter of X over Y or X instead of Y. Your audience will tell you which product or service they prefer.
- Trust your audience with buying decisions. In the age of the Internet, people can and will research products before they buy them. Trust the process.
- Trust your audience with their money. They know what to do with it.
Trust is an important factor in business. It’s important in e-commerce and in service. Let your customer decide what they need. It’s okay to lead them to a buying decision with the right leading questions, but pay attention to the subtle clues that let you know when you are going astray of expectations. If you don’t trust your audience in the matters most important to them, then you can’t ask them to trust you.
There is the first rule of business. Trust your audience before you ask your audience to trust you.
