A friend was telling me a story the other day. She’d felt she’d been burned by a company she’d been doing business with and needed to vent about it. Several months ago, when the relationship began, they’d sat down and agreed on how they’d work together, outlining who’d do what and when. Things looked pretty good at first. But as the honeymoon phase began to wear, she saw signs that all was not as it had been discussed.
In fact, the other company wasn’t keeping specific promises they’d made. She addressed her concerns with them and they promised to not let it happen again, to keep on track. I’m sure you can see where this is going. Recently they did it again ‘ and this time in a big way. They agreed to approach a situation a certain way and then one of their guys completely and knowingly blew it. She walked away from the business.
What does this have to do with marketing? Everything.
Everything you do is marketing
Not just your ads and your blog posts and your websites and your sales pitches. Everything. And when you make promises explicitly or implicitly, you’re asking for someone to trust you. If you’re lucky, they’ll grant you their trust. If you don’t uphold your promises, you’ll lose their trust. It’s that simple.
If you imply that your product is the fastest, it better be the fastest. If you say you answer calls in 24 hours, you’d better answer calls in 24 hours. No ifs, ands, or buts. People can be forgiving. You can make a mistake. You’ll have to earn back that bit of trust that you lost.
But, you cannot intentionally deceive. Not allowed. Say what you’re going to do and then do it. Mom always said,
If you make a promise, keep it.
Who knew she was talking about business, too’
