Brand Credibility: How to Generate Trust by Making Smart Marketing Decisions

Consumer research shows that most people make purchasing decisions based on brand trust. As a matter of fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) discovered that brand identity has a tremendous impact on business success. According to this organization’s research:

• 91% of consumers who trust a brand are likely to buy from the company
• 88% of people will recommend trusted brands to their friends and family
• 90% of buyers who trust a company will be or feel more loyal to it

Of course, boosting conversions and customer retention are not the only compelling reasons to generate trust. The truth is a brand with a highly credible reputation is far more likely to attract investors and buyers once you start thinking about making an exit. And the best part is you can generate trust and invest in your brand’s credibility simply by making smart marketing choices.

So, the question is this: are you willing to do what it takes to position your business as the best option in your industry and niche? If the answer is yes, the following tips will help you build a reputation of a dependable, highly competent brand and a solid investment (for consumers and buyers). 

Give Your Brand a Credible Human Face

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your audience will respond to generic marketing messages and take them at face value. People don’t always trust ads. On the contrary, research shows they prefer authentic forms of communication to guarantee they’re making the right buying decisions.

According to Nielsen, 28.9 percent of people don’t trust branded websites, and 31.5 percent of consumers distrust newspaper ads. If you consider that the same report found 89.2 percent of people trust word-of-mouth marketing, it becomes clear just how important it is for businesses to choose credible marketing methods.

One way to build that sought-after credibility is to humanize your brand. If you look at Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising report, you’ll see that the thing people appreciate the most in ads is humanness. They respond positively to messages that are humorous, describe real-life situations, are family- and value-oriented, and show pets or animals.  

So what can you do to humanize your brand? One effective strategy you can employ is to give your brand a human face. 

You can do this by showing off photos of your team on your website’s About Us page. Or, you can go a step further and collaborate with reputable experts, preferably in an easy-to-consume format, like on the MarketBeat YouTube channel. It’s entirely up to you and your marketing budget. Whatever you opt for, you can rest assured that aligning your business’ reputation with that of a trustworthy person will help you generate brand trust.

Source: youtube.com

Provide Social Media Support

Customer support is crucial if you want to guarantee the satisfaction of your clients. But boosting retention rates and customer lifetime value is not the only benefit of getting this part of the customer experience right. According to a survey from Zendesk, 89 percent of consumers say quick customer service responses positively impact their purchasing decisions, and 97 percent say poor customer service affects their buying decisions.

From this data, it’s easy to conclude that focusing on delivering a first-rate customer experience is essential in proving your brand’s credibility. But is there a way to transform customer service—something that you have to do either way—with your marketing activity? Absolutely! All you need to do is provide social media support.

For inspiration on how to do this in a way that will help you earn customer trust, check out the Brooklinen Twitter profile. This brand maintains a perfect balance of celebrating happy purchases with customers while providing buyers with help regarding their orders. Moreover, note how well the business practices transparency in its communication, which a growing number of consumers are starting to prioritize.

Source: twitter.com

Get Experts Involved in Your Content Marketing

Are you looking for simple yet effective strategies for generating brand trust? In that case, it’s not a bad idea to look into the research surrounding whom consumers consider trustworthy brand spokespeople.

According to Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer, young people hold scientists and brand technical experts in high regard, with 66 and 58 percent of Gen Zers, respectively, considering these influencers credible. So, if you can get experts involved in your marketing efforts, especially with content marketing, you can take advantage of this tendency and prove to your audience that your brand is credible and authoritative.

There are many ways to adopt this type of strategy. 

For instance, you could collaborate with authoritative influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Businesses like Edge Theory Labs do precisely this when they post content showing health and fitness micro-influencers using their products and providing feedback on the experience.

Source: instagram.com

If you’re looking for the biggest bang for your buck in terms of expert support for generating trust, try to recreate what eachnight.com does on its company blog as shown on their 8 Best Split King Adjustable Beds of 2023 post below. 

Knowing that its audience is likely searching for verified information about sleep, this brand hires specialists to produce the highest-quality content possible. Each blog post published on the brand’s site includes an extensive author bio. 

More importantly, the guides are medically reviewed by industry specialists and fact-checked by an independent review board. The brand goes to extensive lengths to guarantee readers are served only verified information regarding sleep.

Source: eachnight.com

Tell Customer Success Stories

Sometimes, the easiest way to generate trust and build brand credibility is to rely on social proof. After all, we’ve already mentioned that almost 90 percent of people consider word-of-mouth marketing credible. So, if you can incorporate this type of content into your marketing activity, you’re guaranteed to see great results in driving brand trust.

There are multiple ways you can employ social proof in your marketing efforts. You can include testimonials on your website homepage and product pages. You can conduct in-depth case studies, which is what brands like Salesforce do spectacularly well. 

Source: salesforce.com

Or, you can even employ social listening and share user-generated content on your profiles. This is an excellent way to serve your followers with authentic content showing how happy your existing customers are with your products (and how your products perform in real life). 

Check out how Anytime Baseball Supply does it on Instagram, making it much easier for potential buyers to figure out how its hole pitching targets benefit baseball players by helping them increase accuracy.

Source: instagram.com

Involve Third-Party Review Verification

Now, if your use of customer feedback stops at the tactics outlined in the section above, you’ll have done a great deal to build brand credibility. However, if you’re searching for ways to take social proof to the next level and guarantee your target audience sees it as convincing evidence to believe your brand’s claims, you can supplement it with third-party verification.

When arriving on your homepage or landing pages, your prospects may see the provided reviews as helpful. But chances are, they may also feel like you’ve cherry-picked or straight-out faked the positive feedback to make more sales. (Yes, 62 percent of people believe they had been served fake reviews in 2021, mainly on Amazon, Google, and Facebook). Fortunately, you can solve this by utilizing some form of third-party verification.

Trustpilot, for instance, is always an excellent choice for sourcing social proof. According to the organization’s research from 2022, 71 percent of consumers agree that a good Trustpilot score makes them more likely to buy a solution. Moreover, 73 percent feel that a good Trustpilot score is all the proof they need to trust a business.

With this in mind, it’s no wonder that businesses like Thankbox share their “Excellent” Trustpilot scores right in the hero section of their homepages or that some ecommerce brands directly pull product reviews from similar social proof platforms.

Source: thankbox.com

Shine a Very Bright Light on Trust Badges

Even though displaying customer testimonials, publishing case studies, and featuring user-generated content on your distribution channels allows you to influence your brand’s reputation as a credible business, there’s always more you can do to generate trust. Showing trust badges is one of these tactics.

According to research from the Baymard Institute, one of the main reasons people don’t follow through with online purchases is a lack of trust in the brands they’re buying from. But, it turns out this is a hurdle easily overcome by making a few design changes. The research institute suggests the following three fixes to boost trust and instill in buyers a sense of security while shopping online:

1. Visually encapsulating secure form fields with colors, borders, shading, or similar visual styles. This increases the perceived security of the page and makes it more likely a buyer will convert.
2. Utilizing reassuring microcopy that tells web visitors their browsing or shopping experience is secured by relevant SSL certificates.
3. Employing trust badges—even homemade ones—that help brands communicate their claims in a way easily understood by potential customers.

While the first two tactics highlighted by the Baymard Institute require you to wait until your prospects have reached the checkout page on your website, you don’t have to delay displaying trust badges.

In fact, you can take inspiration from brands like ATH Sport and make trust badges a vital part of your homepage, using them to:

• Build brand trust. This is done with the “Trusted by thousands of customers and backed by verified buyers” graphic.
• Communicate your commitment to providing customers with high-quality solutions. ATH does this by stating that “[their] products will never contain artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, artificial coloring, or any potential harmful ingredients.” 
• Reassure buyers that your products have been reviewed and certified as effective by trustworthy third-party institutions. In this case, those are institutions like the North Shore Lifeguard Association and the Banned Substances Control Group.

Source: athsport.co

Focus Content on Customer Needs Rather Than Sales

One of the easiest ways to alienate your audience and make them perceive your business as an organization that won’t hold its customers’ best interests at heart is to only produce sales-oriented content. 

However, if you can find ways to focus your content on audience needs rather than sales, you’ll show that you’re a customer-first business your prospects can rely on to deliver the solutions they need.

One compelling way of achieving this is to rethink the purpose of your marketing efforts. According to the Harvard Business Review, the best way to achieve that coveted user-oriented brand status is to stop thinking about prospects as buyers and start seeing them as future users (who need to remain happy with their purchase).

Content can hugely help you achieve this effect. By doing something as simple as addressing your target audience’s pain points and presenting them with accessible solutions—as done in Lowe’s guide to repairing a leaky roof—you can show that you care about helping them solve their needs.

Source: lowes.com

And of course, don’t forget to invest in content made for existing customers. Something as simple as publishing product update news and introducing new features may not be the first thing prospective buyers will look at. But you can rest assured that seeing those posts on your company blog will tell them you’re a brand that cares about its users and is ready to do everything in its power to ensure an enjoyable customer experience even after the moment of purchase has passed.

Don’t Limit Product Reviews to Product Pages

Positive social proof results in conversions. Eighty-eight percent of online shoppers trust an online review as much as they would a personal recommendation, while 72 percent say a great customer review makes them trust a brand they don’t know.

What do these two stats mean for business owners and digital marketers? One of the main takeaways is that customer reviews should take center stage when designing your site’s content. 

Product reviews have traditionally been used only on pages where products are presented to potential customers, which is completely understandable.

But what this practice fails to recognize is the power of introducing a new site visitor to the concept that your brand and products can be trusted as soon as they land on your site’s home page. For the rest of this visitor’s journey through your website, there will be a grain of confidence resting in the backs of their minds, reading every bit of brand messaging through a filter of trust.

Let’s take a look at an example. Shop Solar Kits presents site visitors with a floating “Reviews” tab that’s visible regardless of the page being viewed. Clicking on this link launches an exceptionally detailed pop-up containing a chronological list of product reviews left by customers on various product pages.

Source: shopsolarkits.com

At this point, the brand isn’t trying to use reviews to position or sell a particular product. Rather, they are using highly detailed customer feedback to develop confidence in their brand at a very early stage in their relationship with the prospective customer.

Final Thoughts

Although it’s not something you can build overnight, brand credibility is genuinely worth investing in. This is all the more true considering the huge portion of consumers who make buying decisions based on whether or not they trust a business.

Of course, you don’t have to implement all the strategies outlined in this article. But if you’re looking to make your marketing efforts count, you’ll want to give at least some of the tactics mentioned above a try.

And finally, like any other time you make any changes to your marketing approach, don’t forget to measure results. The best way of knowing that what you’re doing is working is to have tangible proof.