Untainted credibility of your brand is the magic wand, the game changer, the launch pad, and the competitive marker your brand needs to hold sway in the overwhelming competitive market. For you to scale through and make the necessary impact in today’s market, you must work assiduously on any factor that will give you a competitive advantage.
You need leverage whatever good points you may have to boost your ROI. After the overhead and other sundry expenses, investors won’t be avast to smiling to the bank.
Your credibility at the core is the sum total of your brand’s goodwill, the personification of your reputation, and the gate crasher to the market. It determines how people regard your product or service.
The leads your brand generates and conversions made depend entirely on your credibility and it takes hard work to build one. You should jealously guard and nurture any credibility you must have built because it’s your blank cheque.
Research from Statua Labs found out that,
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
- Peers are now considered to be as credible as experts.
- Positive reviews make 73% of consumers trust a local business more
- 64% trust online search engines the most when conducting research on a business
- 15% of consumers don’t trust businesses who don’t have reviews
- 77% of consumers think that reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant
- 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking every day.
What does your brand gain from having untainted and unassailable credibility?
1. Referrals
The market is so competitive that you need help from your customers to scale through. With untainted credibility, your customers will gladly go about telling their families and friends about your product.
They unwittingly become your brand’s advocates, crusaders, loyalists, and influencers. They carry on the word-of-mouth campaign for the brand without any form of bidding.
They trust your product or service and believe others should get to know about it. They have become unsolicited influencers based on the experience they have had with your brand.
It’s believed that when customers are referred by a friend, family member, or colleague there is usually a 25 percent higher lifetime value than customers you just ordinarily acquire.
Forbes reports that,
- Brands are at the risk of losing 22% of business when potential customers find one negative credibility report on the first page of their search results. (2015)
- Brands that have two negative reports on the first page of search results may lose 44% of their customers.
- In the case of three negative reports appearing in a search query, the potential for lost customers accelerates to 59.2%. (2015)
- If on the other hand, you have four or more negative reports about your brand or product appearing in Google search results? You’re likely to lose a whopping 70% of potential customers. (2015)
2. Valuable data
Technology is advancing at a very fast rate and is affecting every sphere of life. Customers have appreciated and require to make inputs as well as recognized.
You can only begin to know your customers if you have valuable information regarding them. That is the only time you will be able to give them what they desire, when they want it, and how it should be delivered all in real-time.
Your credibility vouchsafes your reputation and you don’t need to spend heavily in order to gather information on your customers. They will freely avail you of any information you want regarding them since a bond of trust and loyalty has been built.
3. Market performance
Your credibility wholly determines how your products or services perform in the market. Do people accept them or won’t even touch them with a 10-mile pole? An analysis by the Reputation Institute in 2016, as reported by Nature Torch, found out that about 40 percent of a brand’s market performance is attributable to credibility, which can be corporate or individualistic
Volkswagen had it rough when its group’s overall revenue nose-dived by a colossal 5 percent in the first half of 2016, the group’s share price fell around 40 percent from May 2015 to October 2016, its share of the European auto market plummeted, and it had to send home 30,000 employees as the aftermath of the crisis of its diesel emissions scandal continued to hit the group after the scandal started in September 2015.
If your customers are able to vouchsafe your credibility, your brand stands to reap the following benefits:
- People’s preference in associating with your products or services even when they have alternatives.
- The opportunity to move people’s opinions and views from this association especially as an influencer in the society.
- Enjoying great support for your side of the story in times of controversy.
- The dividends you reap, the value, and quality that are attached to your time in society.
Untainted credibility is simply your meal ticket.
