When Trust Exceeds Your Product

Reading Time: 3 Minutes

Today, we will explore how transparency can help your brand strategy and what to do to get it right. Especially in business spaces known for opacity and complexity, transparency is a powerful strategy.

The cornerstone of any lasting relationship is honesty and transparency. So naturally, if customers are going to forge a long relationship with your brand, they expect you to provide this.

👋🏼 But you need to know that for startup brands founded on a desire for honesty, going fully transparent is a path to success that takes a fair share of moxie. If you commit to leading with honesty, understand that there is no way back. If you have committed to sharing your financial statements publicly on your website in 2022, for example, going quiet in 2024 will backfire.

Look at Everlane's story. They started with the claim of being “Radical Transparency.” These days, however, employees past and present are challenging management, saying the company’s ethical image was an illusion. Even the NYT wrote about it.

Let's examine better brand examples

Ritual, a Los Angeles-based seller of vitamins, insists on a clean supply chain and keeps itself honest by listing details on the origins and manufacturers of its ingredients and clinical trials on its website. As a brand that sells vegan, dye-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, non-GMO, and dairy-free products, Ritual applied the rule of transparency because it knows its niche customers care deeply about that information and the notion that the company’s values align with what they themselves stand for.

How to Get Transparency in Startup Brand Building

➡️ ➡️ Reveal everything. It's the quickest way to showcase transparency. Customers will instantly trust your brand and its products over your competitors’.

➡️ ➡️ Commit fully. Once you choose this path, there’s no turning back.

➡️ ➡️ Understand that your product and audience crave transparency, especially if your industry has a history of dishonesty. For instance, if you're in the fashion industry, which has faced scandals over sweatshops, mention where garments are made. If you run a financial company, explain how funds are used. If you sell a food product, answer questions about its ingredients.

➡️ ➡️ Create a strategic plan on how far you will take transparency and where your brand will draw the line. Measure it against projected ROI, and promote the most important areas of transparency. Keep other areas as brand surprises for continued storytelling and customer engagement.

💡Takeaway → Transparency fosters trust and credibility, which are essential elements for building lasting relationships with your customers.

I am exploring a topic that is a big discussion in any startup I've worked at: the split of the marketing budget between Performance Marketing and Brand Building. If any of my subscribers have insights, ideas, or input on this, I would really appreciate your help. Just send me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn.

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