I read a blog entry today about transparency in Marketing. The author asked why people thought businesses didn’t become more transparent in their marketing. In thinking about it, I think the main reason boils down to fear. Fear of what?

Fear of loss of income. Businesses live and die by the bottom line and one of the main fears is that by being transparent they will anger their customers and lose business as a result. Businesses think its better to not be transparent to avoid making someone unhappy. The problem is that those approach no longer works in a social media era. It’s very easy for people to post a bad experience and share it, and when companies seem to hide the problem it only makes people more unhappy. Lack of transparency hurts the bottom line more than being transparent and honest with customers.

Fear of Customer unhappiness. Similar to the fear above, businesses are afraid of customer unhappiness. They want to keep customers happy, but often approach it in a heavy handed manner, instead of doing what they should do, which is listen to the customer, and work toward resolving the issue together. Businesses also need to realize that you won’t make everyone happy, but making a genuine effort to resolve a situation will stand out more favorably than anything else.

Fear of competition. Some businesses are afraid of their competition and what it will do if it has access to their marketing. While such a fear can be legitimate, its also true that as long as you can differentiate yourself in your marketing, it will make your business stand out.

These are just three fears. What are some others fears that you think businesses have, when it comes to being transparent?