A Revolutionary Marketing Strategy ...Trust Me

This article proposes what, for many Web designers and IT professionals, will be a new way to think about marketing. It is based on developing trust and establishing your credibility in the marketplace. Trust-based marketing requires an initial investment of time and energy up front, but can see you land all the clients and projects you want within six months to a year. Best of all, trust-based marketing doesn’t cost a lot to implement.

The Fundamental Problem with Traditional Marketing

Traditional approaches to marketing suffer from a fundamental flaw: they push your services and capabilities at the prospect. As a result, prospects can be turned off easily, because they’re sick and tired of receiving hundreds of marketing pitches every day. This flaw applies to competitive bidding sites as well, if not more, because on these sites, prospects are deluged with dozens (or hundreds) of applicants that they don’t know.

Whether you create a slick Website that describes your services, use the sales gimmicks that most sales training courses teach, or depend on online bidding sites to get work, you will face the following problems if you pursue traditional marketing strategies:

1. Prospects avoid you, because they don’t want to deal with yet another vendor or salesperson.

2. Prospects don’t always give you straight answers about moving forward.

3. You end up competing on price, and bidding in competitive situations, instead of getting sole source deals.

4. You spend money on high cost advertising and direct mail campaigns that don’t produce the results you want.

5. You feel frustrated, because you have to go through the indignity of pitching your services and skills when you are sure that you offer a terrific solution.

You probably know plenty of talented IT professionals who have taken lower-paying jobs in order to avoid the trials and tribulations of marketing and selling their services in this manner.

Inside the Prospect’s Head

There is another way. Before we discuss it, consider what your prospects are probably thinking when they realize they need to invest in a new Web presence (or any other IT services):

1. I don’t want to hire an IT professional, but I have to. This makes me feel ignorant and vulnerable, because I need help and can’t solve my own problem.

2. I have no way of knowing if the person I hire is really the right person for the job.

3. I hear many stories about people being burned when they hire IT professionals.

4. Why can’t IT consultants speak a language I can understand?

5. I don’t care about technology. I want to get business results. Technology is the means, not the end, and I wish these people would understand this fact.
   
   
6. The last time I hired an IT professional, I felt like I was in that Saturday Night Live skit, “Ned Burns: Your Company’s Computer Guy.” Why can’t these people be more human and approachable?

7. This is going to be expensive, and I worry about not getting value for my investment.

The Root Cause: Trust

Underlying each of these thoughts is a common message. When it all boils down, your prospects are really saying, “I want to hire somebody I can trust.” Therefore, developing trust becomes the theme for a new type of marketing.

You have established trust when you meet four criteria:

1. Your prospect is familiar with you and with what you do.

2. Your prospect perceives you to be an expert in your field.

3. Your prospect believes that you understand his or her specific issues, and can solve them.

4. Your prospect likes you enough to want to work with you.