Were you in leadership in high school or college?
I was, and the annual retreat was always my favorite. It was the only time you truly bonded with your peers. It was also the place where they’d inevitably ask us to do the “trust fall.”
Remember this game? You deliberately fall backwards and have to rely on your partner or group to catch you.
I was never really good at it, of course. I used to look back a million times to confirm my partner was paying attention and would actually catch me. That should have told me all I needed to know about those people. 😂
I can remember a few times — ok, maybe just once — when I truly trusted the person behind me and then it worked!
This is how you need to think about your brand, too.
Do your customers and prospects trust your business?
Do they believe unequivocally that you have what it takes to catch them when they fall? READ: When prices are high, can they trust your team, based on its consultative advice, support and risk management?
With tighter budgets and less cash at hand, brand trust
will be the currency in 2023.
Businesses still spending the majority of their marketing budget on product content are fighting an uphill battle. Keep product sales to your website and out of your blog, email
newsletter or social media content.
Instead, customers and prospects want to know — before they speak to a salesperson or fill out a form on your website — why your business and its experts are the answer to their problems.
3 myths we tell ourselves about brand trust
1. Trust is easily earned.
Putting out a few pieces of trustworthy content (think: a customer case study or two) may open doors, but it’s not enough to secure trust. Today, it takes 6-12 months+ of
solid non-sales communication to establish your business as a truly trusted partner.
That means you’ve got to go all in on the free advice, consultation, support, risk management and industry knowledge for longer than you’d like to before seeing an ROI.
2. My customers shop differently than I do.
Do you purchase an item you saw once on a TV commercial? I don’t either. How many times does it take until you trust a brand enough to make the same investment you’re asking your customers and prospects to make?
3. They’ll reach out to me when they need help.
Your inbound leads are only as good as your continuous outbound brand messaging. If you’re out there daily giving away your secret sauce, illustrating why businesses should trust you, they will reach out when they need help because they’ve prequalified you from afar. If you’re not, you’ll still be prequalifying them — only without their interest or knowledge.
For customers and prospects to trust that you’ll catch them when they fall, you’ve to be standing at the ready. Just passing by hoping to catch them won’t cut it anymore.
