How to earn buyer trust when no one is listening

According to Sinch, 87% of customers will actively avoid buying from brands they don’t trust. And even if they do buy once? Edelman found that nearly 70% won’t buy again unless that trust is maintained.  Trust isn’t a marketing buzzword, it’s your growth engine. Without it, your brand stays invisible.

When your message misses the mark

Vanessa Ashworth former Head of Marketing at A-SAFE experienced this firsthand. “A-SAFE wasn’t visible,” she said during the recent EC-PR webinar The Compass Method – PR strategy to drive growth. “And because the message was always being reinvented, the brand’s credibility and memorability weren’t there.”

Despite a skilled team and active campaigns, A-SAFE’s content lacked structure and cohesion. The message changed too often, meaning there was no repetition and without repetition, there was no memorability. And if no one remembers you, they don’t trust you.

The Compass Method: a framework that fulfils

That’s where the Compass Method made the difference.

Created by EC-PR, this strategic framework gives your message structure and purpose, so it shows up consistently, everywhere it matters. It helps to:

• Align marketing, sales and leadership to create one clear voice.
• Ensure message consistency across all touchpoints.
• Focus every communication on what buyers actually care about.

As a result, A-SAFE became more visible where it mattered. With the message landing in trusted, high-value media outlets, buyers began to take notice The outcome? A-SAFE grew its share of voice by 80%, eventually owning nearly of the conversation in its competitive space.

When your message keeps changing, no one remembers it

At XTM International, a B2B SaaS enterprise, Dave Ruane faced similar hurdles as Director of Marketing. “We were throwing random mud at the wall hoping some of it would stick,” he admitted. Teams followed disconnected agendas and sales had their own materials. There was no alignment.

With Compass, that changed. “It was one of the first proper alignment initiatives we did ,” Ruane shared. “Straight away, that was a big win. We finally had buy-in from the CEO and leadership.”

With that clarity, the content strategy shifted from reactive to relevant and suddenly, every piece had a purpose. But the leadership team was not the only ones that needed convincing.

How to get internal buy-in

Before Compass, different departments at XTM operated on different assumptions about who the business was speaking to. Compass forced clarity.

• They identified their buyer personas
• Built content around buyer relevance instead of internal preferences.
• Created a targeted thought leadership engine using the Brilliant Ideas Bank
• Became the industry’s go-to educator on high-interest topics.

This shift earned them the credibility they were looking for – not just the clicks – and turned content into a commercial asset.

Once A-SAFE and XTM aligned their message through Compass, the ripple effect was huge. 

• Web traffic .
• Inbound enquiries doubled.
• Journalists began calling them.
• Executive gained visibility and credibility.
• Sales conversations got sharper and more relevant.

Vanessa explained the shift: “You need to get good content available in high-value, independent, trusted sources.  That’s how trust grows.”

As for Dave’s team, “We got stickiness from the brands we created and inbound picked up. We were able to laser-focus on what was driving them and get real MQL motion out of it.”

The real difference between being heard and being believed

A clever message might get noticed. But it takes consistency and credibility to earn trust.

The Compass Method helps you be heard and believed. It aligns your people, focuses your message and ensures you show up exactly where buyers are already paying attention. Stop shouting into the void and start building a brand that your buyers trust.

Talk to us today.