Reputational Trust
“What do you stand for, and what do people believe about you?”
As we enter the post-pandemic recovery period, it’s more important than ever to strengthen your reputation. During the past couple of years of the pandemic, social unrest, and global upheaval, consumer sentiment shifted, and along with it, their priorities for where they spend their money. Many brands’ reputations took a hit as they made difficult decisions on whether or not to support their employees effectively during lock-down, and whether or not they took a stand on social issues.
As companies adjusted to manufacturing slowdowns and struggled to maintain continuity and productivity with an at-home workforce, ad spending slowed for many companies. Without frequent messaging to reinforce brands’ core values, and in an atmosphere of racial and political upheaval, some companies found themselves fading from public view, irrelevant in comparison to the life and death situations the world was experiencing, or worse, the focus of controversial social media attention. From the customer’s POV, it became harder to tell who the good guys were... who to trust.
Throughout the past two years, many buyers used “the big change” to change brands. They bought what they could get. Hot items were toilet paper (one-ply? Soft and cushy? Didn’t matter), hand sanitizer (any brand would do.) This trend continued with many product categories. The switch to online shopping vs. in-person retail made comparison shopping easier, resulting in fewer impulse purchases and more price-based decisions. This brand experimentation weakened hard-earned brand loyalty, challenging companies to find new differentiators with which to compete. “Cancel culture” saw many brands sidelined when they wouldn’t take a popular stand on social issues while other brands thrived by living their values and making them known.
It’s time to re-examine values and mend reputations.
So what’s the best way for companies to regain the reputational trust they’ve lost and start competing from strength?
Take a good hard look at what your company and your brands stand for. And then compare that to what your customers and potential customers think you stand for. All too often, there’s a disconnect. And that’s where trust is lost.
Transparency can go a long way in reconciling the internal and external parts of your reputation, but only if your internal values are genuinely trustworthy.
Corporate Culture defines the truth about who you really are because people (not products) are your company. How you rank and file employees, management, investors, partners, and customers, interact with each other, and how they FEEL about these experiences influences your reputation. When these interactions are consistently good, trust abounds.
Social responsibility is your commitment to the world beyond your bottom line. It’s what you’re doing in the community to make it a better, more just place to live. Everything from corporate giving to charity drives to matching donations to sourcing eco-friendly packaging makes a difference. Do you offer time off for volunteerism? Check your supply chain. Is it ethical and humane? How’s your carbon footprint? And when you do all that, make sure to talk about it, not just to enhance your reputation and build trust, but to encourage others to follow your example and keep the good-works-ball rolling.
Financial responsibility and your company’s balance sheet impact your reputation with partners, investors, and customers; who are counting on your continued success as part of their pipeline or for ongoing customer support, technology updates, etc. Your financial performance, which is often quite publicly available, is a big part of your reputation and overall trustworthiness.
Customer perception is the emotional component of your reputation. Some companies conduct focus groups, surveys, or online reputation audits to uncover the underlying reasons why potential customers (and others) do or don’t see you as a trustworthy brand. Whatever your baseline customer reputation is now, it can be improved, and as it improves, so will your engagement, positive buzz, and sales results.
Product and services development may need a closer look. Are they outdated? Still relevant after the huge upheaval the world is still engaged in? Where can you strengthen your offerings? How can you make your company and brand more relevant to the new realities? Now is a great time to stop, drop your old ways of thinking, and innovate. With a new lineup of offerings, you’ll have plentiful publicity releases to send, fresh new marketing messages to craft, and a refreshed reputation as a nimble, responsible, innovative, and relevant brand.
Don’t be shy.
People want to know they’re buying from a trustworthy organization with a good rep. Use your most effective marketing strategies to showcase your commitment to being a responsible, ethical employer and community member. Here’s how to show you’re one of the good guys:
Keep your site’s case histories up to date, and use social media to present a stream of customer stories relevant to your post. Be conscientious about asking customers and influencers for endorsements. Knowing that others have had great experiences with your brands means your prospects can relax a little and consider you a viable contender for their business.
Nurture social proof. There’s no replacement for glowing reviews. Make monitoring customer feedback and responding to positive and negative comments a priority as a regular task on your marketing calendar.
Keep your sales conversations focused on listening to your customers’ needs and responding with solutions, using stories of past clients’ successes as context to illustrate that you understand their concerns.
Make sure your standards are public, and you are actively holding your suppliers and partners responsible in the background.
Have a reputation remediation plan in place. As we’ve seen repeatedly in the news, negative hits to a brand’s reputation can take less than 24 hours to spread.
Take the Infinite Edge Brand Trust Assessment. With the help of culture experts, social scientists, business gurus, and reputation firms, we’ve defined five different trust vectors, each with questions potential customers need you to address and act upon before they feel safe doing business with you. The companies that survive and thrive in these trying times will be the ones who diligently tend all five trust vectors and enlist every employee in maintaining them long-term.
Reputational trust is just one of five trust vectors we measure.
Use your Trust Assessment score as a benchmark to guide future improvements in your company policies, then retake the test periodically to track your progress. If your score is already high, focus on the areas that need improvement, and review how you can make your strong points even stronger. If your score is average (medium), that’s not necessarily a good thing if your goal is growth and competitive advantage, so make trust-building a priority asap. And if your score is on the low side, use the feedback you receive from the assessment to identify opportunities to make measurable improvements in your company’s processes and policies.
Your Brand Trust Assessment results can open the doors to real change with top management, Finance, Customer Service, IT, and even Product Design. HR can become allies in implementing system-wide change with training modules that emphasize the importance of building strong customer relationships. You can also share our Brand Trust Whitepaper with key stakeholders to support your plan.
If the prospect of leading company-wide change seems daunting, call us in to advise you and develop a plan. As a marketing/consulting firm with a twist, that’s what we do.
Ask us for a quick assessment. It’s like free therapy.
If you’re refining your approach to marketing and need help deciding where to focus first, we’d love to chat. Within about 45 minutes, we can get to the heart of your biggest challenges and help you determine where you need to prioritize to up-level your game. Schedule some time to tell us about your “Ready for Anything” challenges.
About Us
InfiniteEdge is a consultancy of marketing and culture experts that helps companies build trust and navigate today’s rapidly evolving market environment while providing all the marketing services you'd expect from a top-tier integrated agency. Invite us in to help you transition your marketing operation from reactive to responsive and develop a roadmap to help you thrive through the coming unknown.
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