What bubble tea taught me: why being everywhere builds trust

In short: customers move through stages with a brand: seeing it, remembering it, trusting it, liking it and buying. Many businesses lose customers between remembering and trusting. Being everywhere is one of the strongest ways to move people from one to the other.

One cup of bubble tea

On a two-week trip to Taiwan, one bubble tea brand appeared in front of me from the moment I landed: main roads, back lanes, night markets, tourist spots, housing areas, business districts. I never drink bubble tea, yet on the seventh day I bought a cup.

Back home I kept asking what moved me from noticing to buying. The answer: I saw it everywhere. My thought was, "If it is in so many places, lots of people must drink it, so it can't be bad."

Awareness is not trust

Advertising can make people know and remember you. But many potential customers stop there. Between awareness and trust sits one question: "Do other people choose this too?"

How a small business can be "everywhere"

You do not need dozens of outlets. Appearing more often in customers' lives works too:

• Concentrate on one area: rather than spreading thin, become the name everyone in one district knows.
• Be easy to find online: search, maps, social media and review sites, all complete and consistent.
• Let customers appear for you: good reviews and referrals are your "outlets" inside their circles.
• Partner across industries: work with businesses that share your customers but not your products, and appear in front of more people.

The secret is not being a chain. It is being everywhere. Customers find it hard not to trust a brand they see wherever they go.

Adapted from Dave Tan's book How High Should Your Customer Retention Rate Be? (2014, in Chinese), updated for today. About the book

Author: Dr. Dave Tan, DBA — Founder of Vital Design, Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). A business consultant to salons and SMEs since 2003, and author of a book on salon management.