How to Build Trust in Your Brand Through Visual Storytelling

Trust. It’s what keeps consumers coming back to the same brands over and over again. But distrust in companies is on the rise, and that lack of trust can lead to all sorts of negative outcomes for brands. Distrust harms your reputation and your bottom line — decreased loyalty, fewer return customers, lost sales, and PR challenges can all stem from a lack of trust.

Naturally, we all want consumers to trust our brands, but how do we build and maintain that magical quality? It’s not easy, but it can be done (and Lemonly is here to help). 

For brands looking to build trust, the key ingredients of trustworthy brand storytelling are a purpose-driven brand foundation, clear messaging, and a cohesive visual identity. These three ingredients combine to create a consistent brand story your customers will recognize and trust.

Let’s take a closer look at the current trust landscape and how you can increase consumers’ trust in your brand. 

The trust landscape

Let’s start with some data that shows an overall decline in consumer trust: 

• 71% of consumers worldwide trust companies less than they did a year ago (Basis). 
• 64% of consumers believe businesses handle customer data recklessly (Basis). 
• 77% of American consumers think companies are pushing low-quality goods at inflated prices (Axios).
• 90% of businesses believe consumers trust their companies — but only 30% of consumers agree (PwC).

Several factors contribute to this “trust deficit.” First, consumers are overloaded with information. On average, U.S. consumers receive 80+ emails (Email Tool Tester), spend 2+ hours on social media (Exploding Topics), and see countless ads (Morning Brew) every day. The flood of daily content means that breaking through the noise to reach customers is incredibly difficult.

Second, only 39% of people trust advertising (Marketing Week). Every attempt to reach new customers through advertising will have to overcome a baseline of distrust in the majority of consumers.

Third, people are concerned about privacy and data use. High-profile data breaches cause alarm, and it’s often unclear how companies use personal data. That lack of clarity can lead to distrust of companies that gather data (which is a lot of companies).

Finally, AI usage has a huge impact on trust: Consumer trust in a brand drops by 144% when a customer believes the company is using AI (CX Dive). Many people don’t trust AI (Melbourne Business School), and if consumers think your company is using AI, they’ll lose trust in your company, too.

The current trust landscape is grim, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to build trust. With the right strategy, you can earn and maintain consumers’ trust in your brand. 

How to build trust through storytelling

Every brand tells a story (through everything from product packaging to email newsletters), and the story you tell can make or break your consumers’ trust. Whether or not they’re aware of it, consumers relate to your brand through the story you tell. That’s why it’s so important to make sure they’ll trust what they see.

Your brand’s story starts with your brand foundation, which should be supported by your messaging and visual identity.

1. Brand foundation

Your brand foundation is the set of core attributes that define your brand’s essence. Simon Sinek’s concept of the Golden Circle provides a great way to think about brand foundation.

Why

At the center of the circle is your “Why,” the purpose of your brand. What is your cause? What do you believe? Why do you exist? Your “Why” should be your mission; it should guide everything your company does, and it should be highly visible to your consumers.

How

The second layer is your “How,” the way your brand conducts itself. It explains how your company does everything it does. Your “How” includes your core values, which should be obvious to your consumers through your company’s actions.

What

The outermost ring is your “What.” It’s what you actually do because of your “Why” — the products and services your company offers. Your “What” should be guided by your values and should bring about your mission.

Your brand foundation is a strategic tool — it provides direction, not necessarily ready-to-use marketing messaging. When your communications reflect a well-defined brand foundation clearly and consistently, you’ve got the beginnings of consumer trust. If consumers know exactly who you are and you consistently meet their expectations, they’ll begin to believe you won’t let them down.

2. Messaging

Your messaging — the words you use in your content — should clearly and consistently support your brand foundation. Here are some key considerations for trust-building messaging:

Lead with your “Why,” not your “What”

People trust purpose-driven brands more than transactional brands. And since you’ve already taken the time to nail down your brand foundation and define your “Why,” you’ll be able to create messaging that highlights your mission. You can also reinforce the humanity of your brand by highlighting real team members and clients.

Let’s look at Lemonly as an example. We make infographics and visual content — that’s our “What,” and we’re proud of it. But our “Why” is important, too. It’s the big, colorful word you’ll find at the top of our website: Clarity. 

Across our content, Lemonly leads with clarity. It’s not just what we deliver — it’s why we exist. Our mission is to make the world easier to understand, and every message we share ties back to that purpose. Emphasizing clarity also means that we highlight the key benefits we offer our clients: clear, delightful visuals that make their stories easier to understand. 

Start from your why and let that inform how you communicate: “If our purpose is _____, then our communication should be _____.”

Create messaging guidelines to unify your content

A messaging guide is a single source of truth for everyone who communicates on behalf of your brand. It documents your messaging strategy and standards, including your brand position, voice and tone, and more. With a messaging guide, it’s easier to ensure that all your brand’s communicators speak the same language and that all your content connects back to your brand strategy. Clear, consistent messaging helps build trust and mitigate misunderstandings.

A key part of your messaging is your brand’s voice and tone — the unique personality and style you use in your communications. Your voice and tone should reflect your brand foundation and feel authentic to who you are. Consumers will recognize your voice and build a relationship with your brand.

Mind the details

While the big-picture strategic elements like your brand foundation and messaging guidelines are vital for building trust, the small details are just as important. Consumers are savvy, and neglecting the details can be death by a thousand cuts.

Details like these help your brand appear polished and trustworthy:

• Flawless spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Verified, cited facts and statistics (bonus points if they come with data visualizations that make the numbers more meaningful).
• Clear copy written in a consistent voice and tone.
• Headings, formatting, and text labels that help users navigate your content and interface easily.

Messaging can make or break consumers’ trust in your brand. If your messages consistently support your brand foundation and you follow through on the promises your messages make, consumers will learn to trust your brand.

3. Visual identity

Your visual identity is how your brand shows up in design — including your logo, colors, visual style, brand assets, and designed content. If your visual identity doesn’t feel unique, authentic, and memorable to consumers, odds are they won’t stick around to read your messaging. Here are some key considerations for trust-building visuals:

Establish visual style guidelines for consistent content

Having clear, shared standards established for your brand’s visual identity allows your team to create on-brand visuals every time. No matter the form factor or use case, your brand should always have a cohesive look and feel. 

A visual style guide is the perfect way to document your brand’s standards and practices for consistent design. It documents guidelines for elements like your brand’s color palette, fonts, iconography, photography, illustration, and animation styles. By nailing down these elements, you help ensure that every visual you create is recognizable as part of your brand.

As you’re establishing and documenting your visual identity, prioritize accessibility so that as many people as possible can have a great experience interacting with your brand. That includes things like adequate color contrast, easily readable typefaces, and inclusive illustration or photography that shows a range of identities.

Build a design toolkit

A design toolkit is a set of ready-to-use assets and templates for creating branded content. It usually includes icons, spot illustrations, patterns, and templates for social media graphics or presentation slides. The purpose of a toolkit is to make creating polished, on-brand content easier and more scalable, even for non-designers.

Everything in your design toolkit should follow the guidelines established in your visual style guide. Your visual style guide defines your brand’s unique look and feel, and your design toolkit allows you to implement that aesthetic at scale across web, social, print, packaging, and more. By consistently applying your brand’s visual identity across all your content, you build brand recognition and, ultimately, brand trust.

Ensure your visuals are high-quality

Visuals that reflect poorly on your brand can act as trust-killers. But if you show your customers consistent, high-quality visuals, they’ll be more likely to expect consistent, high-quality products and services from your brand as a whole. And when you show up for your customers and provide those high-quality products and services again and again, they’ll know they can trust you.

Take care to avoid low-res logos, generic stock images, inconsistent branding, and cluttered designs. Instead, use high-res logos and images, opt for photos of real team members and clients, user-generated content, or illustrations. You can also create a clear visual hierarchy for an easy-to-navigate user experience.

Build trust through clear, consistent communication

A clear brand foundation, consistent messaging, and a cohesive visual identity are foundational for building a brand that consumers trust. Add to that clear, consistent communication, and you’ll be well on your way to growing trust in your brand.

Confusion = distrust

Confusion, whether it’s due to a lack of information or a misunderstanding, stops trust in its tracks. If your audience doesn’t understand who you are, what you offer, and why it matters, they won’t trust you. Communicate clearly and incorporate proof of performance whenever possible. Intentional storytelling and well-crafted visuals help you avoid the costs of confusion.

People trust people

Put a face to your brand (literally). Include names in captions and use visuals with real customers or team members to create a sense of emotional safety. It’s also important to give your employees the tools to talk about your brand authentically, in their own words. Your employees can also help build trust in your brand through one-on-one conversations with consumers.

A rhythm of communication and a pattern of transparency

Establish communication that gets a clear message in front of your consumers consistently. Use things like weekly microcontent or monthly newsletters to answer FAQs and address anticipated concerns proactively. Your consumers should learn everything they know about your brand from you — not from a story that pops up in the news.

And there you have it: a handy guide to building trust in your brand through storytelling. It’s all about a strong brand foundation, clear messaging, consistent visuals, and thoughtful communication.

When you successfully build trust in your brand, consumers keep coming back, talk about and share your brand, and give you grace for missteps. Trust is incredibly valuable, but it isn’t built overnight. It’s built through every detail of your brand’s communication, so it’s important to make sure you’re telling a story that inspires trust.

Ready to inspire trust in your brand through clever storytelling and delightful design? Let’s talk about how Lemonly can help.

Download our helpful guide to building trust, with tips and prompts to examine your brand at every stage of the customer journey.