importance of brand trust

Now more than ever, brand trust is a deciding factor in your customers’ purchases. What is brand trust? It’s how much your customers trust your reputation – your promises and how you deliver on them with your products and/or services. Customers have expectations about how your brand operates, communicates, and serves them. If those customer expectations are fulfilled time and again, trust gets built. According to Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer report, trust now comes second after price when they’re hovering over that “purchase” button in their virtual shopping carts and considering following through. In other words, if the price is right, the next thing your customer thinks is, “Do I trust this brand? Do I trust they’ll deliver what I want/need from this product/service?” If the answer is “YES,” they’re more likely to purchase. Winning brand trust, therefore, is mega-important. A BIG part of that is proving yourself, over and over, in your brand content. That’s what this guide is all about: how to build brand trust with proven content writing techniques. Because if your content isn’t building trust with your audience… It’s worthless. Let’s dive in. ?‍♀️ [bctt tweet=”Trust now comes second after price when customers are deciding whether to buy your products/services. (via @EdelmanPR) How do you BUILD that trust? With these 7 techniques ?✅” username=”ExpWriters”] The Importance of Brand Trust Customers expect SO much from the brands they give their loyalty to – and with good reason. Brands can have a tremendous impact on society, for good or ill. With our products/services, we can make someone’s life easier. We can solve their annoying problems. We can give them joy, utility, time savings, expertise, entertainment, knowledge, growth. That’s not all. With our practices and policies, we have the power to change the conversation on so many issues our audiences care about, whether they’re environmentally-minded or socially-minded. And the bigger your business grows, the more influence you have. So, to build brand trust with your audience, to put it in cliché terms, you need to practice what you preach. You need to put your money where your mouth is. Publishing GREAT content is a perfect place to start. Here are some tips and techniques. 7 Content Writing Techniques That Build Brand Trust 1. Define a Brand Voice and Tone – and Stick to It If your brand as a whole could talk, what would it sound like? How would customers feel if they had a conversation with it? Now imagine each time your customers interact with your brand, it sounds different, like it has a multiple personality disorder. In your emails, you sound peppy and young, like an inexperienced teenager. On your blogs, you sound stiffer and a little too formal. In your social posts, you take on the persona of an older sister with all the right advice. “What is this brand really about?”, your customers might wonder. They might be confused and put off. That’s why pulling off a single voice and tone across ALL your content is essential. Your brand voice needs to be reliable, not all over the place. Your customers should know what they’ll get when they read your content or interact with your company. To make it happen, everyone who touches your content needs to have the same set of guides to follow. Your brand personas, style guide, and image/branding should be documented with rules for writing to and interacting with customers. No brand guides? Then you’ll leave all your creators guessing at how you want to sound, which surely will lead to a brand identity crisis. ? 2. Invest in Consistency This next tip ties into #1, above. Consistency is the ribbon of caramel sauce that should run through your entire content marketing ice cream sundae. Consistency is synonymous with reliability. Stability. Predictability. All things that breed trust. Here are some additional actions that help you stay consistent in content marketing: Post regularly – Ultimately, you want to be a regular presence in the lives of your audience because more contact builds trust faster. The more you show up with great content, the more chances you have to convert them. The key is to post consistently while not compromising on quality – a sweet spot that many creators find challenging. Write with depth always – You should always strive to answer user questions thoroughly in your content. This requires depth, supporting research, and more words than what you’d think. (Hint: That 500-word post probably isn’t going to cut it. Long-form content gets 77.2% more links on average than shorter content AND performs better.) Anticipate that the reader has questions, then go above and beyond providing the answers. Use consistent branding – On your image assets, website, and social pages, keep your branding consistent. It should all read as different pages from the same book. Creating a seamless look among your pages and content helps users remember your brand better, and may also lead to as much as 33% more revenue, according to a Lucidpress study. [bctt tweet=”Consistency is the ribbon of caramel sauce that should run through your entire #contentmarketing ice cream sundae. ?” username=”ExpWriters”] 3. Stay Audience-Focused Is your audience top of mind, all the time? If they’re not, they should be. If you forget to focus on them, who else rises to the top? Most likely, you. Your company. And that’s a no-go for many reasons. Think about it. When a company starts talking about itself and how great it is, that they’re the best in the industry with so many incredible products/services/features, do you start nodding off? Yep. Me, too. The last thing I want to hear about is the company’s greatness when I’m consumed with finding the right solutions for my own problems. Drill that into your brain: Customers do not care about how great you are. They care about solving their problems. That means you should: Aim to be helpful always – If you earnestly want to help your customers, an earnest desire to help will … Read more