Trust Marketing: Building Confidence With Your Target Audience

Can trust marketing be useful to drive traffic to your website? When we think of modern marketing tools, we usually think about social media channels, apps, widgets, targeting options, email marketing campaigns, and even things like events or email marketing campaigns. Trust marketing can be used together with every marketing campaign or strategy your business uses.

Trust is not as abstract as you think

When thinking of the word “trust”, many people define it as a feeling we have. Something that is quite emotionally based. However, trust is also a logical process our brain goes through. We, as humans, often “calculate” our trust in people.

We will judge people based on first impressions, but we will also take historical considerations into account. We ask ourselves questions like:

Has this person/company/thing been reliable to me in the past?
Have they proven their trustworthiness?
How have other similar people/companies/things treated me in the past?

Although it may not be an exact science, we do take mental notes of our interactions with people (and brands). Our brain takes this information and uses its own mysterious algorithms to “calculate” how trustworthy someone or something is. Some people call it a gut feeling because there is an element of “feeling the vibe” and general uncertainty, but in reality, trust is kind of a “calculated risk”.

With that in mind, consumer behaviour studies have shown that there are certain signals that consumers look for when deciding about a company’s trustworthiness. Naturally, trust can be very influential in a consumer’s decision to complete a purchase.

A Trusted Shops consumer survey revealed some interesting numbers about trust in online shopping across Europe:

62% of respondents generally trust online shops
66% of consumers prioritise positive online reviews over price
79% of European shoppers read reviews every time or most of the time before making a purchase.

Customer reviews are clearly a huge part of building trust online – we’ll touch more on that briefly. Besides customer reviews, there are a few more things you can do to make use of trust marketing techniques. Let’s explore some of those ideas in the next section.

Want to read the Trusted Shops consumer survey yourself? Download the Digital Trust Report here:

Using trust marketing for your business

Most successful companies use multiple marketing channels to promote their business. Some marketing campaigns require big budgets and some are organic (i.e. “free”). We’ll look at how trust can be a factor across many channels whether it’s on your website or across the internet and beyond. As many consumer journeys begin on search engines, let’s start with Google.

Trust marketing in Google

Customer reviews are the lifeblood of your online reputation, especially in search engines like Google. Whether users discover your page in Google or use the search engine to research your brand after visiting your product page, what they see here can potentially make or break your sale.

To be clear, Google will separate customer reviews (and ratings) into two categories with regard to online shopping: product reviews and service reviews (aka seller ratings).

Product reviews refer to ratings given by consumers on the product in question (e.g. “This alarm clock works great! It’s turned me into a morning person!”)
Service reviews (aka seller ratings, shop reviews) refer to ratings given by consumers for the seller (e.g. “Speedy delivery! The customer service team was very helpful!)

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Google has a variety of ways to show users your ratings, which often appear as stars in the search engine:

Google OneBox: This is the small box that appears on the right side of some Google search results pages (SERPs). In the context of e-commerce, they show up for brand searches. You can read more about Google OneBox in our blog.
Google Ads: If you run Google Ads, your star ratings can appear if you collect customer reviews with a supported Google review partner (like Trusted Shops). Google Ads can help build trust with other Assets (aka Google Ads Extensions) as well. Tools like Google Integration can help make sure your reviews are being sent to Google regularly, ensuring the star ratings in your ads are up to date.
Google Shopping: Similar to Google Ads, your Google Shopping posts (whether organic or paid) can display star ratings for the product reviews. If multiple sellers offer the same product, then users can also access your seller ratings to differentiate retailers by price and reputation.
Organic results: Although shops can no longer display their own seller ratings in the organic results (i.e. next to their domain), search terms like “your brand reviews” can trigger Google SERPs to show results from review providers like Trustpilot. It may also trigger the Google OneBox mentioned above, which often draws its rating from the top review providers’ sites.

Make sure to work with a trusted reviews provider that is compatible with Google. A good review system can even help you collect reviews for multiple review providers in order to harmonise your reputation across the internet. Learn more about the Trusted Shops Reputation Manager, which does exactly that.

Trust marketing on your website

The next logical place we’ll look is your own website, as your efforts here are often tied together with marketing and marketing strategies. There are plenty of places you can build more trust with your customers. At the very least, it might be worth testing a few options.

We’ll cover a few specific things to look at, but it’s important to keep one thing in mind: it all comes down to transparency. The more transparent you can be, the more trustworthy your site becomes. Even if each individual trust-building element is not used by every single customer, the culmination of your efforts is a great example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Contact information

Make sure your contact info is easily accessible. That means the shopper exploring your site is always one click away from getting in touch with you.

This includes displaying information like:

an email address for support or questions
a phone number
a chatbot
Contact Us page
Links to social media accounts

All or some combination of these contact points are important for consumers to see.

Customer reviews

Your ratings should be clear and easily found across your website. Your homepage should, for example, display your service rating prominently. The placement is up to you: the navigation, the footer, and/or some widgets in between. Consider displaying your ratings or some sample reviews in a widget on your checkout pages.

Along with your seller rating, you should also consider displaying product reviews throughout your site. Don’t limit yourself to just the product pages. You can display them on your homepage if you highlight certain products or in the product category pages.

With Trusted Shops, the Trustbadge widget displays your seller rating along with the Trustmark certification and the Buyer Protection, a real trust-builder.

Content marketing

Content marketing and trust marketing go hand in hand. If you’re unfamiliar with content marketing, the concept is to create content for your audience that provides value of some sorts.

Think about blog articles or “How-to” videos on YouTube. By giving your target audience useful information (and maybe subtly promoting your products/business), you can win their trust.

Recommended reading:
Content Marketing: Boosting Sales for Online Shops

Trust marketing in social media

Social media is a great tool for building trust with your audience. Posting regularly is a good thing for your brand. However, you can also create a very detailed social media strategy. It all just depends how deeply you want to go with it.

Shutterstock/LookerStudio

As a form of content marketing, you can also offer users insights and value through your social posts. However, you could also take the route of simply giving a behind-the-scenes look at your business. Depending on your niche, this could be a popular way of getting attention to your brand. Otherwise, you can just post something personal or funny.

There are many directions you could go. You can test out what inspires the most engagement. The main idea is that posting frequently is a good way to get your brand out there. Many social media platforms will reward you for publishing content consistently.

You can rotate between the different types of content you share. If you post 3 times a week, one post could be behind-the-scenes, the next one could be an announcement for an upcoming sale, and third one could be a form of user-generated content like a real customer review.

If you’re not into making your content regularly, you might want to consider sponsoring a video with an influencer, especially if they are tied closely to your industry. Maybe you can get them to review your product or give it a shoutout if they truly like your free sample. Depending on the agreements you reach with them, it could cost you. However, with the right reach, the return on investment could be well worth it.

Trust marketing in other ads (and other miscellaneous advice)

No matter where you market your brand, trust can always play a factor. If you still use traditional advertising, your ads can show off your service rating in the corner of the ad. This works for print and/or television.

Trusted Shops offers Business Members easy access to any marketing materials they need to promote trust in their marketing campaigns, including custom graphics and even animations, which can be found easily in your Control Centre.

If there is something else about your company that you think can build trust, use it to your advantage. Maybe it’s simple statistics like your service rating (and the number of reviews). Maybe it’s something like “established in 1998”. I know it doesn’t feel like that was 25+ years ago, but it was. And the beauty of it is that it shows your expertise and your success. Those are both signs of trust to shoppers.

Conclusion

Trust marketing can be a very useful way to promote your business because it puts your business in the best light possible. Whether it’s displaying customer feedback (i.e. social proof) and certifications or simply being transparent and communicative throughout your website and social media channels, small things can be done to improve the impression you make on your potential customers.

25/09/24