Content Marketing and Brand Perception: How to Boost Trust with Blogging

Investing in content, and blogging in particular, offers various benefits.

It’s not just a unique opportunity to attract high-quality leads to your website. More than that, a well-written blog provides the ideal platform to establish your brand’s positive reputation.

But why does this matter? Will it boost organic traffic? Inspire conversions? Give you a leg up over your competitors?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

Establishing brand trust, competence, and integrity is more important than ever. Today’s consumers don’t just want the highest-quality products. Or the cheapest shipping options. They don’t even care about brand names.

Instead, what people want from brands is to know they’ll receive an unmatched customer experience, regardless of their position in the buyer’s journey or order value.

Forbes found that 86% of consumers are prepared to spend more for a superior CX. Furthermore, PWC’s research shows people are willing to shell out up to a 16% price premium (and reward brands with their loyalty) if it means feeling appreciated.

In other words, positioning your brand as credible and customer-oriented is one of the best ways to ensure your organization’s success. And the best part is that you can make it happen with the right content marketing strategies.

So, if you’re looking for tactics to elevate your brand’s perception, here’s how to boost trust with blogging.

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Help Customers with Their Niche Needs

What’s the best way to reach your target audience and convince them to trust your brand?

According to Oberlo, 62.4% of people use the net to find information. So, to establish brand credibility (and boost product awareness), you must invest in informational content that answers your prospects’ questions.

But here’s the deal. Elementary informational content is available at almost every step. And most consumers won’t dig deep to learn something simple. Instead, approximately 30% will only click on the first result on Google.

What does this mean for your content strategy? It shows you must invest in content that stands out from anything your competitors may publish. And the best way to do this? Help customers with their niche needs.

The more specific you can get, the better. After all, people will search for complex concepts when attempting to solve their pain points. So, if you can provide exceptional content that gives them precisely what they need, they’ll automatically force them to perceive your business as credible and competent.

For example, check out how MailChimp does it. This brand understands that abandoned cart email campaigns allow ecommerce businesses to recover lost revenue. So, MailChimp teaches prospects how to create such emails. 

But what stands out about the brand’s approach isn’t the article’s usefulness. Instead, it’s the attention to detail. By focusing on a niche customer need, MailChimp differentiates the post from anything published by its competitors, addressing the entire customer journey instead of only focusing on a single point within it.

Source: mailchimp.com

Tell Detailed Customer Success Stories

Demonstrating your brand’s readiness to help its target audience is a great way to boost trust. After all, 79% of consumers want brands to show they understand and care about them to consider buying in the first place.

But credibility isn’t just made through willingness.

Instead, to elevate trust with blogging, you must also prove your track record of helping clients solve their pain points. Publishing social proof content on your company blog — specifically customer success stories — allows you to do this.

This tactic is a marvelous way to show how much you care about customer success. It’s an opportunity to educate your prospects on the methods you employ to help remove their pain points. And it can even help you piggyback some of your brand’s trustworthiness off the reputations of your well-known clients.

Hubspot is a great place to look for inspiration on social proof. The brand regularly publishes detailed case studies. By outlining the challenges it tackled, the results it achieved, and the methods it employed for each client, Hubspot effectively exhibits its dedication to CX. The result? The highly trustworthy brand reputation allows this business to stand out from all its competitors.

Source: hubspot.com

Get Your Product Featured on Third Party Review Blogs

Almost all consumers do some pre-purchase research before committing to a product. So, to convert your target audience into customers, you must first prove that your solutions do what they claim to.

However, there’s one caveat you must consider. 

Most consumers consider branded content less than ideal for earning their trust. Yes, it can be valuable, informative, and even inspire them to convert. But, there are far better formats to employ to boost brand confidence.

For example, recent research demonstrates that consumers trust expert opinions. So, if you can get authoritative figures in your industry to champion your brand, it’s guaranteed to enhance brand perception.

With this in mind, explore collaboration opportunities with scientists, experts, or trustworthy influencers. Then, publish the content on your company blog.

However, to boost brand trust and maximize reach, consider changing your distribution platform. 

For instance, you can build content partnerships and get your solutions reviewed by extremely reputable niche review sites. That way, you can effectively generate more high-quality leads while proving the superiority of your products compared to your competitors.

Check out the Best Medical Alert Systems post from Medical Alert Buyers Guide. As you can see, it’s an article that examines several alert systems for seniors. It’s written by an expert and medically reviewed by a registered nurse. 

Notably, the brand that benefits the most from this piece of content is Bay Alarm Medical. For one, it earns the highest star rating. Moreover, it outperforms its alternatives in cost, versatility, and CX, making this third-party review a superb source of high-quality organic traffic for the brand.

Source: medicalalertbuyersguide.org

Create New Knowledge

How do you earn people’s trust? Well, it’s relatively simple.

To encourage others (whether your customers, employees, or partners) to perceive you as credible, you need to: 

• prove your expertise first
• demonstrate your willingness to put your audience’s needs first
• consistently repeat those two steps

So, if you look at what blogging allows you to do, you’ll see it’s the perfect medium for establishing your business as an industry authority.

Investing in content that shares your knowledge and insights is an exceptional way to boost trust. 

However, if you want this strategy to yield the best possible results, focus on original research and data that no one else is publishing in your niche.

By creating unique resources, such as Wyzowl’s Video Marketing Statistics article, you will attract people looking for info in your niche. More importantly, you can show that you’re a credible entity willing to share exceptional knowledge (for free) without the ulterior motive of forcing people to convert.

Source: wyzowl.com

Give Proprietary Knowledge Away for Free

Are you looking for an even better way to prove your brand’s dedication to helping its audience (and earning their trust through expertise and benevolence)? Then why not consider giving proprietary knowledge away for free?

For many businesses, the go-to educational content marketing strategy is to put the value they offer behind a sign-up wall. But here’s the thing. Asking for people’s email addresses to read an article can decrease conversion rates by 52%.

So, if you want web visitors to stick around long enough to form a positive opinion about your brand, it might be worth giving some of your knowledge away for free.

On the surface, this may seem counterintuitive. Nonetheless, freely sharing your findings helps you establish authority and highlights your brand’s dedication to helping people solve their pain points. This makes it easier to convince your target audience to trust you (and consider signing up for your services).

Check out how well Going implements this content tactic. Knowing that people need help finding cheap flights, the brand created a guide that goes into extreme detail on using Google Flights. 

This may seem like a method to teach people how to avoid signing up for Going’s subscription service. However, considering the described process is complex, lengthy, and energy-consuming, it quickly becomes evident that Going’s solution is the more convenient way to book affordable airfare. Plus, the brand’s willingness to give its knowledge away for free positions it as a highly trustworthy brand in an otherwise low-trust industry.

Source: going.com

Become a Trusted Resource for Niche Information

There are many ways you can boost credibility with blogging. But, if you want to position your business as the go-to in your niche, why not help your audience understand they can rely on your brand when they need niche information?

Ultimately, most brands that invest in blogging tend to do the same types of posts. They focus on high-volume keywords, target awareness-stage consumers, and try to outdo each other with content quality.

But what about those niche search terms that no one feels are worth their while? Most consumers won’t discover your brand by searching for something obscure. Nonetheless, if they need that info, they will probably have difficulty finding it.

So, aim to position your business as a trusted resource for niche info. That way, you can win over an entire segment of your target audience by doing something different from your competitors.

Check out how BJJ Fanatics does it. Instead of merely trying to win over customers with educational content on Brazilian jiu-jitsu (which is widely available throughout many channels), this brand bases a portion of its content strategy on its fighter database, like on their Gilbert Burns profile page below. 

Ultimately, BJJ Fanatics knows that martial arts enthusiasts aren’t just looking for training materials. They also want inspiration. So, by presenting readers with highly informative fighter profiles, stats, and bios, the brand establishes its credibility and engages an untapped consumer segment with its niche content.

Source: bjjfanatics.com

Eliminate Sales Pressure from Your Content

Did you know that most consumers hate aggressive sales pressure?

Sure, encouraging your audience to convert with false urgency or a high number of touches may help you close a deal. Nonetheless, the much more likely outcome is that it will make your prospects distrust your business.

So, if you’re looking for strategies to boost brand credibility with blogging, eliminate overt sales pressure from your content.

You don’t have to remove all product mentions and CTAs from your posts to avoid appearing aggressive.

Instead, aim for conversions only when it makes sense for the readers’ position in the buyer’s journey. Furthermore, pay attention to logic. If a product mention makes sense, it won’t come off as a forceful sales pitch, helping you retain your visitors’ trust.

For example, if you look at Shay & Blue, you’ll see that each of the brand’s blog posts includes links to product pages. 

But, what makes these so effective isn’t just that they’re placed logically, without forcing readers to buy. More importantly, each mention is highly contextual, tying in perfectly with the article’s topic and giving readers something they want to explore instead of just another CTA they’d rather ignore.

Source: shayandblue.com

Help Existing Customers Get the Most Out of Their Purchase

Finally, as you explore methods to boost brand trust through blogging, remember that investing in credibility isn’t just about converting new customers. It’s just as much about retaining existing clients.

In 2024, people are more willing than ever to switch between brands. Research shows that 70% will seek better product quality, 61% want better deals, and 58% cite customer experience as their main reason for changing their buying behavior.

So, if you want long-term success for your brand, you must encourage repeat purchases. And the best way to do so? Maximize credibility with existing subscribers.

One way to do this is to invest in content meant for existing customers. By helping them get maximum value from their subscriptions, you will demonstrate that they can rely on your brand. 

You’ll also significantly boost their satisfaction, increasing their chances of continuing to do business with you.

For example, DialMyCalls understands that it offers a complex solution. So, instead of leaving subscribers struggling to do something with the software, the brand invests in customer satisfaction-boosting resources. It provides how-to articles on some of the software’s core features, helps customers see the benefits of specific tactics, and even provides advice on aligning with relevant regulations.

Source: dialmycalls.com

Final Thoughts

Regardless of your business goals, blogging offers tremendous potential. 

It’s affordable. It’s effective. It can adapt to any of your most pressing needs. Most importantly, publishing high-quality content can help you establish your business as a trustworthy industry authority.

The tactics mentioned in this article are all exceptional ways to positively affect brand perception. So, make sure you give them a go. And don’t hesitate to adapt them to your specific branding goals, as they’re guaranteed to deliver results.

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