The Importance of Trust and Communication

When receiving marketing-related consultation, the thing that always concerns clients is the part regarding costs. The clients’ biggest concern is how effective marketing is in relation to cost, and it may be the marketer’s eternal mission to find a way to be highly effective at low cost. Because the cost of marketing varies greatly and there is no set standard, many people are concerned regarding the costs. Often times, the moment they feel that sales are not increasing immediately, they feel that marketing-related costs are excessive. It is difficult not to feel extremely offended as someone who provides marketing services.

Although the importance of marketing has been recently highlighted, it was not so long ago that marketing was considered to be the same as sales. It has become a given that you should profit just as much you invested in marketing.  Because of this, even now when trends are changing, more people than expected think a certain way about marketing and have come to the same conclusion. The majority of people know that consumers are changing but cannot interpret the changes.  They know it’s a time where marketing is important, but they don’t understand what marketing truly is.

Truthfully, I didn’t offer marketing-related consulting services from the start. If a product or service is already verified and well-known through marketing, they can go straight to sales without much risk of failing.  The problem is, the vast majority of clients who have requested sales, over the past few years, were not prepared at all.

How will you survive if you go to war with guns but no bullets? So I decided to make my bullets. The bullets are marketing.

It is very important to seek value and it takes a lot of effort to get that value appraised. Marketing is one of the many pieces of effort, and it may perhaps be the most important. It’s because consumers do not buy products or services that they know nothing about.

However, there are still many people who do not give much value to advertising their products or services through marketing. They merely focus on sales and results. The goal of marketing is to make sales unnecessary; ultimately the purpose of marketing is to understand the customers and align the products and services to them so that they automatically sell. Is there anything as important as this process? In order to see results, you must go through this process and set an appropriate goal through marketing.

For that reason, communication and trust between the marketer and customer the most important factor in marketing. Because marketing is designing and setting goals for the future, it is not something where you can simply sign a contract, with the respective parties, executing the terms. It is important to note that it is a partnership. If you work together with good communication toward the same goal for the future, you will be able to reap the rewards later. Without proper communication, you will be unable to set proper goals and you will waste money and energy on improper targeting.

“If trust comes first, the results will follow.”

This is the largest quote on my business card. While it is important to emphasize your strengths and achievements to meet many customers, it is more important to meet the right partner to shape the future with. I learned from experience, over the last few years, that if trust comes first, you will eventually be rewarded with the results. Ultimately, trust is the greatest strategy of marketing.