Reilly Newman | In today’s fast-paced, digital world, building trust with your audience is crucial for any brand’s success. Actually, no matter the state of the world, trust is the foundation upon which all successful brand strategies are built. Without trust, consumers may struggle to connect with your brand and question the authenticity of your products or services.
The core of what a brand represents, a promise, becomes obsolete if there is no trust. Just as you most likely wouldn’t trust the promise of a complete stranger the promise holds no value if trust is not present.
How to Build Trust
For humans to establish trust, signaling is key. This is what we do all day long within society. We are constantly, subtly signaling to one another that we can be trusted and are not threats. It’s a basic human necessity that allows us to work together as a society that is rooted in our tribalism essence. This same concept applies to businesses because trust is central to a positive perception of a business (aka your brand)
Trust Through Signals
A business can further trust through a variety of signals. These signals become unified under the brand and create credibility. This credibility increases the potential for the opportunity to build trust through experience (i.e. they hire you or buy your product) or it gives them just enough to take a chance on you and lend you some trust for you to prove to them it was a safe bet. This is why 30-day trials, money-back guarantees, freemium pricing models, etc. are so common and often work because they leverage the need for trust by reducing the risk of the decision. This reduction in risk increases the credibility because we associate this with “wow, they must really stand behind their offering” and begin to feel more comfortable trusting them.
Types of Trust Signals
Trust is derived from five main elements:
1. Integrity
To establish trust with your customers, integrity is a key signal. Being open and honest about your brand’s values and mission, as well as any challenges or obstacles you may face, creates a sense of authenticity and relatability that resonates with your audience on a personal level. Like any relationship, integrity is core to if you even pursue the relationship in the first place. If someone lies to you or cheats you, this erodes the confidence through the lacking of integrity.
2. Reliability
Like sitting on a chair, crossing a bridge, or asking your friend to pick you up from the airport, reliability is something we determine based on past experience and other attributes. This could be the visual signals or the reliability of a chair or the attributes of the salesman you’re talking to. Obviously, as a relationship progresses, reliability increases because the partner in the relationship has proven their reliability. As a brand this comes down to appearance, communication, and once engaged if you follow through on your promises.
3. Consistency
Consistency is also essential. Consistency in messaging, branding, and customer service helps further reinforce your brand as reliable and dependable. This can go a long way in building trust with your audience, as they will know what to expect from your brand and can rely on you to deliver. Just as reliability is a crucial pillar of trust, it is only built if you’re consistent. Like a restaurant you ate at where the meal was awesome, but upon returning the next meal was awful. This lack of consistency lessens your confidence in the business because it is isn’t reliable. You’ll be less likely to return or tell a friend about the brand because the service has too much risk as a wild card of what you’re going to get.
4. Competency
We like to know that whoever we are hiring knows what they are doing. From a painter to a doctor or a brand that sells a supplement or product. When we purchase an offering, we like to see signals of a proven track record, awards, reviews, or credentials to back up the decision. These elements create confidence in our purchase decision and allows us to lean into trusting the brand. These social standards are assisted by standards in industries in certifications, awards, reviews/BBB, etc.
5. Benevolence
Based on the previous four elements, it is clear that it’s not all business, it’s personal and relational.
We feel the relationship aspects at play when deciding on a brand to purchase from so we expect the brand to reciprocate the “relational dance” through these signals we have mentioned. A major social signal of trust is goodwill. The ability to help another person in a version of self-sacrifice is a well-respected and valued signal. A brand can do this through working out a special deal for you, donating, adding value, overdelivering, being generous, customizability, trials, flexibility, etc. — in essence we want the business to act human and treat us like a human. No one wants to interact with a cold business that doesn’t bend or understand where the buyer is coming from. “Take it or leave it” is a poor posture for a business and creates a poor-tasting brand. A relationship is based on give/take parameters, this “dance” builds trust because we feel seen and understood.
Trust Cultivated
Building trust with your audience is vital for any brand’s success. These signals are the building blocks you can apply to accomplish trust. However, these signals are mainly experienced when your audience has engaged with you. How do you encourage trust before the audience has made the leap to interact?
We believe that trust can be cultivated through credibility. This is accomplished through brand signaling from identity, messaging, imagery, and design; along with a few elements I mentioned before like the history, credentials, and awards of your business. Before they fully experience your product or service, your brand can fully signal and relate through these elements. It’s your business’ best chance to get noticed and potentially start a new relationship.
You may have noticed that a lot of these are visual elements. Logos, imagery, design, etc. are powerful due to the human brain’s focus on visual stimuli. The human species relies heavily on visual cues, this means your best bet as a business to catch attention and express credibility is through visual signals. These impactful initial visual signals then increase your likability and pique their interest.
Once this is seeded properly with strategy, you increase your probability of being able to build true trust through an engagement and serve your buyer’s needs and desires. Take a moment and think of brands you enjoy and regularly purchase from. Do they capture these five trust elements? Do you trust them?
