Trust can act as one of the biggest deterrents for consumers. If they don’t trust a brand, they are unlikely to trust that brand’s products or services either. Trust needs to be built to ensure the success of all advertising and marketing efforts and to ensure the long-term success of your brand. So how can you get your audience to trust your brand? Let's find out.
Starting by knowing your audience is key. If you don’t know your audience, there’s no way that you can gain their trust. Otherwise all interactions will seem to be inauthentic to them. That’s why you should be showing your customers that you understand who they are and their needs. A few ways to get to know your audience might be:
Wherever you are interacting with your audience - whether that be on social media, via your blog, emailing or through smoke signals - you want to have a real message to give them. Any content you are giving your audience should be helpful, educational or just of interest to them. The last thing you want to be doing is putting out content for the sake of putting out content!
Really consider problems and pain points your audience have and how you can address them. You'll also want to consider how they like to receive content on top of that, otherwise the content won't be of value to them (and possibly more of a nuisance!). You should have a tailored content strategy and really be considering whether the content you have developed is valuable to your audience.
Just like in a relationship, consistency is key. If you’re trying to build and maintain your audience’s trust, your content strategy should be really consistent. As you’re already giving your audience valuable content and you know them quite well, you’re developing a relationship with them. By giving them consistent content at the right place and the right time, you’ll continue to build on and develop that relationship and the positive associations with your brand.
One of the first and most important determining factors of a brand’s legitimacy is their website. That’s why having an awesome and well-designed website is actually crucial in developing trust among your audience.
As mentioned in an earlier blog post, it’s not just about how attractive the design of your website is, it’s about the functionality too. While the beautiful design of the website might be the first thing your audience will notice, a website that isn’t designed for usability is likely to deter a customer from interacting with your website. Ensure that your website is easy for your audience to use and navigate through and you’ll be well on your way to building trust!
We are all very eager to shout how amazing our brand is from the rooftops, but when a customer is saying it for you, the impact is enormous! Word of mouth (WOM) is time and time again, one of the most influencing factors in purchase decisions. That is because consumers trust the opinions of peers, influencers, thought leaders and experts far more than they trust your marketing efforts alone. In fact, 72% of consumers say positive reviews and testimonials make them trust a business more. That's why you should aim to wrangle the power of WOM and use it in your favour. With reviews and testimonials, you’ll be sure to build up trust among your audience in no time.
Everyone has experienced poor customer service before, and no one likes it! Poor customer service leaves most of us quite frustrated, annoyed and unwilling to interact with that brand again. By providing stellar support to your customers, you’ll be able to build strong relationships with them and work towards building their trust.
You’ll want to encourage your team to really get to the root of your customers' issues and do their best to solve them - and not just handball the customer onto someone else! You should also make the customer service process easy and quick. If a customer has to email your customer service department and then wait 24-72 hours to get a response, they aren’t going to be very impressed! By having chat services and engaging with customers’ issues via social media, they are going to feel more valued and those connections you’re aiming to develop will be strengthened.
In the end, building relationships and trust is really important for the success of your business and all your marketing and advertising efforts. So investing in building trust from the beginning is always going to be a great way to start your marketing strategies and an excellent investment of time!