For any business, generating leads, attracting new customers, keeping existing customers, and boosting conversions are key marketing goals. There are a ton of different avenues, channels, and techniques used to accomplish these goals, and to increase business profitability, but one of the most important strategies, often overlooked, is building trust. Buying decisions are often made on feelings and trust. If you build a reputable brand that consumers feel they can trust, their chances of buying from you are much greater.
Now, with such wide varieties of spam, and untrustworthy operations present, consumers assume dishonesty first and purchase with skepticism. Once you are proven trustworthy, a client will let the “spam guard” down. Your first line of defense against skepticism is a positive reputation.
When a potential buyer stumbles upon a new brand, often the first thing they’ll do is check reviews to first make sure the company is legitimate, and second to check their reputation. Statistics show 61% of customers read reviews before making a purchase. Most clients will not make it past this step if reviews are negative. Additionally, if your brand has no reviews, a buyer is more likely to shy away from your brand and assume negativity because of the unknown factors.
When it comes to brand’s recognition and reputation, franchise systems are both well-known and have an already established brand. This instills trust in buyers. They know exactly what they will get with a franchise model, and this makes them feel confident. Often people fear the unknown and prefer to stick with what they know. Trying something new always means there is a chance to be disappointed. Sticking with what you already know and already like is guaranteed satisfaction.
Additionally, reputation management is a large part of any franchise model’s system, because one “bad apple” can hurt the entire brand. With a system for handling reputation management (including responding and dealing with any negative reviews), franchises are on top of maintaining a positive uniform reputation, making clients feel confident in purchasing. Furthermore, since a franchise system is uniform, if a new division has no reviews, consumers will not be as sceptic as they would be of an unknown startup with no feedback. The franchise system’s reputation is often enough to install confidence, even in new owners.
Getting reviews as a new owner can be extremely challenging, often making purchasing a franchise a better choice for a quicker ramp up and higher success rate.
Great reviews start with great customer service. Clients are often only likely to review a brand if they had an absolutely awesome experience or an absolutely awful experience, so make sure their experience is not only good, but better than most! The better their experience, the more likely they’ll become returning customers, which is one of your marketing goals. From there they will likely recommend you to others, which completes three other marketing goals; attracting new customers, generating leads, and building trust. Consumers thoroughly trust word of mouth, because they trust the people who are doing the referring. For this reason, many business models predominantly focus their marketing strategies around referrals.
These marketing goal completions lead to higher conversion rates, and ultimately, higher profit margins. According to marketingland.com, “Research shows increasing customer retention by five percent can lead to a 25 percent to 95 percent increase in company profits.”
Increasing consumer retention all begins with building trust. By purchasing a reputable franchise model, this step is already complete. From there, you can reach other goal completions more quickly. If you are ready to join a reputable brand and see success quicker, contact Ken today to find out more about The Brothers that just do Gutters franchising opportunities near you!