As the number of customers across digital platforms increases, brands find it tough to maintain the right image and reputation. With four out of every five customers choosing products from brands they trust, ensuring you have the right presence is important to leave a lasting impression.
Minus a strong strategy, brands end up losing customers to competition. Building a strong presence in the digital marketing space can be a good idea to safeguard against problems and handle competitive forces.
This is because when brands lose their trust, customers lose focus and search for new opportunities. Often many of these never return to the original one as they no longer trust it. A mere 20% of the total customers will trust the brand again. This is why businesses with lost customer trust and credibility struggle to regain their footing.
Understanding the need for credibility and brand authenticity
Credibility and authenticity are crucial aspects of building and maintaining customer trust. The brand’s credibility is reflected in the degree to which customers trust it and its promises. To be authentic, it is important to ensure that the brands meet customer expectations and actions.
Top strategies for boosting brand trust and credibility
Every business and brand has a separate story, which means that its credibility is dependent on certain factors like –
- Leveraging social proof and user-generated content
Consumers become more sceptical about brands and their claims. They understand that marketing teams may be dishonest about products and services and thus expect social proof and user-generated content.
With customer testimonials and reviews, it is easy to establish the brand’s authenticity. Thus, the claims must match the brand and its statements. Customer-generated reviews of products help to support brand claims. It boosts customer trust and profits.
- Creating and maintaining transparent communication
Transparent communication helps to boost trust between a brand and its consumers.
Brands can use the same to convey their message, quests towards success, etc. Your brand must also identify the sources trusted by your customers and leverage the same to gain and maintain a reputation.
- Embracing aid from influencers
Adding your top customers as your influencers or investing in influencers allows businesses to boost brand authenticity and credibility.
With such a collaboration, your business can access new markets, audiences, etc. This is crucial for brands aiming to leverage the credibility of an influencer. This creates a win-win situation for all.
- Leveraging content marketing
Content marketing allows brands to share the expertise of their leadership team and growth potential through blogs, white books, etc. However, the content shared must not be merely a sales message but relevant and valuable.
- Accept and manage mistakes.
No brand is perfect and customers understand it. A business that takes responsibility for its actions is likely to gain the trust and respect of its customers. Investing in quality image and online reputation management is important to overcome the negative publicity and regain trust.
Brands that communicate effectively and learn from their mistakes can attain trust and respect from the crowd. This approach makes it easy to build credibility and a positive brand image.