The New Playbook for Building B2B Brand Trust in a Digital World

One of the most important functions of modern B2B marketing is building trust between brand and audience.?

Building genuine brand trust through marketing can be a tricky thing to pull off, however – especially in a digital B2B environment. Pull too hard in any direction and you could end up coming off as obnoxious, sappy, disingenuous… or any number of other undesirable adjectives.

If you want to build brand trust with your customers in a way that doesn’t come across as overbearing, subtlety is key. In fact, some of the most effective ways to build brand trust sustainably don’t come across as “trying” at all. By genuinely communicating your brand values and your company’s passions in a way that your customers can respond to, your marketing naturally builds the kind of brand trust that can help your company develop long-lasting relationships.?

The essential relationship between thought leadership and trust

Edelman, which has become a leading authority on the tenets of trust via its flagship Trust Barometer research, partners each year with LinkedIn to create the Thought Leadership Impact Report. The latest iteration underscores once again how powerful this type of content is for differentiating your brand from competitors, especially during challenging economic times.

For example:

• 61% of decision-makers say that an organization’s thought leadership can be moderately or a lot more effective at demonstrating the potential value of its products/services compared to traditional product-oriented marketing.
• 50% of C-suite executives say that high-quality thought leadership has more impact on their purchase decision-making during economic downturns than when times are good.
• 55% of decision-makers say that during an economic downturn, it is more important than ever for suppliers who do not offer products/services that are essential to operations to produce high-quality thought leadership if they want to win our business.

One of the primary functions of thought leadership is to subtly build trust through the way your brand communicates and presents itself to the world. Developing good habits in your process will help ensure you’re consistently showing up the right way to achieve this crucial objective.

Building B2B Brand Trust: 4 Smart Habits

When it comes to communicating in ways that build trust, here are four key best practices to keep in mind. They all involve showing your brand’s trustworthiness through content rather than explaining it.

Make and keep your promises

There are two types of trust B2B brands should seek to build with their audiences: capability trust and character trust. The first, capability trust, is all about demonstrating how dependable your brand and its solutions are. You have it when your clients are completely sure that when you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it, every time.?

The best way to build capability trust is to make and keep promises. Position these promises as a distinguishing cornerstone of your brand. To justify investments, B2B decision makers need to believe – above all – that your company can follow through, and there are many ways to cultivate this confidence.

In part, it’s about your products and services doing what they are supposed to: build capability trust by focusing on stories where you delivered on and exceeded expectations, and use client testimonials and case studies to illustrate real-life examples.?

But there are also ways in which your marketing itself can convey a trusted partner. Do you show up regularly in the channels where your audience spends time? Are you responsive to engagements and outreach from customers? Does your latest ebook fully deliver on the insights and content it promotes?

The more your customers and prospects believe your company will do what it says, the less guarded they’ll be about the risk of doing business with you.

Be genuine and vulnerable

The second type of trust B2B brands should strive to build with their clients is character trust. Character trust is about demonstrating that your brand genuinely cares about its values, its customers, and its people.

You’ll never build character trust effectively if you’re “just another” brand. You have to give your brand a personality that stands out. To do that, you have to pull back the curtains a bit.

Take every opportunity to make your marketing and thought leadership as transparent as possible. Give your audience an insider’s glimpse into your company’s day-to-day. Showcase the people at the heart of your brand. Talk about the things you (and they) really care about, and don’t be afraid to take a stand for those things. Most importantly, show off not only what you do and what you care about, but why.

The hardest part of working toward that transparency is practicing vulnerability. When you make a mistake, you have to own up to it. Share exactly what went wrong, why you failed to live up to your values, and how you’re going to make it right.

Everyone makes mistakes and goes through tough challenges – you can earn resonance in these situations by sharing how you’ve sought to overcome them (and how you can help customers overcome their own).

Show up in trusted environments

Your B2B audience isn’t just paying attention to what you’re saying; they’re watching where you’re saying it, too. Over half of B2B buyers place a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness of the source of the content they consume. The majority (68%) of B2B buyers notice ads from solution providers they chose during the research process.

But here's the thing: people aren't just noticing your ads. They're noticing the content surrounding them, and it tends to mentally influence their perception. This ties to a phenomenon known in advertising as the halo effect : "The halo effect means that advertising is much better accepted by customers if it appears in an environment that they perceive as positive. Campaigns placed on high quality sites show a higher engagement rate, are perceived as more pleasant and stay longer in the memory of consumers.”

If someone sees your brand advertisement alongside a bunch of irrelevant or objectionable content, their perception of the ad can suffer by proxy. This is one reason we strive to make LinkedIn a trusted platform where your content is met with a receptive and curious mindset among an audience of purpose-driven professionals.

Collaborate with other trusted voices and influencers

Showing up in trusted places is one thing, but there’s a way to take it even further. Building trust is as much about who you know as what you know.?

The more engaged your audience is in their industry, the more they’ve come to follow particular influencers, subject matter experts, mentors, and thought leaders within that industry. These influential voices have earned trust in their space by becoming consistent sources of accurate, insightful information.

B2B influencer marketing involves collaborating and co-creating with these established voices to mutual benefit. It’s a powerful way for brands to build trust through visibility, credibility, purpose alignment, amplification, and community-building.?

According to the 2022 Thought Leadership Impact Report, 90% decision-makers say that referrals from people they know and respect will be moderately, very or extremely effective in earning their attention and purchase consideration. Partnering with influencers might not qualify as a “referral,” but it does subtly capture the same dynamic of co-opting credibility and respect someone has earned with your audience.

Customers are too smart to evaluate brands based solely on what they say in their marketing materials. Much more so, they judge you based on how you act: the company you keep, the places you show up, and the actions you take. Make sure you’re being thoughtful about each.

For more help building brand trust in ways that feel genuine, register to attend to our upcoming LinkedIn Collective Live broadcast on 3/14.