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According to this year's AP-GfK's General Social Survey, Americans don't trust each other.
The 2013 poll shows only one-third of Americans think they can trust their fellow citizens, down from one-half in 1972.
A record high of two-thirds of Americans are suspicious of others.
That's bad news for marketers, who rely on customers' trust to offset their uncertainties.
The AP-GfK poll results come on top of more bad news from the CMO Council, whose 2013 B2B Content Survey shows buyers are largely skeptical about marketers' content.
Trust will be the hot issue for 2014.
Trust me.
In Eight B2B Companies That Deliver Delightful Copywriting, Hubspot's Corey Eridon recommends these rules for better writing:
- Choose the right words. Precision turns the most complex ideas into simple ones.
- Be concise. Omit everything that's inessential.
- Empathize. Find common ground with your customers and avoid "business babble."
- Don't be afraid to have fun. Infuse a little humor in your copy and you'll charm your audience.
You're a global, market-leading, socially responsible company with a broad product portfolio and a deep commitment to diversity and sustainability.
Guess what?
Your customers don't care, according to new research by McKinsey.
The consultancy studied the marketing materials of 90 B2B companies, then asked 700 buyers to rank by importance the themes expressed in those materials.
It turns out buyers don't evaluate prospective suppliers in terms of global reach, market leadership, or their commitment to social responsibility, diversity and the environment—among the most prevalent themes in today's marketing materials.
Instead, buyers care most about suppliers' responsiveness, honesty and expertise—themes rarely expressed in the materials.
The researchers caution against "following the herd" when developing marketing themes.
Ready for a shocker?
B2B brands have stronger emotional bonds with customers than B2C brands.
According to a new study by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), 40% to 70% of customers feel an emotional tie to such brands as Oracle, Accenture, FedEx, SAP and Salesforce.
In contrast, only 10% and 40% of customers feel an emotional tie to such brands as CVS, L'Oreal and Wal-Mart.
Most of us are taught—and believe—that B2B customers care only about the business value a brand delivers.
But, based on its findings, CEB urges B2B marketers to adopt campaigns that focus on the fulfillment of customers' personal and emotional needs.
B2B campaigns that promise personal value have twice the impact of those promising business value, as demonstrated by recent campaigns by Xerox, Grainger and Edwards Lifesciences.
Bloggers can take heart from a trend in the way customers are searching on line.
Searchers are increasingly using complete sentences and long phrases as search terms, according to software maker Hubspot.
They're realizing that simple search terms can no longer pinpoint useful Web content, given its enormity.
So, for example, instead of entering "sales training," a searcher might enter "two-day onsite sales training for a small insurance brokerage in Kentucky."
"As a result of these more complex searches, Google has actually changed its algorithm to better fit conversational questions from searchers," Hubspot says.
Google's change in its algorithm will help drive more traffic to blogs, "which are designed by nature to be educational, answer questions, and provide background info," Hubspot says.
