Trust or bust: marketers need to build brand trust to deliver growth

Trust is a vital element in relationships and business, fostering loyalty and better outcomes. Consumers prioritise trust in purchasing decisions, with 63% willing to pay more for trusted brands. As trust faces growing challenges, transparency, authenticity, and trust metrics are key to maintaining brand health and customer loyalty.

Effectiveness

Written by Sonia Danner, Marketreach 10 February 2025

Trust is the most valuable universal currency. It’s the highly prized attribute which delivers social value and on which mutually beneficial relationships can be built. Think of your own relationships, a lack of trust can lead to creating distance between people. Once trust is broken it can take a long time to heal.

If we want to get deep, trust is recognised in psychological research as being associated with positive chemical reactions and emotions. We certainly want to enjoy the feeling of trust and the converse reduction of fear and risk.¹

What’s the relevance of trust in the fast-moving world of comms and advertising? It’s the bedrock on which the strongest customer relationships are built. It’s the bridge to better commercial results, lifetime customer value and a better likelihood of a ‘pass’ if you make a misstep or cause customer distress - for instance, customers might be more forgiving about being locked out of a banking app despite the inconvenience (okay, maybe just the once).

Even in transactional business negotiations, you must trust the other side to deliver on the terms of the agreement. If they don’t, they won’t be getting your business again but they will get a negative referral.

Men checking his laptop screen with tea cup

Consumers will purchase based on brand trust

When it comes to consumer choices trust is right up there for informing purchase decisions. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer says 63% of respondents will buy new products from a trusted brand, even if they are more expensive than a non-trusted one.² And 55% say they will stay loyal, even if the brand makes a mistake or is accused of wrongdoing. This is incredibly valuable.

Add to this, the Advertising Association’s (AA) Value Of Trust report, which shows that trust has jumped to second place from seventh as a driver of brand effectiveness and financial performance.³Now that’s a leap that brands and marketers shouldn’t ignore. Further good news came recently with AA research showing trust in advertising rose to 39% from 36% over 2024, with the biggest point increase among young people.

But trust is being stress-tested like never before. Unverified news amplified by algorithms, and unlabelled AI-generated ‘deep fake’ images leave consumers confused as to what’s real and what’s disinformation. When advertising does accompany misinformation, consumer trust will decline.⁴

Guard against trust erosion

There is a parallel erosion of trust in brands with a feeling that brand promises are being broken – look at the recent furore over changes to various loyalty schemes⁵ - and a belief that customer services are deteriorating. Consumer research showed 44% of respondents believe customer service has become worse over the past three years.⁶

Both content and media channels are integral to shoring up trust. Marketers will need to give more consideration to this attribute than ever this year.

If brands reverse their position on social issues, start speaking in a tone not their own or just look like they are jumping on the latest trend it’ll damage brand perception. It’s quite the danger in the social media world. Just think back to Pepsi trying to associate with Black Lives Matter protests in a heavily criticised ad with Kendall Jenner.⁷

And when it comes to media channels, research shows some are more trusted than others. Social media platforms may be on an upwards trajectory as the source for people’s news but they are not necessarily trusted as much as established news brands. BBC News and ITV News were still trusted by approximately 60% of people in a Reuters survey compared to Facebook’s 17% (and that’s before Meta’s announcement about dropping fact-checkers).⁸

Make trust metrics a KPI

What can brands do to try to reaffirm trust through marketing?

When it comes to content the bar is set by the Advertising Standards Authority, which works to ensure advertising is ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’. You can add the requirement to speak authentically and be transparent – both elements make for a positive customer experience and mean you are putting customers first. Transparency applies to a range of things, from explaining your product’s environmental impact to making it simple rather than causing tears of frustration when a customer wants to unsubscribe from a service.

An example of a brand that truly strives to put the customer first is Octopus Energy with its intuitive app that gives customers more control – something that builds trust – and its service strategy of creating special teams of around 10 people to look after small groups of customers. No wonder the business has been recommended by Which? for six years running.⁹

When it comes to media planning, we know that channels have distinct roles and attributes and a well-balanced campaign will incorporate a range of channels to ‘cover all the bases,’ as they say. Mail is a channel that’s inherently trusted – research shows 71% of recipients say they completely trust the mail they receive. This may be because it’s typically personally addressed to an individual and has a permanence of promise. Rory Sutherland expands on this in his Mail Unleashed discussion with Nishma Patel Robb which you can watch here.

Trust is so heavily associated with brand health that I’d suggest that trust metrics should be a KPI. Whether that’s measured via a proxy, such as Net Promoter Score, customer sentiment expressed on reviews pages or another mechanism, you need some way of monitoring if trust is being eroded before the brand hits a tipping point.

If you want to keep customers coming back and see your bottom-line benefit from positive perceptions, don’t let your understanding of trust and its importance rust!

Trust or bust: marketers need to build brand trust to deliver growth

Consumers will purchase based on brand trust

Guard against trust erosion

Make trust metrics a KPI

Further reading

Keep up to date