For companies that do marketing, values are essential. Some believe advertising is manipulative, but deceptive strategies only erode customer trust and damage the relationship in the long run.
Today, consumers have more information than ever and are not fooled by marketing gimmicks. To live up to their expectations, brands have to step up and go for transparency, value, and authenticity. Let’s discover together the era of transparency marketing.
What Is Transparency Marketing?
We can define business transparency as the practice of sharing information about managers and employees, values, culture, strategy, business processes, and results of a company with the public. On the other hand, opaque companies work behind the scenes and control the information that is shared about them in detail.
In today’s digital environment, anyone can influence brands through media such as social media. Businesses are no longer the only voice for brands in the marketplace, and consumers demand social responsibility. Therefore, transparency has become an essential requirement for companies.
Transparency marketing can take many forms, from sharing personal stories of managers and staff to explaining the different factors that influence the final price of a product. It is especially important when there are mistakes or reputational crises: we have to be able to share that we have made a mistake and take the consequences, rather than trying to “cover the flaws”.
Companies that adopt a transparent marketing policy are able to show the more human side of their business, which increases its authenticity. Consumers feel more secure knowing who they are buying from and this helps improve sales.
Another benefit is increased confidence. By sharing processes with transparency, we leave less room for communication errors and we strengthen the relationship with the consumer, both in the short term (to get new customers) and in the long term (to promote loyalty).
The 5 Pillars Of Transparency Marketing
1) Authenticity
Transparency marketing starts with knowing who we are and understanding that we can not please everyone.
One of the first exercises that should be done in any brand or company is to define our values. Only in this way can we find clients who are aligned with them and to whom we can add value. And vice versa, we will also fit in with the client’s values and make him feel that we are what he is looking for.
At Cyberclick, for example, we have distilled who we are through these three values:
Admire People: Humility and respect are two fundamental components for any personal and professional achievement.
Always Find a Better Way: we always want to go one step further. Our mentality can be summed up in “always learning” and “always testing”.
Customer Experience Freaks: we don’t just meet customer expectations of us, we exceed them.
2) Transparency
To carry out our work honestly, we have to inform clients and consumers of everything we do and show clear accounts. If we have to raise the price of a product or service, for example, we must do the exercise of explaining why. If we offer a discount, we have to be completely transparent about the original price and the terms of the offer.
And in the same way, you also have to be very transparent about aspects such as environmental sustainability or hiring policies. Consumers increasingly give more importance to aspects related to corporate social responsibility, so as a company it is our duty to live up to it.
3) Value
Whether we work in B2B or B2C, the essence of our marketing should always be to add value to the customer. Empty promises are useless.
Therefore, we have to start by fully understanding the needs of customers through tools such as market studies or buyer personas. Only then can we know what they really need and adapt our products and services to make them really useful.
4 People
Companies are made up of people and are directed at people, and both employees and customers have emotional needs.
The only way to have an ethical, transparent, and values-based company is to put people’s well-being before profit. For workers, this translates into policies such as work-life balance or flexibility to work for objectives, which create a climate of trust and cooperation.
This paradigm shift is called ” human-centric marketing “, a concept that arises when companies focus on the human side and that can be synthesized in these questions:
What can the people who are part of the company achieve?
How do our business decisions affect people?
How can we create value for the people who work in the company?
5) Experience
User experience is one of the fashionable terms in the world of marketing, and it is increasingly taken into account in web positioning.
But the term “experience” goes beyond digital and encompasses all aspects of the relationship between the brand and potential customers. Offering a quality experience is a differentiating factor that is becoming more and more essential.
Questions And Ideas To Improve Your Transparency Marketing
If you are considering adopting transparency marketing in your company, these questions can serve as a guide to get started:
Do your ads and marketing accurately reflect customers’ experience with your brand?
What can you do so that the experience of interacting with your brand exceeds the expectations of your customers?
If you asked your employees what the experience of working in your company is like, what would they answer?
What is your company doing to improve the lives of employees
Are the directors and managers of your company a good example of people who live according to their values? Are you passionate about what you do to help your clients?
What is your company doing to conserve natural resources and be greener?
Does your company always act in a socially responsible way to improve the lives of people outside the company? Depending on the size of your business, this may affect your immediate community, your region, or the entire world.
Once you have answered these questions, I propose these ideas to start working on your transparency marketing:
Sit down with your team to review the answers to the questions, identify potential areas for improvement, and gather ideas for improving the situation.
Monitor the conversation around your company on social networks and other internet sites through a social listening tool. When you identify a criticism, think about what is right and how you can fix it.
Create an internal feedback system so your employees can easily communicate their needs. For this system to work, it is important that you actively listen to their requests and respond to them as soon as possible.
