There is one commonality in business, regardless of your industry or market.Strip away labels like business-to-consumer, business-to-business, government, nonprofit, etc., and you’ll find the same thing on the other side of the content you create and conversations you have: Communities.The communities that make up your brand’s audience are built around personal and professional networks, mutual interests, even devotion to individual influencers. And to connect with these communities, you need trust.Without trust, your content won’t be noticed.Without trust, your sales funnel won’t fill with new leads.Without trust, your top and bottom lines won’t be met.You can’t force trust, though. You must earn it.It’s not surprising, then, that a new white paper from Outsell, Inc., shows the marketing methods rated most effective by B2B and B2C senior marketers are “pull” methods – methods that empower users to opt into their interactions with brands.The findings from Outsell, a research and advisory firm focused on media, information, technology and the business of data, reveal a fundamental shift away from intrusive tactics, such as telemarketing, autoplay video and TV/radio ads, towards user-initiated behavior.“In the research we conducted with Outsell, 81% of senior marketers said that earned media was more effective than paid media,” says PR Newswire’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Ken Wincko (@KenWincko).“Because of this, today’s CMOs and their teams must go from a push to a pull strategy – leveraging earned media through advocacy, third party experts, press releases and other tactics that build communities.”While these earned media tactics may be more labor intensive than paid media, many brands are waking up to the reasons they’re a must.Audiences crave authenticity.In narrowing down which company they’re going to hand their money to, customers research who you are, what you do, the opinions others share about you and how it all compares to your competition.Anything they find that can be construed as fake or deceptive puts the trust your audience places in you at risk.Audiences view natural and organic earned media as the most authentic form of marketing because it’s coming from someone else. A verified source who lends credibility and authority to your message. 

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