Anyone who is working in communications, marketing or sales knows the mantra “gain your audience’s trust”. But what does it really mean? How can you anticipate your audience’s reaction? How can you gain their trust? This usually requires a lot of research into the target audience but there are some truisms that can help you along the way. Let me give you an example.

Photos mistaken for stock

I take great pride in my work and I consider myself a perfectionist. But I have learned that sometimes perfection doesn’t necessarily mean better. A couple of years ago, I bought a new graphics card for my desktop computer, and I figured I would sell the old one. I used the backside of a poster to create a white background, set the lighting just right and used a portrait lens to get a detailed shot. My rationale was that taking beautiful photos of the graphics card would garner more attention and make it easier for me to sell.

The photos turned out great, and I posted in a couple of apps where people can buy and sell stuff they don’t need anymore. It didn’t take long before I got a notification from the app called LetGo. They had removed my listing because they thought I had used stock photos. I was a bit taken aback by this at first, having spent that much time getting the photos just right. I tweeted about it and of course LetGo, like any responsible company does when they are wrong, reversed their decision right away.

Oops! Sorry about that. 😅We’ve approved the listing!

— letgo (@letgo) March 23, 2018

Be honest

In LetGo’s defense, there is a good reason for why they are doing this. If people use stock photos of the products they are selling, how can you really know the condition of the product you are buying? From the company’s standpoint they would have lost their customers’ trust. Even though my photos were not stock, they looked like they were stock.

I assume that there was an actual human at LetGo who made the decision to pull the plug on my listing. That tells me one thing; if a person, who does this for a living, couldn’t tell the difference between my photos and stock photos, how could I expect others to tell the difference? It’s very likely that people didn’t trust my photos and therefore chose not to inquire about the product I was selling. In this case, it’s likely that a photo taken with my phone, on my dining room table, would have instilled more trust. Despite the fact that I didn’t have anything to hide, and the product worked as it should, a photo from my phone would have seemed more honest.

How to gain your audience’s trust

My overall point here is that in order to gain a customer’s trust you need to anticipate what the audience is expecting. In my example above, I was selling a used product, and the audience was not expecting photos that could have been on the front of the box of a new product. It instills more trust to use an honest photo of the product.

In order to gain your audience’s trust you need to meet their expectations, be accurate, avoid things that can be misleading or perceived as misleading (e.g. photos, headlines) and have integrity. You don’t have anything to hide and you need to show it. Being open, transparent and honest shows that you are acting with integrity. Always take a couple of steps back and ask yourself how you would react to the content if you were the one exposed to it, and always get a second opinion from someone who isn’t directly involved in the project or campaign.