Wish more people had faith in your company?
Searching for a content marketing strategy that promotes trust?
This post will show you how to combine three different types of content to build and maintain a trustworthy relationship with the market.
Why Trust Matters More Than Ever in Marketing
Without trust, brands, marketers, business owners, and salespeople cannot succeed.
What gets someone to open a sales call, download a lead magnet, or purchase a product is trust. Customer loyalty is motivated by trust. People will refer your company to their friends, family, and coworkers if they feel confident doing so.
The last few years have seen a significant decline in consumer trust in firms. Actually, there is a trust crisis among American customers.
That’s a significant issue for corporations. Customers must know, like, and trust you before they will take a bet on your brand. Brands are falling short at the very end.
How then do you begin to restore confidence, particularly in such a busy and noisy market?
Through high-quality material, you may demonstrate your honesty and integrity. The “Prove-It” Method is what it’s called.
Simple steps to increase your marketing effectiveness
The Prove It Method is a straightforward marketing tactic.
You provide outstanding customer service? Show me!
Are your products the best available on the market? Show me!
You run an eco-friendly, sustainably-minded startup, right? Show me!
Every time you assert something about your company, you should be ready to provide evidence to support it.
This fundamentally alters the way you produce material. You won’t post what the public wants to hear; only things that are unquestionably, indubitably true, will be posted.
- Select the statements that will best reach your target audience and achieve your objectives. Making proof for something your customers don't care about is pointless.
- Verify the veracity and evidence of your current material. You must make sure that your material is continuously trustworthy if you want to gain the trust of your audience, even if that means editing or removing previously popular postings.
- Start producing material that provides evidence through confirmation, documentation, and instruction.
Here are some examples of the material kinds you can use as evidence: corroboration, documentation, and education. If you want to differentiate yourself from the competition and establish enduring trust for each type, you must produce high-quality content.
#1: Corroboration
Finding people who will support your marketing claims is known as “corroboration.” They’ll concur with you if you say you have the best products, the most affordable costs, or the most cutting-edge features!
You can utilize two different kinds of corroborators in your content:
Find academic or industry authority who can bolster your assertions. You may ask them to repost a certain quotation, give your merchandise its official seal of approval, or utilize their social media following to your advantage. The ideal method for promoting information, such as specifics about a product’s advantages, is expert confirmation.
Witnesses are individuals who have personally verified the veracity of your assertions. They might be customers, clients, or even workers! Request that they provide testimonials, evaluations, or a “day in the life” of one of their encounters. The finest method for selling an experience is witness confirmation.
Both sorts of corroboration are generally beneficial for your marketing approach, despite the fact that they have varied strengths. Use those witness reviews if you need expert confirmation but all you currently have is witness testimony! Any form of confirmation can be useful.
Once you’ve gathered these sayings, anecdotes, and endorsements, you may distribute them in any manner that appeals to your audience. Think about your target audience’s preferred methods of content consumption while creating website copy, social media postings, white papers, eBooks, print books, and films.
B2B businesses have a history of providing both expert and witness corroboration. They frequently conduct their own research studies, publish statistics, and exchange reviews.
However, there are also several chances for B2C businesses here. Consumer trust may be built in sectors with a lot of regulation, including beauty and healthcare. Expert testimony demonstrates the dependability of your products, and witness attestation can bolster your claims with social proof.
Finding credible experts and witnesses is key to using the corroboration approach. Ask your consumers if you’re not sure who that is! Finding out what type of corroboration you require can be determined by conducting a few brief polls or focus groups.
#2: Documentation
The second sort of proof we use in content marketing is documentation.
Consider it this way: corroboration is the process of getting a witness or expert to vouch for your marketing claims. To provide main sources of evidence is to document. Prospects can view the evidence and determine its worth on their own.
A story should be told to support your marketing promises. Instead of just expressing data and facts, develop a narrative with a clear emotional trajectory. For instance, if you offer fair trade goods, you may invite a farmer to share how fair prices have benefited their operation and neighborhood. You can share tales from clients, partners, staff members, suppliers, or anybody else who has a relationship to your company! Remember that stories demonstrate a process, demonstrating how life was altered or enhanced by your brand, unlike straightforward witness corroboration.
Additionally, you can demonstrate the method or narrative of your influence through more factual types of documentation. Consider comparison charts, flowcharts, explainer movies, audit findings, statistics, awards, certifications, case studies, or even checkbox matrices! By providing vital information in the most practical style, you efficiently take care of the audience’s homework using this type of documentation.
User-generated content (UGC) on social media is a particularly effective approach to gather stories. You can launch active efforts to gather UGC by providing incentives and benefits, but you can also discover that individuals spontaneously write tales about your business. If they do, get in touch with them to request permission before using the content as evidence in your content marketing approach.
For instance, at Social Media Examiner, we held a competition for videos shot by conference goers at Social Media Marketing World. It is now prominently displayed on the website!
You’ll need to connect with your journalistic side if you arrange or record more structured interviews. Keep in mind that when narrating a story, characters might be forced to revisit unpleasant or challenging circumstances. Ask open-ended inquiries without pressuring them to give a specific response. Try utilizing words like…
“Explain to me what it was like back then.”
“Could you tell me more about…”
“Tell me a tale about a time when…”
#3: Education
The third and last sort of proof in your content marketing approach is education.
• Obtaining third-party confirmation of your assertions was the goal of corroboration.
• In documentation, you have to present your own proof.
• The goal of education is to enable your audience to experience your brand and the knowledge you have to share in order to come to their own conclusions.
Allowing individuals to experience your claims for themselves is the aim of educational proof. You can accomplish this in two ways: by giving your consumers useful information; and by guiding them while they face difficult tasks or circumstances.
Your audience might not have the information necessary to make decisions about purchases if you work in a niche market or one where the majority of clients are first-time purchasers. So it’s your responsibility to provide them with knowledge and guidance. This is a useful tactic to use any time the purchase isn’t your end user. For instance, if you sell cyber security solutions to businesses, it’s unlikely that the person making the purchase will also be responsible for maintaining the security system. Giving the customer information that they may share with others can empower them.
Providing information through coaching is a more practical method. Step-by-step instructions, tutorials, templates, free audits, and sampler experiences are all included. This kind of content displays your expertise while guiding your readers through a novel task or experience. For instance, to help their readers, several wedding websites provide free planning templates and checklists.
If you sell things, information can assist customers in making challenging choices. If you sell services, coaching can benefit you in two ways: by fostering overall trust and, in some situations, by demonstrating to the client their desire to employ a specialist to handle the difficulty.
You only need to demonstrate that you fully comprehend the situation and have all the facts your customers require without overstating how difficult something is. If some visitors simply take the free guides and leave, don’t worry. They would never have bought anything from you. With coaching proof, you may concentrate on the clients who need your skills and direction right away.
You may learn a lot about the types of educational content you require from your sales and customer service teams. Ask…
• What causes people to second-guess making a purchase?
• What are the most frequent inquiries you receive?
• What are some common misconceptions regarding our company?
• What aspects of our company are people against?
All of the issues raised by the responses to these questions can be resolved with knowledge and confidence.
When to Use Each Type of Content
We’ve seen how presenting concrete evidence for the promises you make in your marketing can help you gain the audience’s trust.
But does that imply that you must constantly check every piece of material for each of these components?
Obviously not! Different kinds of proof will be helpful at different times, depending on your sector, audience, and how your firm is expanding. Consider how important customer reviews might be when you’re first starting out. For a while, you might concentrate on education if you’re aiming to increase sales for a new product introduction, and so on.
Additionally, you’ll discover that different consumer segments have varied requirements for proof. When a lead is at the top of the marketing funnel, educational content can be effective; however, as the lead moves closer to a sale, their emphasis shifts to documentation and corroboration.
The Prove It Method is a content approach that takes time, regardless of the type of proof you’re concentrating on at the moment. Identifying the necessary evidence, locating qualified experts and witnesses, and producing impressive documentation and coaching materials will all take time.
But it was well worth the wait. While we manage the consumer trust problem, producing top-notch content will help you stand out from the crowd.
