How to gain user trust? You can start from these 9 aspects

When Dangdang held the “50 off for purchases over 100” campaign not long ago, I thought Dangdang was crazy.

But looking at the various year-end promotions that can be seen everywhere, I feel that Dangdang’s “madness” is nothing special. There are many merchants who seem to be crazier than him, such as the “1 yuan flash sale treadmill” I received every other day...

I wonder how you feel when you see this crazy promotion that is beyond your imagination?

When people around me who are not in the marketing industry encounter this situation, their first reaction is:

• "Ah? So cheap? Can you believe it?"
• "How can it be so cheap? Is it fake?"
• "Even if it's not fake, is it inferior? Is it counterfeit? Otherwise, why is it so cheap?"

In other words, many times consumers’ first feeling is not excitement, but questioning.

When consumers ask "Can I believe it?", they are already doubting the authenticity of the advertisement.

If this suspicion cannot provide evidence in your subsequent advertising content to support your positioning and make consumers feel it is credible, the customer will leave.

Contemporary psychology research proves that users are more willing to trust their own perceptions and trusted sources. We can work hard in the following aspects.

1. The Sinatra Test

Not long ago, Huawei gave a very typical demonstration. In the newly launched Mate10 video advertisement , the scene where the little girl puts the phone under the faucet to wash her father's face made countless people cry. While expressing our admiration for the deep love between father and daughter, we also remember the powerful waterproof function of Mate 10 through the little girl's action.

From a marketing perspective, rinsing a phone under the tap is a classic Sinatra Test, where brands try to win the trust of insecure consumers by demonstrating the performance of their products in certain extreme scenarios.

The Sinatra Test originated from the lyrics of the classic song "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra, a famous American pop singer in the 20th century: "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere", which means that only one example is needed to establish its credibility in a certain category.

For example, if DuPont becomes your customer, sales in the chemical field will become much easier. Similarly, if your products enter Walmart, which is known for its strict treatment of suppliers, entering other sales channels will be a natural thing.

In practice, this kind of practice is actually very common, such as the seller show on Taobao :

Consumers don’t trust shelves purchased online because they don’t know whether the shelves are sturdy and can bear the weight, so sellers tell consumers “I’m very sturdy” through such displays.

2. Visible Effects

In a sense, visible benefits are the reverse application of the Availability Heuristic .

Availability bias means that when people make predictions and decisions, they mostly use information that they are familiar with or can construct through imagination, which leads to giving too much weight to information that is easy to see and remember.

To give a very common example, when the girl in our office first came to apply for a job, she saw that I used a white mobile phone and drove a white car, so she asked me, "Do boys like white? I see many boys use white mobile phones and drive white cars." - This girl's conclusion is a typical availability bias. Once she has such a "prejudice", she will unconsciously pay attention to people who use white mobile phones and drive white cars to see if they are men. If they are men, it fits her imagination, and she will even say "as expected" very self-satisfiedly.

Now we can apply this kind of "biased" thinking to our marketing . For example, when consumers choose fruits, they will be very concerned about whether the fruit is fresh. If they pick a bad one, they will think that all the fruits in the basket are not fresh. On the contrary, if the merchant puts some leaves that match the fruit next to the fruit, consumers will be more likely to believe that the fruit is fresh:

Even if they find something bad, consumers will comfort themselves by saying "maybe it was damaged during transportation" and so on, instead of doubting whether there is a problem with the freshness.

It is also popular for restaurants to open their kitchens for diners to see, so that consumers can trust that the food they eat is clean and wholesome.

When I was buying clothes for my child a few days ago, I saw this video of cutting clothes to verify the authenticity of the materials. I placed the order immediately without giving it much thought.

The reason why this merchant took such an action is based on the prejudice of many consumers: You can buy a down vest at such a cheap price (69 yuan/piece after discount)?

So he made this video targeting this consumer bias:

As a consumer, after watching the video, I even looked at all the down jacket series in the store, both for adults and children. All of this was based on the fact that the information conveyed by the video has made me trust the seller. In my mind, I have assumed that all the down jackets in this store are genuine.

3. Experience First

Compared with seeing as mentioned above, a further way to gain consumers' trust is to let consumers experience it themselves.

For example, for durable consumer goods such as cars, the trust threshold is often higher than for general decisions. What salespeople often do is to guide consumers to experience and build trust through experience.

Another example is olfactory marketing , which is often used in the food retail sector. In a sense, it also builds trust through consumers' sensory experience . For example, many bakeries use aroma diffusers to spread selected aromas (not the actual aroma of baked bread) to the store lobby, so that consumers can believe that their products are delicious and generate motivation to buy .

4. Existing Beliefs

A typical example is that under the influence of traditional Chinese medicine and traditional culture, many people believe that like cures like.

For example, because walnuts look like human brains, we believe that walnuts can nourish the brain, so we created the promotional copy of six walnuts .

For example, we all know that in ancient China, the emperor ruled the world, as the saying goes, "All under heaven belongs to the emperor." So the place that makes the emperor linger must have some special benefits. Therefore, Wuxi Huishan Ancient Town used advertising copy such as " The place where Kangxi and Qianlong visited 14 times " in its promotion. What this actually does is to use the public's existing beliefs in ancient emperors to build trust.

5. Price Tags

Many consumers believe that in most cases expensive things may be better than cheap things, or in other words, high-priced products are more likely to win consumers' trust than low-priced products.

For example, I once promoted an online training course for a big internet celebrity in the beauty industry. When the initial price was 1,980 yuan per person, few people bought it, and most of them were hesitant. So we boldly adjusted the price to 2,980 yuan per person, and it was snapped up. Not only were all the reserved places sold out in just 4 hours, but we also opened 2 additional classes.

The key to increasing sales is price change. We say that consumers usually have two paths when making purchasing decisions. One is the central route, that is, the formation or change of purchasing intention comes from the consumer's careful and rational thinking about the most important product information; the other is the marginal route, that is, the formation of purchasing intention is not based on sufficient thinking, but comes from the brand association formed by consumers based on celebrity publicity, reliable sources of information, or any marginal clues that can cause positive feelings.

The price increase here actually sends a clear signal to potential consumers, guiding them to make decisions from the edge and making them realize that the training courses are indeed worth the money, otherwise there would be no price increase . The "high price equals high quality" thinking shortcut plays an important role in attracting potential fans to sign up.

6. Origin label

Through the accumulation of time and word of mouth, people have formed relatively fixed evaluations and cognitions of certain regions, and these existing cognitions of the regions can serve as a vehicle for us to build brand trust .

For example, when we think of Inner Mongolia, we can think of "the wind blows low and the cattle and sheep can be seen", so we can use this existing cognition to promote the reliable quality of our milk. In the advertisement, Telunsu promotes that their milk source comes from the golden milk source dimension belt:

But if I say that XX brand high-tech products: smart curved screen mobile phones from Inner Mongolia, it seems that they are not as trustworthy as those from Silicon Valley in the United States or Zhongguancun in Beijing.

What needs to be emphasized here is that when using origin to build trust, it is necessary to use an origin that has been recognized by consumers in order to better win consumers' trust in the product itself .

A typical example is that most consumers know that Coca-Cola comes from the United States and it is also a representative of American culture. However, few of us know which country Red Bull comes from, because for the brand promotion of Red Bull drinks, telling consumers that the country of origin is Thailand does not add much trust to their brand.

7. Reverse Marketing

The conventional practice is to "boast about oneself like Wang Po selling melons", but this trick may not work now because consumers have too many choices. "Everyone says they are good, who should I believe?" So some people do the opposite and use self-deprecation to win attention and gain trust.

For example, this method was used when BMW MINI was being promoted.

In fact, every product has shortcomings and defects. Most advertisers are reluctant to talk about this, thinking that it will scare away customers. But in fact, unless you think that the shortcomings of your product are really well hidden, or they are unlikely to occur before the end of the product's life, then you can ignore this. But if your product does have shortcomings, and they are particularly easy to be discovered, it is recommended that you tell users in advance in a more appropriate way so that they can be prepared, or help them accept your shortcomings from a different perspective . Sometimes skillful honesty can make it easier for you to gain the trust of users.

8. Authority

The authoritative forces here include authoritative individuals and authoritative institutions.

We have an innate trust in authority. For example, when we ourselves cannot judge whether something is credible or not, we tend to believe in the elders, leaders, shamans, etc. in the tribe. These people seem to be born with power and are worthy of our trust. In his classic book "Influence", Robert Cialdini elaborates on the impact of authoritative experts in various fields on consumer trust. Based on trust in authority, we are willing to believe whatever they say or do.

For example, we tend to listen to doctors when it comes to health, and we’re willing to listen as long as the person looks like a doctor, like the professional dressed as a doctor in the Colgate ad:

For example, Lin Dan ’s endorsement of Li Ning sportswear shows that Li Ning is the choice of professional athletes and makes consumers believe that Li Ning has good quality.

Various celebrities are authorities on a certain lifestyle. For example, Wang Shi’s endorsement of the Grand Cherokee makes everyone believe that this car is suitable for successful people like Wang Shi.

It is important to note here the difference between corroboration and endorsement.

You may think, aren’t people like Wang Shi and Lin Dan just brand ambassadors?

They are indeed spokespersons, but some of them do so just for the sake of endorsement, without creating any added value from the endorsement.

For example, in an electric car promotion I did before, this electric car brand hired an out-of-date actress to be the spokesperson. The reason was that, although this actress was out-of-date in the mainstream market, she was still very popular in the brand's dealer channels mainly in third- and fourth-tier cities, so they spent 300,000 to hire this actress as the spokesperson. So what characteristics of this electric car can this actress embody? No, this kind of endorsement is just for the sake of endorsement.

But as an industry authority like Wang Shi, he has spoken for Cherokee as "exclusive for successful people" and testified to the brand attributes . Such endorsements have an extra layer of authority than ordinary endorsements, and this authority can help your sales .

So in the final analysis, the premise of finding a trusted endorsement is what message you want to convey to users, so find someone who matches your requirements to help you convey it . When you want to express that your product is good and worth choosing, find an authoritative person in the eyes of users to help you express it. Compared with other methods, this is a shortcut to building trust.

Consumers also trust authoritative organizations. As individuals, consumers often know very little about the technical aspects of many products and hope to have a professional organization to help them conduct testing to reduce the risk of decision-making in purchasing.

For example, Wang Ziru in the mobile phone industry (a person who specializes in evaluating mobile phone digital products), and internationally renowned authoritative certifications such as UL and ROSH.

This type of third-party certification is naturally credible because it is not self-boasting by the merchants themselves and their stance is not affected by the merchants' own interests. Consumers are more likely to believe that it is true.

Authoritative media is also a vehicle for building consumer trust. Some media with a strong background or professional fields are more likely to be trusted by users.

For example, CCTV. Being able to afford advertising on CCTV will make consumers feel it is more authoritative and credible. After Little Sheep placed an advertisement on CCTV in the late 1990s, the company received 40 to 50 calls for franchisees from across the country every day, which was considered a very good conversion rate at the time. This was a good use of consumers' trust in the media.

Of course, there are prerequisites for using authoritative organizations . For example, your target consumer group must understand/know the organization; the credibility of the organization itself must be trustworthy; and the attributes of the organization must be related to your product.

9. The Power of Anti-Authority

The third party outside of authority is called anti-authority. They may not necessarily be celebrities, but they have a great influence on building trust with buyers.

For example, when we buy a car, home appliance or house, we will ask people around us if there is anything wrong with that brand of car, TV or house. What's wrong? ——The people around you here represent the anti-authority forces.

Comments on some e-commerce websites, messages left by users on online BBS, etc., also known as UGC (user-generated content) in the field of Internet marketing, are also one of the forces against authority. For example, many people will first look at the average/ bad reviews before buying something on Taobao:

If after reading it I find that the problem is not that serious, or that it is within an acceptable range, I will buy it.

The inspiration given to us here is to attach importance to the accumulation of consumer word-of-mouth power, optimize the user experience throughout the entire process of using the product as much as possible, let consumers become our publicity media, help us bring in more customers , rather than relying solely on our own marketing promotion to obtain all customers.

In addition to word of mouth, there is also the herd effect that everyone has always heard of, such as the slogans that brands use to lead in sales:

The herd effect is essentially a common method that takes advantage of consumers' thinking shortcuts, which they believe is always right like everyone else, to help consumers avoid purchasing risks and reduce decision-making difficulty. For example, if three out of four friends use Didi , it is essentially taking advantage of the herd mentality to make the target users trust the product.

This article was compiled and published by @杜江 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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