According to a Nielson study, 84% of consumers trust recommendations about products and services from people they know. Why do consumers find these word of mouth connections so trustworthy? Because they expect friends and family members to be transparent in their recommendation, having nothing invested in the outcome aside from love of the product or service. Since those results were released 4 years ago, brands have been trying to match up to the power of word of mouth marketing by a variety of tactics, but the most important of these is the ever elusive transparency.
Social media’s always-on access and immediate content has made it easier than ever for brands to achieve transparency and thus, trust, with their customers, but fumbling still abounds. Think of Kmart’s post-Sandy Hook tweet that expressed sympathy and sadness for the victims, but rather insensitively added their hashtag #Fab15Toys at the end…
