Build Brand Trust

How To Build Brand Trust Within Your Audience

You don’t have a business unless your audience trusts your brand. How do you build brand trust, so your customers believe what you are saying?

How do you build brand trust? Hi Trish Davies, here from TrishDaviesInternational.com and as a personal branding expert I know the importance of brand trust.

Your brand is the most important asset to your business, something that your audience can rely on. I think this has been highlighted over the last 18 months or so with Covid-19.

Consumers have had their own challenges over this time and have stuck with what they know. Unfortunately, businesses and come and gone over this time but the ones remaining know the benefits of brand trust. Therefore, they have survived and are in a great position to move forward during the brighter times ahead.

What Is Brand Trust?

In a nutshell brand trust reflects your audiences expectations. Expectation that your products, services, how you behave lives up to the promises you have made.

Failure to live up to those promises runs the risk of losing customer loyalty and will damage your reputation. Therefore, brand trust is the most important element that you must develop. If you don’t and break your promises then your audience will flock over to your competitors.

When you do build brand trust then it has a knock on effect with your audience. They are more likely to recommend, advocate, you to their close circle of family, friends and associates. Your audience will only do that with the knowledge that no one will be left disappointed.

Brand Trust Benefits

If you are still sitting on the fence about building brand trust let me share with you some benefits. The three main benefits when you build brand trust are increasing loyalty, engagement and advocacy within your audience. Let’s break those three benefits in more detail.

Loyalty

I just researched the definition of loyalty and the general opinion is as follows.

“a strong feeling of support or allegiance”

Therefore, your audience will buy your products and services even if they are not the cheapest on the market. Loyalty also compels your audience to only buy from your brand, even when you introduce new products and services.

Engagement

When customers engage with you and your brand it sets a seed in their behaviour. You will find that your audience will become comfortable to share their most sensitive information with you. They know that information is safe in your hands and won’t be shared about.

Also, as they are more engaged they will pay more attention to the message you deliver. They will be highly vested in your advertising and marketing communications and more likely to take action.

Advocacy

When you build brand trust then you will find that a high percentage will repost your content. They will share their experiences and why they trust your brand so much.

They will recommend your brand to others and be your protectors if you ever receive adverse feedback. Word of mouth recommendation coupled with defence are tell tale signs that you have built brand trust.

5 Strategies On How To Build Brand Trust

Use Brand Storytelling

Brand storytelling is something that I empower my Build Your AU members to use whilst building their brand. What it does is create a narrative around your brand that will ultimately connect with your audience.

Your customers want to know how authentic you are, and that authenticity comes from your story. They also want to know your values, your goals and everything about what makes you tick as a person.

Therefore, your brand must have that authentic feel, look and sound that connects with your audience. The way to do that is to create content conversational and make your audience feel you are talking to them personally. Somewhat like how you would talk to a friend.

You can go as deep as you feel comfortable with your content, the deeper the better in many respects. That content must be engaging and provide value to help nurture the relationship your are forming with your audience.

Personally, I love to do Facebook Live because that is where you can show your true authenticity. You can show your vulnerabilities and your authority to really make that heartfelt connection.

Be Honest & Transparent

Ensure that there are no grey areas in your business. Always tell the truth and be transparent with people. You only want to work with people who you can provide value to, they are the backbone of your business. People who are aligned with what you can offer and will get maximum benefit.

Sometimes you will find that people come to you who in reality are not the right fit. That right fit works both ways so always be honest and say that your products and services are not right for them.

Don’t just take the money because it will come back to haunt you. Dealing with customer complaints, refunds and refunds easts into your time. Time that would be better spent dealing with the right customers.

Create Brand Consistency

You must be consistent in everything that you do and say about your brand. This means having a uniformed front when it comes to online appearance such as website, social profiles, logo, colours and fonts.

Also, and more importantly your message must be consistent in relation to context, meaning, personality and tone. Take some time to think about your own favourite brands and how they present themselves. What attracted you to them then take what they do right and model those principles into your own brand.

Create High Quality Products & Services

Now this should be a given for any business and please excuse my bluntness. Selling crappy, low quality products and services is like opening a pandoras box for your business.

You must only create and sell high quality products and services that meet the customers expectations. That must be fit for purpose and deliver the outcome that your customers are looking for.

To ensure you achieve this you must test rigorously, set up Beta groups to iron out any problems. Analyse the feedback and make the necessary alterations before you go to mass market.

Build Social Proof

Part of anyone’s buying decision is to look for social proof and reviews. The more positive customer reviews and testimonials you can get the better, but they must be verified.

Now you can do this through your own platforms but also leverage third party authority review sites. Reviews from those trusted sources will have a lot of weight behind them and potential customers are more likely to respond in a positive way.

It may sound strange but even negative feedback can be turned into a positive situation. Make sure you respond to that negative feedback and don’t leave it hanging. This will show your true authenticity and transparency for everyone to see.