In a time when digital hype has never been cheaper and disinformation more abundant, public trust in many institutions is crumbling.1
For tech marketers, this erosion of trust poses a significant challenge. Trust is the foundation of customer buy-in, and the relentless pace of innovation—fueled by advancements in AI, security, and cloud computing—only magnifies the pressure to stand apart without compromising credibility.
Fortunately, principled marketers have several strategies at their disposal to accelerate trust-building while avoiding common pitfalls in messaging and go-to-market approaches.
In this article, we’ll explore how to foster trust by deeply understanding customer needs, communicating effectively, and engaging audiences at every stage of the buyer journey.
Why Trust?
In today’s digital world, creating engagement is a quick win. Building trust is a much longer game, with a less easily measured ROI but much greater returns. Customers reward trustworthy brands with loyalty and advocacy beyond initial purchases based upon a demonstrated ability to meet and exceed their expectations.
Accordingly, building trust is not a one-and-done exercise—trust requires renewal through consistent demonstrations of value that create a cumulative store of customer goodwill. That’s what makes trust such a potent differentiator for the products and companies that earn it.
Put simply, creating trust with your customers takes consistency, authenticity, and a deliberate approach to continuously understand and address their needs.
Listen First, Then Communicate Clearly
Good storytelling is clear and concise. It also aligns with your buyers’ interests. Clear communication of an offering’s potential benefits—and any associated limitations—ranks nearly as high as active listening in importance to customers.2 It sits alongside delivering high-quality products and experiences as a cornerstone of building trust.3
Yet, to achieve trustworthy storytelling, marketers must go a step further. It requires a deep understanding of what truly motivates your customers and acknowledging these drivers at every stage of their journey. To do this, marketers must not start with their own “why” or “how” but with their customers’ “what.” This enables practitioners to first address customer needs and concerns and then how their technology can support them in achieving their goals.
Know Your Audience
To address your customers properly, you must also understand who they are. Inaccurate assumptions about their challenges, motivations, and constraints can manifest as inauthentic messaging and ring hollow.
By building stakeholder personas you can extract real-world insights into the nuances of your customer audience, their pain points, and thought processes—then align your marketing in service of their needs. Well-crafted personas facilitate clear communication and can be the difference between talking to customers or talking at them. Prescriptive guidance on the preferred tone of voice (formal, casual, technical) and narrative style (data-driven or story-based) for each persona reduces friction by accurately reflecting how your unique customers think.
A Little Candor and Strong Value Go a Long way
While marketers may feel inclined to lead with the latest capability, fad, or trend—the proverbial “speeds and feeds”—product-first messages can sometimes undermine value. It emphasizes what you can do versus how you can help. On the other hand, customer-centric messages enable you to focus on audience needs and outcomes upfront. It also frames your solution or offering through the proper lens, elevating your presence as a trusted advisor to help achieve a desirable future state.
The Right Content at the Right Times
Like many things, building trust is an ongoing process. It doesn’t stop with the sale. What customers need to see and hear from your brand changes throughout the journey from awareness to advocacy.
Before the purchasing decision, customers naturally spend more time with top-of-the-funnel content. After the sale, they want value-adding content that demonstrates how to get more out of their investment, hone their skills, or advance their career or business. By addressing these needs down funnel, you can reinforce value by continuously demonstrating your commitment to their success with useful, insightful content over the entire customer lifetime—not just presale.
Bring Storytelling to Your Marketing
In an age of hype and skepticism, the value of brand trust can’t be overstated. For nearly two decades, Exact Market has been creating trust-building messaging and marketing campaigns for technology businesses of every size. Learn more today!
- Gallup, U.S. Confidence in Institutions Mostly Flat, but Police Up, Jul 2024
- Edelman, 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, Jan 2024
- PwC, Voice of the Consumer Survey 2024: Shrinking the consumer trust deficit, May 2024
