Using Trust to Increase Your Marketing ROI

Trust is an essential element of marketing. It is the secret sauce that helps you move a cold contact to a customer. The simple fact is that customers buy from people and companies they trust.

The process of building trust in your marketing begins with establishing a brand reputation — bringing consistency in your messaging and image to help establish your credibility and authority. When you can continue to get this branding in front of people in multiple mediums, across both physical and digital channels, then something magical starts to happen. You make more money through higher return on ad spend.

Don’t just take my word for it, I have data to back it up. We recently conducted a little research project. The process had three steps:

1. We separated our customer list into two categories — those that have established a brand and those who haven’t. We defined “brand” as customers that have a consistent corporate image that is used across multiple marketing channels.
2. We compiled all our call log data from the past three years.
3. We analyzed cost per conversion (CPC) numbers for each client. This is the number of times their phone rang from one of our ads divided by their total marketing spend with us.

The result of our research was that clients with consistent branding across multiple channels had an overall 50% lower cost of marketing compared to non branded companies.  Our finding is that companies who have an established brand enjoy a 2x higher return on their ad spend.

Now that I have your attention, let’s jump into the steps you need to take in order to achieve this marketing ROI.

The foundation is brand consistency. You can’t build trust in your branding if consumers don’t recognize you, and they won’t recognize you without a brand image with the same logo, colors and slogans used across all your marketing mediums. Branding leads to recognition from which you can start to build trust. In their State of Brand Consistency Report, Marq found that companies who utilize consistent branding in all their marketing channels received an increase of revenue anywhere from 10% to 20%.

There have been several studies that seem to back up this correlation by linking trust and revenue. A survey by Edelman, a global communications firm, that found 81% of consumers say that they need to trust a brand before making a purchase. Another study by McKinsey found that customers are willing to pay up to a 20% premium for products and services from companies they trust.

Overall, these stats suggest that creating trust not only helps you close more deals, but it also brings you a higher average revenue per job. The branding ROI is there for you, but the question is how do you take advantage of it? Two action items come to mind:

1. Marketing consistency. If a consumer can’t recognize you across marketing channels, you are throwing money away. You have to have a consistent brand including logos, colors and slogans.
2. Marketing channel. Not all marketing channels are created equal. A study from Marketing Sherpa found that 76% of consumers trust direct mail more than other marketing mediums. Direct mail not only helps you stand out from the digital crowd, but it also helps you build trust.

The bottom line is that the biggest and best home service contractors don’t just spend more on marketing, they spend it smarter by repeatedly getting a consistent brand message out in strategic marketing channels. When this is done right, you will see higher quality leads and you will see your return on ad spend increase to levels you never thought possible.