How marketers can make truth a competitive advantage

It can be tempting to stretch the truth a bit, in order to keep up with competitors, but honest and truthful communication can cultivate a loyal customer base. Here’s how.

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Related: Fake News and the Threat to Your Brand: 4 Things You Can Do AboutIt Now

Wikipedia ‘s entry, meanwhile, chimed in with its own definition of post-truth as “the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.”

All well and good. But, you have to wonder: Are these definitions talking about politics or sales and marketing?

The reason I ask is that part of running any company entails communicating with your market and employees. In every one of those interactions. you’re called on to make decisions about “the truth.” And many of those decisions are non-controversial, while others entice you to be more liberal in your characterization of the truth — as in, “We now have over 1,000 customers”—since the definition of “customer” is often stretched to be as flattering as possible.

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