What does trust bring to the B2B marketer’s strategy table in 2021?
Does your company advertise? If so, I have bad news: Your audience doesn’t trust your ads.
Buyer distrust of advertising and brand communications is one of the top challenges of our time for marketers. As TopRank Marketing’s Nick Nelson has shared, ” trust is currency ” and that trust is “arguably the most valuable currency in today’s B2B marketing environment.” Studies continue to show that business peers and experts have customer attention over brands. 95% of B2B buyers say they prefer credible content from industry influencers according to a study from Demand Gen Report .
Trust in marketing —how to build it and how to wield it for good—needs to be top of mind for every modern marketer. Why
Let’s cut to the chase: If brands and marketers can’t build trust internally at their organizations, they’ll never be able to develop it outwardly in an authentic way. Plain and simple. When marketers broadcast trustworthiness as a virtue through content and messaging, while their company visibly deals with discord and misalignment in its own ranks, the sentiment rings about as hollow as a sinister-looking Disney villain telling the protagonist through a wicked grin that of course they can be trusted
In June the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity brought together some of the world’s savviest B2B marketers, brands, and other creative professionals. From Nike, IKEA, and Visa to Tommy Hilfiger, Microsoft and Target, strong brands and the marketers behind them were involved at Cannes, and the trends they gathered to explore will play a part in shaping how B2B marketers focus their efforts in the months and years ahead. Here’s a run-down of some of the top B2B marketing and other revelations from this year’s Cannes, and what they’ll mean for your business in 2020 and beyond.
The marketing funnel as we know it is gone.
Recently, we’ve been running a series of posts here on the TopRank Marketing Blog called “Trust Factors,” where we explore techniques that modern brands can use to build trust and credibility with digital audiences. There are numerous examples of companies building trust with best-answer content and boosting credibility with influencer marketing for this purpose. Marketers are always seeking creative ways to forge genuine connections while standing out from the pack
Trust is a currency. It’s arguably the most valuable currency in today’s B2B marketing environment. And much like real money, it needs to be earned; the risks of attempting to counterfeit trust are grave
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