Every brand wants to build a trustworthy relationship with its customers. After all, brand loyalty is a crucial part to any brand’s growth and success in the long term.
Building a trusted brand isn’t achieved overnight. It takes time, effort and consistency – every interaction that a customer has with your brand should be a positive experience.
So, what does it take to build a trusted brand in today’s competitive landscape, where we are constantly bombarded with competing advertising messages, content and calls to action?
1. Be authentic — know who you are as a business or brand and what you stand for
What are your values? What do you stand for as a brand? Don’t deviate from that. Brands like Nike, Dove and Hermes have stayed true to their brand heritage over many decades, building customer loyalty.
If we look at Dove’s Real Beauty and Self-Esteem project, which celebrates diversity, you can gain a greater understanding of their brand values. Uplifting and positive, it shows customers who they are and what they believe in – that beauty comes in many different colours, shapes and sizes.
2. Invest in customer/client relationships
The relationships you build with your customers or clients are at the core of your business and determine your success. It’s important to connect with your customers or clients every day.
Successful brands value content and utilise it to communicate with customers, subscribers, stakeholders… It might be a personalised eDM, a social media post or corporate video. The brands that have communicated well with their customers during the pandemic have retained that connection and, in many cases, attracted new customers.
Despite its airline fleet and its customers being grounded during the pandemic, Qantas made the prescient decision to continue publishing its In-Flight magazine, mailing the print version to Frequent Flyer customers and making a digital version available for download. The airline committed to the magazine, presenting aspirational destinations and delivering feel-good stories to maintain customer connection until such time as those loyal customers would be able to travel with them once again.
3. Be transparent and don’t be afraid to answer questions
If you want to be trusted as a brand, you must be honest. In today’s world, corporate transparency is valued more than ever. Trustworthy brands are notable for stepping up to the truth in the public arena. Owning mistakes and missteps, and being accountable, is imperative to creating brand loyalty. Corporate responsibility should always be evident, even in the most challenging circumstances.
Fitbit is just one brand that continues to lead when it comes to corporate transparency. They have been open about which parts of data they collect and how they share it, giving piece of mind to their customers.
4. Harness the power of storytelling
Storytelling is fundamental to establishing an emotional connection with customers. Without it, a valuable opportunity to grow brand trust is missed. Personalise the story behind the brand, its ethos and its people. Storytelling invites customers into your world by creating opportunities for them to relate and identify a relationship with the brand that resonates with them.
Storytelling has been the fabric of Nike’s marketing and advertising campaigns. Their ‘Just Do It’ tagline has been used alongside aspirational and inspirational stories for decades.
Businesses like global visual communications platform Canva are successfully innovating new ways of connecting through storytelling, sharing success stories of small businesses and entrepreneurs in their community. By fostering small businesses that have used the Canva program to leverage their own businesses, and Canva collaboration to seamlessly facilitate the processes, the brand has expanded its storytelling in multi-layered ways. These first-hand personal stories provide customers with inspiration and, importantly, confidence in the brand through the positive stories of others.
Need help building your business into a trusted brand? Call us on (02) 9825 9600.