How to Put Your Trustworthy Brand in Front of the Right Audience

Have you ever thought, “Why don’t more people know about our organization?”

A decade ago, your reputation and quality of service might have been enough to keep business steady. Today, it takes more than word-of-mouth to grow. If people can’t find you online, they may never experience the impact you’re capable of making.

The reality is this: being trustworthy is essential, but it’s not the only thing you need to be successful. You also need to be visible.

What Is A Trustworthy Brand?

A trustworthy brand is one that, without even working with them, a prospective customer believes that they can trust. Today, organizations must overcome the age of distrust and connect with potential customers on a deeper level.

There are four key factors that make up a trustworthy brand:

• Competency: Meeting the needs of its customers with excellence and innovation.
• Credibility: Consistent and reliable performance that is reinforced by previous customers.
• Authenticity: Proving to a prospective customer that a brand’s claims are genuine.
• Empathy: Communicating care and connection that transcends the typical customer-brand relationship.

When an organization displays all four of these, a customer is more willing to work with them and ultimately become a brand advocate.

Want to learn if your brand is trustworthy? Use our Brand Trust Tool to find out your score!

Trust Comes First: Why It’s the Foundation of Brand Awareness

Awareness without trust wastes digital resources.

In your pursuit of becoming more known online, you must first confirm that your brand is trustworthy. Without that, you’ll be spending valuable time and resources promoting a brand that prospective customers will continue to be skeptical of.

Trustworthy brands are operating ethically. They are also investing in the right brand assets to communicate they are competent, credible, authentic, and empathetic.

At PHOS, we guide brands through our Proven Process to build both trust and visibility in a way that aligns with their mission and goals.

OUR TRUST AND AWARENESS METHODOLOGY

How to Increase Your Online Awareness

If your brand is rooted in trust, it’s time to expand your reach. We’ll explore two main ways to improve your organization’s online awareness.

Strategic Foundations for Visibility

Before you can effectively grow your visibility, you need the right foundation. The strategies below help ensure that every marketing effort is rooted in intention and aimed at the right people.

Define Your Target Audience

You need to know who you’re trying to reach first. One of the biggest mistakes we see organizations make is trying to speak to everyone, and in doing so, end up connecting with no one.

Defining your target audience ensures that your marketing efforts are focused, strategic, and built around what your ideal customer truly cares about. Creating buyer personas, fictional but research-based representations of your ideal customers, helps you understand how they make decisions, what problems they need solved, and where they spend their time online.

For example, a busy mom researching pest control services may prioritize safety for kids and pets, trust recommendations from Facebook groups, and scan Google reviews for peace of mind. Without knowing that, a business could waste time and budget on channels or messages that miss the mark entirely.

Launch Campaigns Across the Customer Journey

There are different points in a customer’s buying journey. Not everyone will be at the same stage at the same time. Building out multi-channel campaigns for each stage of a potential customer’s journey will help you guide people along and meet them right where they are.

Awareness

Awareness is where visibility begins. The goal at this stage is to introduce your brand to people who have never heard of you and spark initial interest.

These campaigns should highlight your credibility and values in a way that quickly earns attention. Think about showcasing your average star rating, years in business, differentiators, and credentials that build confidence. High-quality photography and video are especially powerful here. People decide within seconds whether they trust what they see.

Consideration

Once someone recognizes your brand and starts actively looking for a solution, they’ve entered the consideration phase. At this point, your messaging should shift from introducing who you are to clearly communicating what you do and why it matters.

Potential customers are searching online, comparing options, reading reviews, and evaluating your credibility. This is where tools like search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC) play a crucial role. They help your brand show up when someone is looking for exactly what you offer. Your website and social media presence also become key trust-builders here.

Rather than pushing for a hard sell, offer helpful resources that guide their decision: things like quote calculators, downloadable guides, or comparison tools. These “soft sells” create opportunities to capture emails and continue nurturing with personalized content.

Conversion

When someone is ready to take action—to call, fill out a form, or visit your office—they’ve reached the conversion stage. This is where interest becomes intent, and your marketing needs to remove every barrier to saying “yes.”

At this point, you’re speaking to your warmest leads, people who already trust your brand and just need a nudge toward taking the next step. Paid ads, retargeting, email campaigns, and well-timed calls-to-action can all help move them forward.

Conversion doesn’t happen by accident. Make sure your website is fast, your forms are easy to complete, and your messaging is clear and reassuring. Trust got them here, now your systems and strategy need to carry them across the finish line.

Loyalty

Just because you’ve closed the deal and earned business doesn’t mean you’ll keep it forever. Loyalty is an often-overlooked stage of the customer journey, yet it’s one of the most powerful for sustaining growth and building advocacy.

When customers feel consistently valued, they’re more likely to leave glowing reviews, refer others, and engage with your brand online, all of which feed back into broader awareness and trust. In this way, loyal customers become your most credible marketers.

Loyalty campaigns help reduce your dependency on constantly chasing new leads. Use tools like email marketing, exclusive offers, and engaging social media content to nurture these relationships and remind customers why they chose you in the first place.

Trust doesn’t just get people in the door. It keeps them coming back.

Leverage a High-Performing Website

A well-designed, high-performing website communicates credibility, reinforces trust, and moves visitors closer to conversion.

However, slow load times, outdated visuals, or clunky navigation can quickly push people away and hurt your search engine rankings. In the eyes of both your audience and Google, performance matters.

Because your website is the destination for nearly all marketing activity, from paid ads to email to organic search, it needs to be easy to use, fast-loading, and aligned with user needs. Help them find what they’re looking for, take the next step, and leave with a positive impression of your brand.

Ongoing Trust-Building Tactics

Visibility isn’t a one-time tactic. It’s a rhythm. Maintaining trust is what sets brands apart. Once your foundational strategy is in place, it’s time to nurture and grow the trust you’ve earned through consistent, meaningful engagement.

Maintain a Strong Online Reputation

People are distrustful of organizations they’ve never worked with. But, they will be more trusting of what a stranger says about your company. Your average Google rating is not only a consideration when someone is researching your company. It can also affect your Google Local Service Ads performance and your local SEO rankings. For a local business, these two marketing tactics are essential parts of a robust strategy.

Additionally, how your brand is perceived on social media will affect your performance. A bad comment or an unanswered question can erode trust with current and potential followers on these platforms. Social media algorithms prioritize highly engaged content and profiles, so if people aren’t commenting or engaging with your content anymore, your posts could go unnoticed.

Curate Trustworthy, Engaging Content

Increasing your online awareness is a constant rhythm. This can be easily reinforced with consistent engaging content that actively builds trust.

Here are a few ways to keep your brand visible and trustworthy across key channels:

• Website: Adding or optimizing website content makes you more competitive in search results and can improve your conversion rate from your ad campaigns.
• Social media: Use a mix of posts, testimonials, team features, user-generated content, tips, and community engagement, to reflect your brand’s authenticity and empathy.
• Guest blogging: Contribute to relevant industry publications or partner websites to extend your reach. It builds authority, earns backlinks for SEO, and positions you as a thought leader.
• Podcast: If you have the resources, podcasts allow the opportunity to reach listeners interested in your industry and unlock a new network to explore. You can also repurpose podcast content for blog posts and social media content.
• Webinar: Webinars help you speak directly to your audience, build rapport, and collect valuable leads. Like podcasts, they offer great follow-up and content repurposing opportunities.

You’ve Built Trust, Now Let’s Multiply It

You’ve built a great organization, one that customers continue to trust. For a growth-minded business, being found online is the only way to continue reaching your business goals.

At PHOS, we help trustworthy organizations increase their visibility. Through intentional strategy, meaningful content, and data-informed campaigns, we’ll help you reach the people you’re meant to serve and earn their trust from the first impression.

Curious how visible your brand really is online? Start with a complimentary Awareness Audit where we’ll measure where you stand and offer clear, strategic next steps.

Request An Audit