Trust and Online Marketing - Essay Example

Trust and Online Marketing In every organization, trust is important to all stakeholders and shareholders. More often, customer base trust based on the company product and profile. Without trust, a company cannot fit in the business world because customers purchase from trustworthy companies. A company earns trust through cooperation and effective communication with its stakeholders and shareholders. Trust builds relationships through reducing fear, complexity, and ease exchange of business ideas and opportunities. With advancement in technology, organizations have the opportunity to communicate with a wide range of customers on the product and service availability over the Internet. Online marketing may refer to all kinds of marketing done on the company website, emails written to customers and other wireless media. Customer relationship can earn a company competitive edge since good relationships build trust and, hence, regular customers. Internet marketing binds together the art of creativity and technical elements of the Internet comprising design, development, public relations, and sales. Internet marketing is mostly done through the company website and social sites like Facebook and Twitter (Maughan, 2007:58). Although the main goal of the internet marketing is to grow the company business, the company should emphasize winning customer trust by appearing genuine and promising what it can offer. This is because internet influences chances of frauds; hence, imposters can steal from customers. Zappo embraces internet marketing to sell its products, which are majorly shoes and bags. Use of the Internet to market its products is of high importance as the company encourages all employees to exploit social media networks and connect with customers following the companies’ core values. This has endowed Zappo with great support since the employees are active on Twitter, the company’s director being most popular. Zappo uses YouTube to display its products, give speeches to customers through videos, which majorly highlight company values, customer feedback and compliments. Facebook is one of its engines towards customer feedback and discussions that present an opportunity to clear doubts and instill confidence and trust. Zappo has several blogs giving information on its products, employees, and management. Blogging creates credibility and wide readership and enables customers to understand the company better as well as reduce fears. A company aspiring to succeed in online marketing should invest in a good-looking design (Rosen, 2011:26). This is because first contact and sight counts a lot when it comes to perception of online customers and prospects and the credibility of the site. It is crucial for a company logo, layout, design, and colour tone to suite the expectations of the target group of customers. For example, if a company handles a wide portfolio of customers, a simple design may fit best providing general information on the broad range of products. On the opposite, if a company deals with a market niche like baby products, it is important to tailor-make the appearance of the site to look baby-friendly, warm, and display some lovely and touching baby photos (Scott, 2010). This will attract mothers, especially young ones, to purchase from such a site. Use of a reputable payment service will boost customer trust to a company offering online services and products. Online business is often associated with hackers and fraudsters, and customers can no longer incur such a risk. If customers doubt the company payment details, they are likely to switch immediately to a more assuring competitor. Therefore, it is important for the company to engage an online payment system that the target group of customers can trust. If the company sells to international customers, it is essential to use universal payment system like PayPal as it is recognized worldwide. It is important to include the payment gateway logo on the website as survey shows that 80% of customers feel secure when seeing company logo on websites when purchasing online. In order to win customers’ trust when conducting online business, the company should focus on providing information on how it conducts its business. This is because customers usually consider safety, convenience, quality, warranty, and privacy of personal data. When there is not enough information on how the company conducts business, customers are faced with doubts and will prefer buying from another company with more detailed profile (Wiesel, Pauwels & Arts, 2011:606). The company should consider sharing information like contact details, physical location, and addresses to reach it. Return and refund policy is essential as customers want to know the next action if unsuitable product is purchased or if delivery terms pertaining to the mode and duration of delivery are violated. Transparency is important in online marketing since customers cannot gauge company credibility by assessing the expressions of the employees as it could be on physical marketing. Many decision makers find it a hurdle to create transparency to customers and capture their minds. In Zappo, transparency is an innate reality as customers talk of the company products online (Maughan, 2007:60). The little information customers have, no matter how crude it is, spreads like a virus thanks to social networks. If the company is clear enough in its operations and the information it provides to customers, it stands a chance to earn customers’ trust and a good reputation. If the information is unclear, customers will lack guidelines to make a decision and are likely to share fears and doubts in the company. If the top management uses social media, customers tend to trust the company because customers associate such a brand with top-level management. Zappo embraces this strategy of involving top management in social marketing, whereby its chief executive leads the employees on Twitter; this has given the company a great deal of success. Quick and responsive communication with customers builds customers’ trust to a company. This is because when customers have the assurance, they can reach the company through the Internet and are influenced to do so, which gives the company an opportunity to campaign for its brand (Rickett, 2007:24). At this platform, the company can handle complains and address then effectively. Customer feedback is crucial to any business identity because it helps understand customer expectations and satisfaction level. It also provides an opportunity to present information about new product lines in the market. Fast handling of customer complaints and providing an effective solution to their issues generates trust to the company, and customers are likely to see it as an effective company (Alexandru & Carmen, 2011:121). Nothing beats genuine feedback from a happy and satisfied customer. What customers tell each other is much more convincing to the customers than what the company communicates to the public. Therefore, it is important to conduct a product review from customer feedback based on their testimonies. The company can take advantage of happy customers by publishing a photo of such customer on its site or other social media on the Internet as no customer will doubt such a complement. Ensuring accountability when interacting with customers via social media enhances the confidence in the company products and services. If a company engages in social media marketing and encourages the audience to interact via discussions, a great level of accountability is generated. By using social media aggressively, a company can gain accountability by providing a range of portfolio and customer service. Therefore, it is important that the company displays only relevant information to customers and acts in a professional manner whenever engaging customer discussion on Internet. Another great way of building and maintaining trust is by entertainment. A company should provide fun and be simple when engaging online marketing; presence of humour cultivates interest in the company product. The website should not only provide information on products and services but also have a sense of humour. Fun is a form of creativity that presents business opportunities (Wiesel, Pauwels, & Arts, 2011:609). For example, Zappo provides games on the company website that one can play and win discounts or additional products; this encourages many customers and prospects to purchase as they have confidence in the company. Any company focusing on a good relationship with customers and a long-term one should focus on the importance of replying emails and any other form of enquiry from a customer online because email is an important communication and beneficial asset to a company when utilized wisely (Maughan, 2007:61). Any transaction and progress on a purchased product should be communicated to the relevant customer as this will generate trust and security about the company. The speed of response matters as quick response is a show of efficiency and reliability. Conclusion Since online marketing provides no physical avenue for a customer to assess the quality and credibility of a product and its seller, both the company and buyer face the challenge of trust to each other. Customers tend to doubt the quality of the product on top of worries about its details as well as fear for fraudsters. They also fear making payment to non-existing companies or are afraid that goods may fail to reach their premises. On the other hand, the company fears to deal will imposter customers who may just use fake credit cards or even hack the company system. Therefore, a company needs to build customer relationship that yields loyalty to the company (Alexandru & Carmen, 2011:122). If a customer trusts the service provider, there are no fears that substandard service or product may be delivered. In addition, a customer is more willing to pay in advance if there is trust in the company than if there is no trust at all. Bibliography Agarwal, A, Hosanagar, K, & Smith, M 2011, Location, Location, Location: An Analysis of Profitability of Position in Online Advertising Markets, Journal Of Marketing Research (JMR), vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1057-1073. Alexandru, P, & Carmen, A 2011, A qualitative research regarding the marketing communication tools used in the online environment, Annals Of The University Of Oradea, Economic Science Series, pp. 119-125. Köhler, C, Rohm, A, de Ruyter, K, & Wetzels, M 2011, Return on Interactivity: The Impact of Online Agents on Newcomer Adjustment, Journal Of Marketing, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 93-108. Maughan, S 2007, Way Cool: Marketing and the Internet, Publishers Weekly, vol. 254, no. 8, pp. 58-61. Rickett, J 2007, A way with the web, Bookseller, 5272, pp. 24-25, Literary Reference Center Plu. ROSEN, J 2011, Where the Kids Are: Marketing Online, Publishers Weekly, vol. 258, no. 8, pp. 25-28. Scott, D 2010, The New Rules Of Marketing And PR : How To Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, & Viral Marketing To Reach Buyers Directly, n.p.: John Wiley & Sons, eBook Collection. Wiesel, T, Pauwels, K, & Arts, J 2011, Marketings Profit Impact: Quantifying Online and Off-line Funnel Progression, Marketing Science, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 604-611. Read More