Trust-Based Marketing / In practice
The moves, one at a time
Trust-based marketing is an established discipline associated with Glen Urban of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the credit is his. These pages are my reading of how it plays out in practice: decisions that cost something, roughly in order of how uncomfortable they are, and the ways the whole approach fails. The narrower thing I do claim, that trust has to be the first move, is Trust-First Marketing.
The moves that cost something
Who you are not for
The highest-return page most businesses never write, because it feels like turning away money.
Evidence beats messaging
There is a point where more words stop helping. Most budgets are spent past it.
Answer the thing they are actually worried about
The buyer already has the question. The only variable is whose answer they get.
Why guarantees are underrated
Bearing risk you could have left with the customer is a costly signal, which is the point.
The mechanisms underneath
Consistency is a trust mechanism, not a brand rule
Saying the same thing everywhere is a claim about reliability, and it is assessed as one.
Why urgency tactics cost more than they earn
They work. The question is what they trade, and when the bill arrives.
The hard cases
What to do when you have no proof yet
The honest answer for a new business, and why the usual advice makes it worse.
Trust is slow, and the quarter is not
The most uncomfortable objection, and the version of the answer I would defend.
What trust-based marketing looks like when it fails
Five failure modes, all of which look like virtue while they are happening.