24 July

Do Consumers Trust Your Brand?

Sigh…Gone are the good ol’ days where you could just “yell loudly” and get your marketing noticed, right?

Or should we be bemoaning the loss of yesteryear?

It’s not actually new news that “loud” retail ads no longer work. Way back in 2015, Marketo released a global study that showed how consumers feel.

Nearly two-thirds of the consumers interviewed said they TUNE OUT ads that blast the same message over and over.

So, the louder you scream, the less consumers care.

That’s probably NOT what you wanted to hear.

But the good news is, consumers are speaking loudly about what they DO want to see in ads.

First, think about building trust with your audience and acting like a real person – not a stodgy company.

Second, consumers want to know that you share their values (so you need to know what your audience cares about).

Third, consumers care deeply about the environment and climate, so sustainability truly matters to people. Therefore, your brand should also care about it.

These values and goals must be incorporated across your brand.

According to Purna Virji in a recent podcast with MarketingProfs, “You have your customer brand, which is how your consumers and how your partners feel…. Then you have your talent brand, which is how your employees and prospective new hires think about you as a place to work. Then you have your corporate brand, which involves how your key stakeholders like influencers, investors, government orgs perceive your organization.”

We’ve all seen it played out in the press: A company scores accolades for being a great place to work, but then gets scorched for its poor customer service.

Your brand can win the ad game with a content strategy that works across channels and focuses on more than just product updates or news.

Here are some ways brands can build trust:

  1. Bring your team together to brainstorm and build your brand identity.
  2. Create your brand’s DNA. It’s the space that “lives” between:
    • How consumers and customers feel about your brand.
    • How employees and prospective hires feel about your brand.
    • How stakeholders feel about your brand.
  3. Build a framework for your values about the environment, sustainability, and other values.
  4. Keep in mind that trust has three main elements:
    • Authenticity
    • Empathy
    • Logic

If you build your ad and content strategy around these elements, in combination with your values and DNA, you’ll create trust – and your brand will shine.

Need an example of how to build trust? One company, Red Hat, declared that they would source all of their company’s swag from minority-owned sustainable companies. And they followed through on that promise.

So, in this example, they focused on the value of diversity and then built one of their company’s practices around that value.

Consumers trust that value, because they can pop over to their swag store and see for themselves who made the products.

If you’re still wondering if these efforts are worth pursuing, Virji offers this proof: The most trusted organizations are the ones that get rewarded with more loyalty, more business, and more recommendations.

Are you ready to be rewarded for building trust?

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