Do your customers trust your brand?
If they do business with you, especially consistently, the answer is probably yes.
But to what level? Why? And how can you get more people to trust your brand and become customers?
Today we’re answering all of your burning questions about how and why to build trust between your business and customers.
It’s not an understatement to say that the level of trust generated by your company can make or break your customer relationships, brand mission, and brand image. That’s why we’re diving into why brand trust is so important, how to build it, and how to maintain and scale that trust once you’ve got it.
Defining Brand Trust
Brand trust describes the relationship between you and your customers. If your customers do things like provide good reviews, repost content you share with a positive sentiment, and recommend your brand to others, odds are you have built a strong sense of brand trust and security for your customers every time they interact with your business.
Building brand trust is more than just getting your customer to like you, though.
81% of consumers worldwide say they need to be able to trust a brand if they’re going to actually buy from them.
A.K.A.: Brand trust = more sales.
So how do you go about creating a good reputation for your brand and building a business to instill trust in your future buyers?
There are several factors you’ll need to consider, but the quality of your product and service is the biggest one. In other words, the better your overall customer experience is, the easier it is to build trust and drive sales.
Other building blocks that contribute to building trust include your business’s values and support of social issues, visual identity, positive reviews, and proper communication to your target audience.
Why You Need to Prioritize Brand Trust in Your Marketing Strategy
Okay, now that we’ve identified what brand trust is and how it’s built, the next question to cover is why should you care?
Aside from driving more sales, here are a few important reasons why it’s essential to create a positive customer experience and build brand trust as you define and carry out your digital marketing strategy.
Creates Opportunity for Advocacy
Focusing on building brand trust opens up an opportunity for your customers to transform into loyal advocates to help drive even more leads.
Whether your happy customers take to social media to tell their followers about how much your product or service improved their life or they shared a positive review on Google, a brand advocate is a former or current customer who helps your brand by giving you good press.
When someone trusts your brand, they are more likely to become a brand advocate providing social proof. In fact, 92% of consumers seek social recommendations before making a purchase.
Whether it’s helping make purchasing decisions easier for future customers or generating free word-of-mouth promotion with loyal buyers, it’s pretty clear that you want as many brand advocates as possible — and prioritizing brand trust is a good way to get them.
Establishes Loyalty and Security
Another reason why brand trust is so important is that it creates customers who are highly loyal and who feel secure with your brand (which leads to recurring revenue for you).
Think about it. When someone trusts you, they confide in you. They stick around. They have no reason to leave because they know you, and they know that no matter what, you’ll be their rock.
Similarly, your brand has the ability to be someone’s rock when it comes to what they’re looking to purchase. When they know your product does what it’s supposed to do, and you create a consistent customer experience, they’ll also love their entire experience with your brand, from pre- to post-purchase. You’ll essentially give them a sense of security to come back.
Loyalty is also important to establish. In case anything does go wrong with a customer, their sense of loyalty will make them more forgiving. For instance, maybe something is shipped late or is incorrect upon delivery. Customers will be more lenient if they know your brand will make it right.
Brand Trust Statistics You Need to Know
Brand trust has only gotten more important since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The global pandemic exposed which brands didn’t truly care about their customers or employees during hard times. With life as they knew it turned upside down, customers were anxious to find a company that felt like a friend.
In fact, strong brand trust lead 53% of consumers to say their positive experience and trust in the company was the second biggest factor in their purchasing decision, only behind price.
Even more, 75% of people who shopped with trusted brands said they would buy the brand’s product even if the product isn’t the cheapest, and that it’s the only brand of that product they will buy. This means, as a business, higher amounts of consumer trust and cultivating a positive customer experience may allow you to charge more for your services without losing business to a lower-priced competitor.
To help in building trust, consider these reasons why people develop a positive relationship with brands:
- The brand delivers good quality products or services (73%)
- The brand has a great deal of social proof and gets positive reviews and ratings (63%)
- The brand charges a fair price for its products or services (49%)
- The brand treats consumers well (39%)
- The brand quickly addresses customer service problems (36%)
- The brand does a good job protecting the privacy and security of personal consumer information (23%)
- The brand treats its employees well (22%)
At the end of the day, brand trust is important because if your customers don’t trust your brand, they’ll find another place to shop.
5 Ways to Build, Maintain, and Scale Brand Trust
It’s clear that brand trust is an absolute must for your brand. But how should you go about getting your customers to trust you? Here are five tactics we recommend implementing in your omnichannel marketing strategy.
1. Keep Your Audience in the Loop Via Email
One of the best forms of communication to help cement customer loyalty is email. Whether you’re reminding someone they forgot something in their cart, you’re alerting them of a sale coming up, or you’re simply sharing an educational newsletter, email is a powerful tool to keep the conversation open with your audience.
How often should you send customers emails? Data from Campaign Monitor indicates that most marketers send promotional emails 2-3 times per month. But your email list might do better with a different number based on your own testing.
However your email marketing strategy shakes out, email is a highly effective channel. Email marketing has a very high ROI, generating $42 for every $1 spent. And 80% of small businesses rely on email as their primary channel for customer acquisition and retention.
2. Build A Community on Social Media
Odds are, your buyers are from all over the country — or maybe even all over the world! No matter where they are, however, there’s a good chance they spend a lot of their time on social media.
3.6 billion people worldwide use social media platforms. That’s almost half of the world’s population, after all.
Put in the work to create a community on social media, encouraging people to share their experience with your brand — what they’ve purchased, why they love it, and other details.
This will allow your customers to connect with each other over a mutual love of your brand.
A strong social media community also provides strong social proof for potential new customers and helps ease their minds and make their decision to trust your brand easier.
Having a community like this is also beneficial because it lets you act as a fly on the wall. Your brand will have a unique set of eyes and ears on how people feel about your brand, getting feedback on areas where you might be able to adjust or improve.
3. Create Opportunities in Packaging
Whether you have a physical product that gets shipped through the mail or an online product that gets delivered digitally, the delivery of your product is a strong part of your brand’s image and an extremely important factor in helping build brand trust with your customers.
Most of the time, the delivery is the most exciting part of making a purchase. So if you can make the customer experience even more special at the time of delivery, why not take that opportunity?
Some businesses use their packaging to help tell their brand story in a unique way, share their brand’s impact on the world or include an opportunity for customers to find and connect with their new trusted brand on social media.
Some brands add handwritten notes to packages. Still other companies offer customers free prizes or entries to a raffle in exchange for an online review.
If you offer a digital product, you might be able to create opportunities on your landing pages, social media accounts, or through email sequences.
If you’re still not convinced packaging is that important in building brand trust, just know that 30% of businesses report an increase in revenue after improving their product packaging, and 40% of consumers will post photos on their social media accounts of products with unique and branded packaging (hello free social marketing and positive feedback).
When it comes to building a trusted business, remember, creating a positive customer experience is the most important thing to do. So when it comes to one of the final and most exciting steps in the customer’s buying journey, try to make that experience as positive as possible and provide them an opportunity to continue their journey with your brand.
4. Stay Transparent
94% of consumers say they are more likely to be loyal to a brand that offers transparency. You probably wouldn’t do business with a company that acts shady or doesn’t answer your questions. And your customers don’t want to, either.
How can you be honest and upfront with your customers? You don’t have to pull back the curtain and let customers see everything that happens behind the scenes.
Boundaries are still important. However, a few small changes can go a long way.
One easy tip when it comes to transparency is to put your values on your website. Maybe you’re committed to diversity, trust, and innovation. Whatever they are, be vocal about the values you prioritize.
Just stating your values, however, is not enough. You need to live out your brand’s values and mission whether you’re on social media or in person.
This includes things like employee appreciation or sharing what you’re doing as a business to help the people that make your brand into the brand it is.
5. Reward Dedication
One of the best parts about building a trusted business is creating an opportunity for customer loyalty.
HubSpot defines customer loyalty as a customer’s willingness to repeatedly return to a company to conduct business. Normally, the reason a customer returns is because of a good, consistent experience they’ve had with that brand.
Loyalty isn’t always easy to build, though. So once you do have a strong foundation of loyal customers, make sure to say thanks.
Help these people feel valued by offering exclusive discounts or opportunities.
Many brands even create full loyalty programs for their customers.
A lot of these programs are based on earning points that can be redeemed for a discount or a free product. Others give cashback, birthday surprises, or free shipping.
Some brands even reward customers with prizes and offers for posting positive reviews on relevant review sites they know other potential customers look to before buying.
When it comes to rewarding loyal customers, the sky’s the limit. And in essence, reward programs act as customer retention programs — helping you retain those consistent spenders long-term.
Maintaining Trust For Your Brand
Brand trust is incredibly important if you want your brand to see success long-term.
The good news is that it’s not difficult to build. By intentionally building a community, being transparent with your customers, and rewarding loyalty via prizes or programs, you’ll be well on your way to making sure your customers know they can trust you.
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