Credibility is an issue for all businesses, but it's especially critical for a small business (or relatively unknown company - especially in what most consumers believe to be a mature product market where there is very little if any differentiation between one company's products and another. If I told you that IBM or another big name company provided the highest quality of PC uptime and the fastest service options available, you'd probably believe it. You might guess that the cost would be ridiculous, but you probably wouldn't argue the possibility that IBM could deliver on those claims. After all, IBM was the company that originally invented the PC after all (at least the PC that could run multiple software packages on one PC).
An egg company, Eggsland Best. They have an advertising campaign to convince egg consumers that Egglsand Best eggs, and their eggs only, are somehow endowed with special nutrients and vitamins - and they don't take the time to explain (at least not to my satisfaction,) how this happens. It's just presented as a fact and we aren't supposed to simply take their claim at face value and not wonder how this magic came to be. advertising their eggs as being better than the competition's eggs.
Not wanting to believe that they're telling us a bold-face lie - that could easily end them up on the wrong end of a class action lawsuit, I tried to imagine how they could enhance the quality or characteristics of their eggs. Do they have a special breed of chickens that naturally produce eggs that naturally have these beneficial qualities?. Are they injecting these vitamins into the eggs somehow? Or are they pumping their chickens full of some type of drugs that cause the chickens to produce these magical eggs? Whatever it is that their scientist are doing to those poor chickens, it's probably something that I don't want to know about it. But I probably don't want to eat their eggs either - and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the response that they were hoping to evoke..
My point is simply that credibility has to be earned, it cannot be bought with a few slick commercials, the invention of some spiffy new terms, or even a spiffy little stamp on your eggs that identifies that as special. I simply don't believe that it works that way for most consumers.
When you make claims about your business, or your products or services, check with a few people to see if they sound reasonable, and if the explanation that you give puts most people's minds at ease. If they don't, you probably need a better explanation or to dial back what you're asking your customers to believe. If you come out with a claim that is ridiculous, or that is judged by your target customers to be ridiculous - you're definitely not doing yourself any favors. In fact you're likely doing damage to your reputation. Be careful what you claim and provide some supporting information if people aren't really convinced. Don't stretch too far or you may damage the most important assest that you have - your company's good name.
Know Thy Customer,
Chris Hawkes
