There are some differences between trusting someone in work and trusting someone in our personal lives. That’s something I think everyone knows.
It’s not possible to trust Salesforce or HubSpot as much as you trust your family or best friend. I think everyone at those companies would agree with you on that.
A B2B tech company can only hope to be as trustworthy as IBM was when the saying “No one ever got fired for buying IBM” was made up.
You can basically sum up trust in this situation as “the product will work and you won’t get ripped off.” Not that much is being asked.
We are, however, hard-wired to not believe our institutions, like the government or Google.
You ask, “Google?” “Google was one of the few tech companies on the Morning Consult list of the most trusted brands in 2024!”
You’re not wrong. Brands like Band-Aid, Kleenex, Lysol, and Clorox made up most of Google’s list. But the top brands in Morning Consult’s study look at things from the point of view of the customer.
People believe that Google will give them accurate information. This happens all the time when we talk to our friends. “Google, thanks for putting that to rest. It’s true that the Royals won the 1985 World Series. (And Google’s responses that are created by AI have only made this better for customers.)
If you work in paid ads or SEO, you deal with Google on a business-to-business level and probably have a more unique view of the brand.
A huge leak of documents about Google’s search algorithm last month confirmed for many that what employees said did not always match up with how the papers say the mysterious system works. Because of this, people in that industry aren’t sure how much they can trust what the company that runs their jobs says.
Of course, social media makes everything worse. And when someone posts about a bad experience with a seller or something that seems fishy that they did, it quickly spreads around the world.
People now like to write on LinkedIn about bad SaaS renewal experiences or what happens when you don’t renew with a provider.
That SKU is no longer available? How many times have you heard that when it’s time to renew?
It’s like SaaS apps are on a shelf and the cashier is getting a mistake when they try to scan the bar code. “That SKU is no longer available” means “get ready for a package that costs more.”
If a customer doesn’t renew, they may be shown the small print of the deal they signed. These are the places where they learn that leaving a seller is a lot like getting divorced. When people make plans, they don’t usually think about how expensive and bad it might be in the end.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued Adobe this week because it made it too hard and expensive to cancel software contracts in the first year, according to the FTC.
There was a lot of fuss on social media lately about language in Adobe’s Terms of Service that said the company could see what you make with its software. This is related to fine print and Adobe.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. The terms gave reasons why this might be important. It might come in handy for customer service or in case Adobe gets an order. The clause had been in the rules for months before anyone on social media made a big deal out of it.
In response, Adobe decided to change the terms, but this wasn’t the first time this spring that people had doubts about Adobe’s word.
What’s going on here is partly caused by social media. But brands also need to earn trust, and too many of them aren’t doing that.
In May, Jay Mandel and Liam Maroney and I recorded a podcast for MarTech.org about why people are rethinking B2B marketing. It took an interesting turn when Jay and Liam talked about how many smaller B2B tech vendors were never built to build a brand, earn trust, or give great customer experiences.
The founders were only interested in getting out and making money, not in the long term, and it was clear.
When people try to grow at any cost, they make choices that hurt customers. Customers pay a price when software companies that make a lot of money lay off a lot of workers. They have to get new account managers and customer success reps, which hurts the trust and relationship they made with the old ones.
The vendors are set up. Brands are made to last.
How do B2B tech companies today get their buyers and prospects to trust them? I don’t know what to say.
There are people who work for companies, and people make mistakes. The good news is that people are aware of this and will overlook occasional slip-ups.
But the podcast episode with Jay and Liam where they talked about brand vs. performance marketing might hold the key.
If you want to grow your business no matter what, you probably aren’t putting enough money into your brand.
You probably aren’t putting enough into your brand if you’re building a business just to sell it.
You probably aren’t putting enough money into your brand if you care so much about your bottom line that your marketing team is mostly made up of people who do performance marketing.
Adobe and Google will get through what users see as mistakes. In fact, Adobe’s best quarter ever was the second quarter of this year. Adobe and Google both put a lot of money into their names. It could be an accident, but it could also be true.
People knew IBM was the safest bet in the business because of its name.