Your Consumers Trust You More Than You Think

The Nielsen Global Trust In Advertising report is out.

If I were you, I’d take the time to read it thoroughly.

The survey polled 30,000 online respondents in 60 countries to gauge consumer sentiment about 19 paid, earned and owned advertising mediums.

And the results will surprise many.

What do we trust the least?

Across the world, the medium we tend to trust (or like) the least is text ads on mobile phones. No big surprise there, right? It kind of feels like an intrusion of my personal space when I get a text ad from someone I clearly did not register to get text ads from.

A bit more surprising is that most other online advertising formats like banners, search ads and even online video ads are among the least trusted advertising mediums. We just trust traditional advertising like print, TV and Radio more than we trust online ads.

However, while video and banner ads have a lower trust rating than traditional ad formats, at least their credibility has held up over the last two years, while trust in TV ads has fallen.

What Do We Trust the Most?

No big surprise what made the top of the list:

Recommendations from someone the consumer knows

Or what marketers refer to as “word of mouth” (WOM).

The holy grail of marketing is when you get someone around the dinner table to say to someone else, “Hey, have you heard about this new product? It’s so cool! I just got one and it’s amazing.”

But, hey, you can’t create a marketing strategy around that goal, right?

So let’s focus on what comes second on the list:

Branded websites

Yes, that’s your good old website. Sound odd?

Well, think about it.

If I’m a new parent and I find great advice on pampers.com like this article about baby sleep, will I trust it to be
authentic and high value?

Yes, of course I will.

Pampers is an obvious expert on the matter of baby care, and being a large brand, I’ll be confident they did extensive research and validated anything they wrote with the help of several pediatricians (not to mention lawyers).

This is exactly why you need to make your website the cornerstone of your content marketing efforts.

The next most trusted medium is also related to your content marketing strategy:

Editorial content

You can leverage editorial in two ways:

• EARNED media (usually through the efforts of your PR team)

• PAID media (partnering with a publisher for a custom content initiative, like Netflix did with The New York Times.)

Here’s how:

Next in line is another form of content you have relatively little control over:

Recommendations from people the consumer doesn’t know

Only then come other traditional media opportunities, like TV, radio and outdoor advertising.

So think about it.

How much are you currently investing in the forms of marketing that consumers trust the most? How much are you investing in really adding value to consumers (like Pampers is doing) as opposed to blasting messages about how great you are?

Join us in the content marketing revolution.

Join the circle of trust, and think of this as an invitation to join us in building a sustainable future on the back of content people want to enjoy, not ads people want to block.