Brand Trust: Know Like Trust Series

Research shows that a lead's successful advancement through the purchase decision process is strongly motivated by whether customers know, like and trust the brand. Consequently, sales teams configure their sales funnel to encourage customers to 'know, like and trust' them. However, to successfully sell on this basis, you need to analyze what these 3 terms actually mean and then know how to incorporate them accordingly. For instance, well designed social media content plans systematically incorporate these 3 objectives in strategical and tactical content pillars. 

This post is part of a 3-part series 'Know, Like & Trust' that deals with each of these 3 objectives in turn to determine how to incorporate each into your brand's efforts for best results. To this end, this first installment deals with trust. Research shows that trust is a hardcore motivating factor in the decision-making process. 

Depending on the context, trust means slightly different things. Furthermore, although it is something every brand wants, it is hard to figure how to get it if without being clear what it is in the first place. For this reason, I will discuss the different meanings separately. Consider your internal strategic goals (like brand awareness*) and target customer profile (TCP) to find one or several facets of trust that should apply to the relevant campaign. This is especially useful for defining your strategic and tactical content pillars within the area of social media content management. 

Do not lose sleep if you find overlapping meanings to these terms. You need to figure what definitions and names work best for you and use those with a definition in your brand voice and tone guidelines to resolve any confusion. If you use any of these terms to name your tactical content pillars, you can fine tune them or their meaning eventually.

1. Social Proof     |     2. Authenticity     |      2.b Authenticity - Transparency     |     3.    Customer Experience

1. Trust: Social Proof (of the brand's expertise)

Social proof refers to the psychological phenomenon in which people mimic the actions of others when faced with uncertainty (about new products). With trust in brands in crisis, it is noteworthy that research suggests that it trump all other forms of advertising in motivating buying decision (with an impact rate of over 90%). I recommend social proof as a form of building trust for new brands, especially that suffer sales objections related to being unknown*.

In short, social proof builds trust in your brand's expertise (relative to the competition).

Examples of how social proof content can be incorporated into content pillars include the following.

'Reviews'(*) or 'Results'(*) pillar. (Feel free to rename your content pillars in a way that is more meaningful). Very useful for Brand Awareness campaigns for new brands when the market can not trust because the brand and expertise is unknown.

• Product reviews by consumers  
• awards won
• good R&D results: like high percentage rates of customer satisfaction
• influencer marketing; Third party expert's positive review of your product or brand 
• indicating best sellers (to minimize analysis fatigue from too many choices)
• indicating segmentation  (to minimize analysis fatigue from too many choices)
• dedicated landing page of reviews
• list of well-known customers, often including their their logo. NB, get permission to use the logo of other companies beforehand.
• user generated content (UGC) in which customers showcase themselves using your product.

2a. Trust: Authenticity 

The construct of authenticity refers to honesty and integrity, ie the uphold of certain convictions (shared between the brand and customers). Keeping in mind that brands are a type of personification, it is easier to recognize why authenticity is central to trust and loyalty, ie the ability to keep a relationship in tact.

Example(s): Consistent representation of a certain ethos. Entertaining content that provides multiple points of exposure to a brand may encourage consumers to feel that they 'know' the brand. Likely very useful for new brands for which sales objections involve the fact that the market feels distrustful because they do not know the brand.

• Lifestyle branding that illustrates years long consistent adherence to a way of life, whether it is the fun loving nature of Red Bull, raw nature of Harley Davidson, nature protectionism of Patagonia and so on. 
• Personal branding (influencers that fit the TCP) / Lifestyle branding that involves sales communication that shows that the brand representative has a genuine interest in the stated values through lived experiences. 
• Consistent adherence to valued standards * of production, hiring, ethical practices regarding the sourcing of materials, etc.  ['Values' content pilar]

The use of loyalty-motivating content to maintain loyalty is especially obvious when the market gives negative feedback (like bad customer experience complaints. disapproval to brand practices like social injustice, mistakes or other transgressions), when the values associated with the transgression carry heavy emotional weight. Just consider the cases of brands being cancelled. Part of transparency in the face of bad situations is for brands to own up to transgressions and demonstrate continued commitment to the values they were expected to share with their target market. 

Example(s): Apologies after a brand's transgressions

• Balenciaga, one of the most powerful and iconic luxury brands used by A list Hollywood stars was canceled by numerous celebrities in November 2022 when a campaign featured child pornography and sadomasochism.
• Murad Merali is a YouTuber whose falling out with his main audience, black women was a striking case in 2022. Although not being black himself, his content was heavily focused on highlighting anti-black racism in popular culture, a theme that represented very strong values for his audience. However, during that year, video evidence was released revealing his participation in anti-black race-play sexual activity. (Race play often includes  playing out domination and stereotypes usually used to put down another race). This activity was apparently one way in which he made a living before his YouTube success. When performing this type of sex work, some of his clients apparently asked him to use the specific anti-black racial slurs. Needless to say, the black community felt deceived and exploited by him. Many vowed to never support his channel again.

2b. Trust: Authenticity - Transparency

Transparency involves being very open and honest about who your brand is so that customers can know the real you and decide whether they want to buy from your brand, This is a refreshing departure from organizations that use wonderfully worded policies only for PR purposes with no interest in complying. The psychology of transparency is that it allows consumers to feel assured that they are not being exploited.

Here are some 'Transparency' (arguably also 'Values') content pillar ideas. NB, some examples overlap with 'authenticity' pillars. This type of content is often created in response or proactive response to negative market feedback and social consciousness.  Consider thee trends in your industry and how you can use them to your advantage.

behind the scenes

being open about your production inputs 

product ingredients 

McDonald's created a website that responds to tough customer questions like the origin of meet products. 

source of materials and labor force (a new trend in response to the negative feedback against businesses using the sweatshop model).

the identify of your management team

responding in an open fashion to feedback or questions from the public.

responding to negative feedback like complaints, your mistakes 

committing to policies, ie unlike the practice of having policies only as a PR strategy without any genuine adherence to those polices.  

3. Trust: Customer Experience 

Customer experience (See full article) is arguably the leading motivation factor in keeping customers in the sales funnel. Since I have already discussed it, I will not re-introduce it here. Instead, I will only discuss its place in the sales funnel and application to the social media content pillars.

• Unboxing user-generated videos. This type of video has been shown to be a powerful emotional trigger that can convert consumers. Even the term 'unboxing' has been widely searched. Its value is that it enhances customer experience, albeit vicariously. Viewing prospects enjoy the same rush as opening gifts. 
• Example(s): Content-related style guidelines should explain the brand voice and tone.

• Buyer personalities have very specific needs regarding how they want information to be shared in order to trust a brand. Include DO's and DONTs in your  pillar definitions.

CONTENT RELATED TO BUILDING BRAND TRUST (ONE PART OF THE KNOW LIKE TRUST SERIES)

• Know, Like and Trust Series
• Social media content management
• Persuasion techniques