Summary: How do you build trust and credibility for your brand in the AI era? Read this guide to help you plan your brand strategies for 2025.
What will likely be at the heart of successful brand strategies in 2025? As the era of AI continues and businesses become increasingly comfortable with the technology, almost every area of branding and marketing has to adapt. Bringing these high-tech elements into your relationships with your customers requires a special emphasis on trust and credibility.
Whenever a company is asked to incorporate a developing technology into any aspect of its business, trust will naturally become a central concern. Whatever brand strategy you devise for the year ahead will likely involve AI somehow. It should also bring trust and credibility to the fore. This article will explain why this is the case and what you can do to perfect a successful, trust-based strategy.
Why Trust Matters More Than Ever in the AI Age
Trust has always been the foundation for successful business relationships. A trust relationship is established between the seller and the buyer whenever a sale occurs. In digital marketing, potential customers visit your site because they believe you have something authoritative to say about a specific topic.
One of two things happens as they engage with you and your content. Either their belief in your authority and trustworthiness is confirmed, leading to establishing a trust-based relationship (hopefully followed by a sale!), or the visitors are given reason to doubt, which means they will usually look elsewhere.
With the advent of AI, consumers are more discerning and skeptical than ever. They know that content can easily be created with AI tools, and they can ask AI if they need answers. They can quickly look elsewhere if you can’t provide the answers, information, or products they need. Therefore, if you would like to attract and retain such a literate and skeptical audience, you must work harder to show that your brand can be trusted.
Embracing Transparency and Authenticity
Marcus Sheridan, celebrated speaker and author of the book They Ask, You Answer, outlines the process of building trust in these four fundamental principles:
- Be willing to discuss what others don’t want to discuss, and be prepared to answer all questions, including the tough ones.
- Be willing to show what others won’t. This requires a personal touch that goes far beyond traditional content creation—especially content created with AI.
- Be willing to sell in ways that others aren’t. In other words, don’t just pitch your products; offer your customers a story and be prepared to teach them what they need to know.
- Be willing to be more human than anyone else or show your humanity more than other companies and salespeople may wish to.
These points can be summed up in two words: transparency and authenticity. When consumers ask questions about a particular product, they are immediately inundated with offers. And truthfully, they could choose competing products, so what will likely drive their final decision?
Transparency and authenticity—particularly expressions of genuine humanity—are the answer. When a market is flooded with similar products, the seller’s humanity will make the difference. Customers who interact with your website and quickly find real people behind it will be more likely to keep interacting. When they see that these real people—you and your team—are prepared to answer their questions thoroughly and honestly, they will soon start to trust you. If you show a willingness to put your money where your mouth is and show when your competitors are merely talking, you will rapidly deepen the relationship.
Does this mean you should not use AI tools such as chatbots? Absolutely not. These are extremely useful tools, and they can serve your digital marketing strategy well, just as long as they are used to help you express transparency and authenticity and are not a hindrance to them.
Humanizing AI: The Power of the Human Touch
An AI chatbot can serve as an authentic conduit for your brand and the genuine human voice behind it. As the technology develops, the emphasis is on making the interactions between chatbots and customers more and more true to life. Bots are becoming increasingly human and responsive in their interactions. Humanized AI can transform customer interactions into authentic exchanges between clients and company representatives. The key to this is predictive analytics – algorithms that empower AI to create genuine, responsive conversations with your customers. This creates an AI that shows genuine empathy and can answer increasingly nuanced permutations of anticipated customer queries.
Building Trust Through Storytelling
The keyword is empathy. It is this impulse that establishes and develops relationships between people. AI chatbots are being designed to have more of it—but you and your staff innately possess plenty of it. Empathy builds trust, and the best way to create a foundation of empathy with your customers is to share stories with them. You have a story, your company has a story, and your brand is a story. Your marketing strategy is the collective body of methods and tactics you use to tell these stories. Ultimately, it is your story that your customers will buy into.
While you may think the best way to sell your products and services is to focus on the facts and steer clear of emotion, the opposite is true. Of course, you must never ignore or try to obscure the facts—they must be shared openly and transparently—but how you do that must be empathic and emotional. In an article from Psychology Today, the following four principles are highlighted as the keys to building rapport with customers and other stakeholders:
- Show emotions. Be vulnerable and dare to get personal. Emphasize your goals and values so that your customers know exactly who they are dealing with.
- Tap into your and your customers’ emotions by telling a story. The best way to access emotions is through a story. We tend to lower our defenses when told a story (in contrast to a sales pitch).
- Show strong, primarily positive emotions when telling your stories. Your brand and products should be inspiring and exciting; otherwise, who would want to buy them? Tell stories highlighting the positive emotions you want to associate with your brand.
- Avoid tall tales. A story does not have to be fictional to be exciting and inspiring. While building trust does depend on human interaction and positive emotions, it also depends on truthfulness, so above all, be honest and transparent, even as you create a compelling story.
WSI: Your Trusted Partner in the AI Era
If you are looking for the best ways to navigate brand strategies in the AI era, WSI is here to help. Our AI Consultants can help you understand and leverage this technology for maximum benefit. You can also work with one of our digital marketing consultants to develop a holistic branding and marketing strategy that will help you succeed in what is sure to be an exciting year.
Contact us for more information or to request a consultation.
