Are you really building brand trust with your customers?

Why is brand trust important?

Brand trust is one of the most important factors in customer purchase decisions. When people trust your brand, they will have more confidence in your products and services. They will make an effort to seek you out, even if you’re not the cheapest or most convenient option.



But brand trust is earned, not given, and many businesses have a long way to go in gaining significant support from customers. To build trust, you can’t just run a marketing campaign about how reliable you are. You need to develop trust little by little.

“When people trust your brand, they will have more confidence in your products and services.”

Brand trust is more important than ever because today’s consumers are bombarded with options. What was once a choice between a couple of brands is now a global mix of hundreds, which has customers asking who they know and trust before purchasing.



By building trust, your one-off customers are more likely to become repeat customers. And their positive word of mouth will likely deliver new customers for your business. With repeat purchase comes profitability. You also need to create traction, which leads to repeat purchase. It is trust that is the essential ingredient in building traction for a customer to purchase your product or service over and over again.

How do you build trust?

Building trust takes time, commitment and consistency in all aspects of your business. At Icon Visual Marketing we advise our clients on how to build that all-important business trust. Here are a few tips to get you started.



Embrace transparency

Transparency when discussing your business is a crucial factor in eliciting trust. It doesn’t mean you have to reveal all of your commercially confidential information, but it does mean you need to be open with people.

Transparency is essential not just for your relationships with your customers, but also with employees, investors, and other stakeholders. For example, you should let customers know you’re using their data. And when sharing information, always veer towards oversharing rather than under sharing. The less information key stakeholders have, the more they will guess or make assumptions.



How you prove your transparency depends on your particular business. Transparency, for example, could be communicated by publishing third-party research about your products, divulging ingredients for your products, or responding openly and honestly to queries on social media.

Be authentic through brand storytelling

Authenticity is at the heart of trustworthiness. Consumers today are not interested in the big sales pitch or waffly marketing spiel. They want to know who your brand is and what the people behind the brand stand for, and we have helped many businesses to unearth these details.

You can demonstrate your authenticity by facing up to negative interactions in a timely manner. Respond to negative feedback, address complaints, engage with your customers offline and online, and when you make a mistake, own up.

Be authentic by telling stories, which can better engage your customers and help develop a relationship. You want to appeal to their emotions and thereby, build trust.

Offer consistent customer experiences

Customer service can be seen as simply transactional, like answering a question, helping pick out the right product, or solving problems. But when done well it can build relationships with your customers.

That’s when it’s called customer experience rather than just service. If you keep your customer interactions timely, consistent, honest and transparent, you will provide customers with a personalised experience of your organisation. 

“The less information key stakeholders have, the more they will make assumptions.”

The better the experience your customers have, the more likely they are to trust your brand. They are more likely to buy from you again, and recommend your business to others.

Use social proof

The concept of social proof is that people see your online interactions as ‘proof’ of your authenticity and transparency. These interactions could be product reviews and testimonials, social media post and comments, blog posts, or even media coverage.

Social proof works by tapping into the basic human instinct to follow the actions of others, and building trust and credibility. The idea is that since so many other people behave in a certain way, it must be the correct behaviour.

Social proof conveys trust, which is a key factor in converting customers, particularly when they are purchasing online. Showing potential customers that a business has many satisfied customers through testimonials and user reviews helps to build trust that a business is legitimate and trustworthy.