Every once in a while, we’ll look at various annual marketing surveys that come out — in particular the ones that ask businesses about the biggest marketing challenges they face. Respondents typically cite areas such as:

• • Lack of awareness of the company/products/services
  • Lack of budget
  • Poor ROI
  • Managing the website
  • Lack of strategy
  • Generating traffic and leads

All of which, we can confirm, are areas that we see small businesses struggle with too. We’re not arguing any of those. We do, however, want to talk about one challenge that remains critical to business success, yet rarely appears on any list.

That is, trust.

It’s no secret that customers buy from companies they trust. The problem that we sometimes see is that companies don’t really integrate this concept into their marketing approach. After all, many organizations might work hard to address the above marketing challenges – budget, awareness, ROI, generating traffic and leads etc. And those are all important for sure. But some businesses do such activities myopically.

What do we mean by that?

For example, if you have a problem generating traffic or leads, you would certainly try to drive more of both – through, say, more content production, email, or advertising. If you have a problem with budgets, you might, say, increase investment in certain area. If you have a problem with ROI, you try to analyze and improve performance with your operations. But none of those activities should be done in a vacuum without a broader approach, especially, we’d argue, one with an eye toward establishing more customer trust. Before we dive into that, let’s take a step back to consider the bigger picture.

Why Trust? Lessons from Great Leadership

The other day, we were listening a podcast from the group Chief Executive, in which the hosts interviewed current Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer and management guru, John C. Maxwell for a discussion on great leadership. Meyer had an interesting thing to say on the topic that stuck with us: “I used to say [to people], the job of a leader is to set a standard and demand all live up to that…But I disagree with that completely now. The number one job of a leader is to earn [the people’s] trust.  

OK, you say, that’s a great point for leadership but how does trust relate to marketing? If you think about what a leader has to do, he or she must motivate people to do work that may sometimes be difficult or challenging. If people trust the leader and trust that he or she “has their back” then they are more likely to be motivated to do that activity. If you think about marketing, it’s no different. In marketing the core job is to motivate audiences or potential customers to take action. That action can be made a lot easier if the customer trusts the company. Think about those companies in the bigger picture: How many do you know that were high-trust that have actually failed? The answer is, probably not many.

How Do You Create Trust in Marketing?

If we had to answer this question in a more practical fashion, we might, say, give you a list of more marketing activities you can do. For example, typical trust-building priorities might include things such as:

• • Adding testimonials, case studies or other forms of “social proof”
  • Demonstrating your relevant expertise in a particular topic area (“social currency”)
  • Using more personalized outreach through email or even advertising
  • Resolving customer complaints
  • Being transparent in pricing and how your business operations run
  • Getting involved and supporting socially responsible causes

All of those are certainly great to do. But we would encourage your business to think more deeply about how you establish trust. And that goes back to your brand identity and narrative, and focusing on implementing a consistent approach to all your marketing activities. That means whether you’re increasing budgets, trying to improve your ROI, or generating more traffic, the narrative of you as a trustworthy company should run through all of it and be a focus for your strategy in each area. Want to increase budgets? How will that investment also increase customer trust in your company? Want to develop more traffic or leads? Similarly, what can you do get more customers to “trust” you and your company enough to fill in that form or come to the website?  

How Do You Develop a Good Narrative of Trust?