Trust Marketing Framework - Who Owns What? // Local Marketing Insider #075

If you haven’t heard this before then, well, I’m no good at my job.

For the last 10 years or so, trust in businesses has largely been built peer-to-peer.

In its most basic form, this is the thesis upon which Widewail is built.

Consumers trust the words of past customers. Reviews are simply a tool connecting prospects and customers (and Widewail makes it easy to get more).

The voice of the customer is remarkably persuasive.

And this is a very good thing for us marketers.

Beginning two years ago, we developed a framework to help local marketers put the voice of the customer at the center of their marketing.

The name: Trust Marketing.

The long-time readers have come across this before. If you’re new, welcome to Trust Marketing.

Trust marketing is all about putting your customer at the center of your marketing. 

Your customer is your “trusted messenger.” 

To explain the framework, we put together a great deck for a partner, RentManager, in the context of property management. However, the core concepts apply just the same to any industry.

I haven’t released this deck before. Now you can get it here.

Here’s the Trust Marketing Framework Visualized

To give you a taste, here is the framework visualized. It has three parts - Capture, Distribute and Manage. Zoom in or click here to see the image larger.

In Trust Marketing, Who Owns What?

In the framework, four different teams have a role. Each team is supported by technology to speed up the process. I’m applying the framework to a multi-location local business structure for this example. Let’s take a look at the four teams and their technology.

Group-Level Marketers

This team quarterbacks the strategy. 

At the group level, marketing teams are responsible for:

• Creating the messaging for SMS review generation campaigns 
• Selecting the appropriate review sites
• Determining the split of text review vs. video review requests
• Publishing review-led marketing on the company website and social media
• Monitoring group-level reputation performance and effectiveness

Group-Level Operational Teams

Reviews are as useful as a source of operational feedback as they are a tool to increase visibility in the local market. Operational teams and leadership should be using reviews as an input to improve business best practices.

Operations teams at the group level are responsible for:

• Monitoring group-level reporting
• Identifying constructive feedback trends in customer reviews and using those to provide direction to onsite teams

Onsite Teams

Onsite teams shape a business’s reputation. Their focus should remain primarily on consistently delivering a high-quality customer experience.

Onsite teams are responsible for:

• Delivering great in-person customer service
• Updating CRM with transaction records to power review request automation technology
• Working with vendor-managed services teams to verify that suggested negative review responses are accurate.
• Implementing feedback from operational team observations

Vendor Services Teams

Vendor teams do the heavy lifting on the management side of the framework so that onsite teams can focus on in-person customer engagement.

Vendor services teams, particularly review response teams, are responsible for:

• Responding to all reviews as soon as possible
• Posting responses to positive reviews immediately
• Sending suggested responses to onsite teams for verification and approval

Technology

Technology links these four teams together, simplifying daily tasks and removing human error and fatigue.

Some examples of what technology is responsible for:

• Using what the onsite team inputs to the CRM, SMS requests for reviews are sent automatically by review generation software
• The reputation management platform aggregates all customer feedback from the group’s brand mosaic into one place
• Topic and sentiment reporting turns free text customer reviews into useful summarized reporting

Four Teams + 1 Framework + Technology Working Together

“A brand is no longer what we tell consumers it is - it’s what consumers tell each other it is.” Scott Cook, Co-founder, Intuit

A lot of chatter surrounds your business online, which contributes to your overall reputation. We think about this as your brand mosaic. The group marketer’s role is to shape the brand mosaic to be favorable to the brand, resulting in more business. But the concept is nebulous.

The Trust Marketing Framework provides a structured approach to managing a tricky part of a local business’s brand – the voices of existing customers.

But the team structure is just a piece of it. Understand the framework in more detail.

See you in 2 weeks - Jake, Marketing @Widewail