Most people trust content marketing, but companies must be careful what they include in messages to consumers.
According to Kentico’s latest Content Marketing Survey, 74% of the general public trusts content from businesses that aim to educate readers about a particular topic. But, according to the survey, that trust is fragile: Using any sort of a product pitch will bring the content’s credibility level down by a staggering 29%.
Here are some key content marketing offenses that impede customer trust as reported by survey participants. Including information that:
· Can’t be corroborated with other non-company sources (46%)
· Doesn’t address other perspectives or viewpoints (17%)
· Isn’t clear that it’s coming from a particular company (15%)
· Talks down to the reader (12%)
When it comes to content credibility, longstanding business-to-customer relationships seem to matter little, according to the survey. In fact, 85% of those surveyed aren’t any more trusting of educational content simply because they buy from the company that posts the content. The majority of those surveyed (60%) also believe a company’s size has no bearing on the credibility of its content marketing, although 29% do feel educational content from smaller businesses is more trustworthy than that of larger businesses.
Of those surveyed, 49% will generally trust what a company says about a particular topic but will also corroborate with other sources. While such findings demonstrate the importance of posting content that can be corroborated, it also suggests this requirement may be met by including genuine third-party sources within the content: 57% claim educational information from a company is more credible when it contains verification from named sources, such as parents or doctors.
The shareability of content is also vital as 69% of survey respondents said that a company’s educational information is more credible when it’s discovered through a friend or family member, and 94% claim they have shared educational information from a company with someone. Women tend to trust content shared though friends and family members 20% more than men.
When asked how often a company’s educational content comes up while searching for topics related to a particular problem or need, 27% report it happens often, 57% sometimes, 11% hardly ever, and 5% never.
Women generally appear 11% more trusting of content marketing than men, the survey found.
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60+ year-olds are 17% more trusting than 18-29 year-olds, but the same 60+ age bracket is 14% less trusting of content passed through friends and family members than the 18-29 age group.
“Our latest Digital Experience survey goes to show what professional marketers hopefully already know,” Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas said in a release. “While customers will, for the most part, give a company’s content marketing the benefit of the doubt, businesses must take care in not breaking that trust with information that can't be corroborated or strays from the truth altogether. In this way, content marketing and transparent marketing must go together at all times.”