How To Ensure Your Brand Wins Consumer Trust: 4 Quick Tips

Want con­sumers to trust your brand? Then make sure to get these basics right.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Want con­sumers to trust your brand? Then make sure to post accu­rate con­tent, avoid down­time, and keep their pri­vate data safe.


Trust is a qual­i­ty which many brands hope to inspire amongst their con­sumers. From launch­ing a live Q&A con­tent forum, to the age old (and occa­sion­al­ly risky) prac­tice of hir­ing influ­en­tial spokes­peo­ple, brands view trust as a key com­po­nent of their over­all rep­u­ta­tions.

An absence of trust can have wide-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for a brand, across the busi­ness. Uber, for exam­ple, con­sis­tent­ly suf­fer with con­tin­ued abuse of tech­nol­o­gy and con­sumer pri­va­cy, as well as with accu­sa­tions that the com­pa­ny pri­or­i­tizes con­tin­ued growth while fail­ing to address a long-term prob­lem with eth­i­cal behav­ior.

Why do con­sumers lose trust in brands? To find out, Neustar released a report, “What Erodes Trust in Dig­i­tal Brands?”, which reveals the biggest fac­tors that cause con­sumers dis­trust brands.

trust

In today’s dig­i­tal world, where con­sumers are so often asked to pro­vide per­son­al infor­ma­tion dur­ing cer­tain moments of their pur­chase jour­neys, trust becomes an even more impor­tant qual­i­ty. In entrust­ing brands with an ele­ment of their per­son­al infor­ma­tion, con­sumers look for key sig­nals and indi­ca­tors to assess whether a brand is trust­wor­thy.

Luck­i­ly, Neustar’s sur­vey of 750 adult Amer­i­cans shows that these indi­ca­tors are often sim­pler than you might expect.

Here are four quick tips to ensure your brand wins con­sumer trust.

1. Ensure Content Is Accurate, Useful & To The Point

Inac­cu­rate con­tent is one huge way to erode con­sumer trust. Nine­ty-one per­cent of peo­ple said they lose trust after view­ing inac­cu­rate con­tent on a brand’s web­site.

In our always-on, always-con­nect­ed world, a brand’s dig­i­tal store­front may be the first and only touch­point a cus­tomer has with a com­pa­ny,” said Lisa Joy Ros­ner, CMO at Neustar. “Dis­cern­ing cus­tomers expect a brand’s web­site to offer them accu­rate, real-time infor­ma­tion, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want it.”

Make sure your con­tent is free of errors and mis­takes, that it offers answers/solutions to questions/problems your audi­ence is like­ly to have, and that you give it to them quick­ly.

2. Avoid Website Downtime At All Costs

Web­site down­time is anoth­er way to lose con­sumer trust. Eighty-eight per­cent of peo­ple told Neustar they have lost trust in a brand after they can’t access their web­site.

That means you must ensure that your brand and web­site are con­stant­ly avail­able!

In addi­tion, a con­sid­er­able 67 per­cent of con­sumers lost trust in a web­site that was per­ceived to load too slow­ly. How­ev­er, the report also found that the amount of time that con­sumers were will­ing to wait for a page to load var­ied by indus­try.

For gov­ern­ment or finan­cial ser­vices, more than half of con­sumers were will­ing to wait an addi­tion­al five sec­onds for a page to load. For enter­tain­ment or social media web­sites how­ev­er, just 10 and 6 per­cent of con­sumers were will­ing to wait an addi­tion­al 5 sec­onds for a page to load.

trust_industry
Clear­ly, con­sumer expec­ta­tion will strong­ly dic­tate the impor­tance of page load times to your brand. If you run an enter­tain­ment web­site, for exam­ple, then you know it’s an indus­try in which con­sumers are used to the fastest online expe­ri­ence. So if your web­site can’t deliv­er a speedy expe­ri­ence they expect, your site will sim­ply fall out of favor.

3. Keep Consumer Data Secure

A data or secu­ri­ty breach can do ter­ri­ble dam­age and cause con­sumers to lose trust in your brand. In these instances, “27 per­cent of con­sumers says it takes more than a year to regain a pos­i­tive view of a breached brand [and] 24 per­cent report that even 12+ months lat­er, they con­tin­ue to view the brand poor­ly.”

trust_data

Cus­tomers demand that all of the infor­ma­tion they share with a brand is retained in a safe and secure man­ner,” Ros­ner said.

That’s why you should imple­ment a rig­or­ous iden­ti­ty and authen­ti­ca­tion process, one that inspires con­fi­dence. Also, fig­ure out how you’ll store the data.

4. Don’t Let Ads Interfere With Content Or User Experiences

When it comes to on-page adver­tise­ments, Neustar found that usage of dis­play adver­tis­ing did­n’t intrin­si­cal­ly dam­age trust. Even so-called “aggres­sive ads,” such as ban­ner adver­tise­ments, did­n’t neg­a­tive­ly impact con­sumer trust.

Instead, con­sumers main­ly dis­liked ads that inter­fered with con­tent (55 per­cent), and ads that redi­rect­ed con­sumers to irrel­e­vant sites (52 per­cent).

trust_ads

It sug­gests that con­sumers are still fair­ly recep­tive to dis­play adver­tis­ing, inas­much as it still does not erode over­all brand trust. How­ev­er, this is on the assump­tion that the ads are at most aggres­sive (or promi­nent) with­out being inva­sive (encum­ber­ing the view­ing of con­tent, or the desired nav­i­ga­tion of a site).


What are you doing to ensure your brand wins con­sumer trust?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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