Measuring Trust

B2B software buyers are over it. They’re skeptical, cynical, and jaded—and who could blame them?

Websites selling false promises. Misleading and biased data reports. Flimsy and fluffy case studies. Weak or non-existent customer support. Bad examples are way easier to find than good ones.

But every day, brave marketers keep showing up to the borderline impossible task of getting people to “know, like, and trust” their brand. All three of those goals are tough, but trust is the most elusive of all. 

It’s worth asking: Do people even trust brands anymore, especially in B2B? It does happen, but it’s rare. 2025 TrustRadius research found that buyers trust their own past experience more than demos, user reviews, or company websites, and OGM research found that buyers rank SaaS companies the least trusted information source. 

That’s a hell of an uphill battle. How do you successfully build trust in your company through your marketing and content, and, just as important, how do you measure it to prove you’re getting the job done? I asked two experts on trust in the marketing world:

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• Ashley Faus, Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian. She’s also the author of Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI, which focuses on connection in an era of declining trust.
• Renee Lynn Frojo, Brand Storyteller at A Good Reputation. She’s built her platform and community around telling authentic stories, one of the most direct paths to helping others trust you.

They shared what they mean when they say “trust,” why it’s so hard to measure, and the rules marketers should live by to build it. 

What do you mean by trust? 2 expert approaches

Trust can seem like an intangible, “you know it when you feel it” concept. When trust is broken, you can’t miss it. But it’s not always easy to describe why a trustworthy person or company has earned our vote of confidence. 

Luckily, Renee and Ashley both had clear, distinct definitions of trust ready at hand. They each shared a different framework, drawing on the work of trust scientists and researchers to reframe how we think about the B2B trust crisis.

Trust as risk tolerance

Renee points to a definition from trust researcher Rachel Botsman: “She defines trust as a confident relationship with the unknown. Trust inherently involves a lot of risk-taking.” The inverse is also true: Mistrust correlates highly with risk aversion. We’re not willing to take a chance on someone or something we don’t trust.

It’s not a stretch to put this in the context of buying B2B software. When you’re considering buying a tool on behalf of your company, you’re putting a lot on the line. The wrong purchase could waste many thousands of stakeholder dollars, lead to a failed project, or enable a data breach. Buyers risk their own reputation and competence, too—a worst-case software scenario could cause them to lose their job. 

When enterprise B2B buyers trust a vendor, they’re willing to take the risk on unknown results because the vendor has made deposits that build confidence. Content that proves expertise. Authentic referrals from a peer. A strong, engaging brand voice that reassures them that this company gets it. A proof of concept to see the software firsthand. 

Together, these proof points de-risk a vendor and reassure the buyer that the risk is worthwhile.

Trust as 3+1 key attributes

Ashley looks to Harvard Business School’s Dr. Frances Frei for her definition of trust, which involves three key elements:

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1. Authenticity. Buyers evaluate brands to answer the question, “Are you who you say you are?” When a company makes claims about its product or brand, the rest of the customer experience needs to deliver.
2. Empathy. Does the brand’s content actually consider what the audience thinks, feels, or wants? Or are they just waiting for the next opportunity to try to get them to request a demo? It’s not just a cliché that content marketers need to put themselves in buyers’ shoes; it’s just good marketing.
3. Logic. Buyers are savvy—they’re on high alert to gauge if brands are competent and know what they’re talking about. Audiences notice when a company overstates its expertise or makes things up as it goes along. 

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On top of Dr. Frei’s three elements, Ashley posits a fourth from a customer perspective: consistency. Does the brand deliver authenticity, empathy, and logic, not just once, but over and over again? 

Ashley blames one particular aspect of trust for the current trust breakdown. “People don’t trust brands because they’re missing the empathy piece. I don’t believe you when you say that you genuinely want me to succeed at my job—I think you only want me to succeed if I buy your product or service.” 

So, the current trust outlook isn’t great. Next, we’re looking back at how we got here and why it’s poised to get worse before it gets better.

‍In the mood for a rabbit hole today? Both of the experts Renee and Ashley cited gave TED Talks about trust: Rachel Botsman’s We’ve stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers and Dr. Frei’s How to build (and rebuild) trust.

Where’d all the trust go? How we got here

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found what they called a “Crisis of Grievance.” The survey uncovered a global decline in employer trust, fears that leaders lie at an all-time high, and an urgent need for institutions like the media and governments to rebuild trust. In short, mistrust is touching every corner of our lives.

B2B software is no exception. Buyers are cynical—and vendors have given them every reason to be. Over and over again, marketers have fallen for so-called “best practices” that actually create some of the worst brand interactions ever.

Think back to the state of SEO in the mid-2010s. Brands learned that they needed to rank at all costs, so they churned out countless keyword-stuffed articles that didn’t match reader intent or build authority in any way. Across authenticity, empathy, and logic, this approach to content failed with flying colors. 

Untrustworthy content trends have only continued through the years:

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• Gated assets that offer nothing you couldn’t have found via Google
• Formulaic, vague case studies that lack a detailed story
• Flashing marquee logos without regard for the pain points and use cases of specific verticals

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…and plenty of other examples. All of these content “strategies” fail to build trust; they take the path of least resistance to produce the most transactional content possible with the least possible effort, creative risk, and detail. They prioritize quantity over quality, flash over substance, and metrics over buyer experience.

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And that trajectory has delivered us into the latest hurdle for trust on a macro-level and a company level: AI.

The paradox of artificial intelligence

Consumer AI sentiment is hard to pin down. 2025 headlines were full of examples of public backlash to high-profile brands using AI, from McDonald’s holiday ad fumble to backlash to Duolingo’s AI-first announcement. 2025 Forrester research found that only 15% of US adults trust companies that use AI with customers, and three-quarters of those experimenting with genAI say AI makes it harder to trust what they see online.

Meanwhile, B2B buyers use it fairly widely. Research from Responsive found that 47% of buyers already use AI in time-sensitive stages such as market research and questionnaire drafting, and 48% of US buyers use GenAI for vendor discovery. And the trend is much stronger in tech: 80% of B2B tech buyers now use GenAI as much as traditional search.

Hypocritical, no? Audiences criticize companies for using AI while using it themselves. Ashley proposes one explanation: “They have lower expectations for AI—they know it’ll hallucinate sometimes. But it’s different if a human or company says something to you: There’s a perception that humans are much less likely to blatantly lie to you, and there’s more consequences if they do.” 

Consumers have a higher bar for expertise when a human is talking to them (through content or through a 1:1 interaction), but they’ve been burned by inexpert and incompetent companies, making it that much harder for B2B brands to earn their trust. 

The right balance: Put trust first

Marketers are left in the middle. Their leadership wants to see transactional, easily reported metrics, and the entire tech world is pushing AI for efficiency. But these approaches more often break trust than build it. 

If you do choose to use AI (voluntarily or by company mandate), how do you decide when and how? Renee says to take this dilemma back to the humans that matter most. “You have to ask, ‘Where do customers really want AI, and where do customers really want human interactions? There’s a fine line here. When do your efforts to optimize start being less valuable than having had a human in the process the whole time?”

The same is true of your marketing. When does efficiency driven by AI, content farms, or lazy volume-based tactics turn into broken trust? (Hint: The answer is, “pretty damn soon.”)

“If I’ve built trust with my audience, they want to see my content. If I use AI without disclosing it, the perception is that I’m faking it—that I’m not showing up as the person they trust.”
— Ashley Faus

There’s no perfect playbook to tell you when, why, or how much to use AI. But the risks of a single misfired AI campaign damaging your brand and destroying audience trust are notably high. Efficiency and trust aren't mutually exclusive, but the brands that build genuine trust with their customers know which one is more important—and they’re figuring out how to drive and measure it.

The measure of a brand: The current metrics struggle with trust

Marketers love a good metric. We measure time on page, conversions, traffic, and gated asset downloads all day—what we can see. But do any of those actually measure trust? Not in any kind of meaningful way. Trust doesn’t fit into those boxes: It’s about a customer’s (largely intangible) perception of and feelings toward your brand. 

“A lot of brands don’t specifically ask questions like, ‘Do you trust us? Do you perceive us to be authentic, and do you think we care about your outcomes and success?’ We tend to ask about associations, memory, likelihood of churning or spending more money,” Ashley explains. Trust is, ultimately, a company-level metric, not tied to a single page or piece of content, although those can and do contribute to trust. While it can be tough to pin numbers and verifiable metrics on trust, it’s not impossible. 

Your current performance marketing metrics can play their part in measuring trust. Think of them as your baseline—if your gated assets are genuinely valuable, for instance, measuring retargeted or nurtured leads who downloaded them is a great place to start. A hefty LTV or strong renewal rates, especially paired with qualitative evidence that customers are truly happy and not just renewing with you by default, can signal that people trust where your company is heading.

To get a holistic picture of trust (and measure it from all angles), focus on the three key avenues for building trust—brand, content, and product—and metrics for each one.

Trust avenue 1: The brand 

Trust in your brand goes well beyond logo or name recognition. When you build strong brand trust, your audience feels confidence in your voice, POV, or values. They believe that you stand for something, and they proactively seek out your expertise to add to the conversation. 

How do you measure this? Ashley suggests looking at how the human voices of your organization are being elevated beyond your owned channels. “When they’re invited to speak, what is the prestige and audience size at events? What’s their follower growth? These are indicators that people have affinity for them and trust them.” She also recommends mentions on value-based brand lists focused on corporate social responsibility or environmental, social, and governance as a trust metric. 

You can (and should) collect qualitative descriptions and sentiment that signal affinity and confidence from your customers and the wider industry. You can do this reactively—with social listening for organic signals—and proactively, by surveying your customers or prospects.

“Look at verbatims from your customers and partners that say, ‘We always bring this brand in to help us solve this problem. They’re knowledgeable leaders in the space.’ All of these are indicative of the three elements of trust.”
— Ashley Faus

Trust avenue 2: The product

Does your product do what you say it does? Does it successfully solve user problems, and does the experience and support only make it better? If all signals point to yes, your product is a positive force for trust. 

You’re probably measuring customer satisfaction in some way, but trust goes deeper. Measure trust in your product through loyalty and lifetime values. Look beyond referrals at how often customers are willing to be a reference—and the quality of those references. Ashley also recommends surveying for ease of use as a leading indicator: “It uncovers whether the product is actually serving users’ needs.”

Renee points to the sales process as the right place to measure trust in your product. “How many attempts does it take to get people on those sales calls? If someone’s already heard of your product spoken in a positive way, you’ll see less friction in getting them to make that leap,” she says. 

Trust avenue 3: The content

Good content is a powerful trust-builder not just because of what happens on the page or in the asset, but because of how it can stay with someone long after they’ve read, watched, or interacted with it. Done right, your content can hit all of the pillars of trust, per Dr. Frei: 

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• It can reinforce your authenticity with real people’s stories and experiences, the vulnerability of a unique take, or the effort and investment of a costly project. 
• It can show empathy by expressing an understanding of someone’s problems and sharing genuinely helpful and valuable takeaways (whether or not the reader becomes a customer).
• It projects logic when true, hard-won expertise shines through, whether from your CISO, an industry partner, or a customer. 

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Look for proof of the ripple effects of the ideas your content presents. Is your company being tagged into conversations organically on social or one-on-one? Are people citing your ideas and POV on LinkedIn or Reddit unprompted? On sales calls, have prospects seen so much of your content that they can’t remember where they first heard about you—but they keep coming back for more? 

As with most of these non-traditional metrics, these don’t show up neatly on a dashboard or point to overnight ROI. But that’s not how trust happens. Measure (and report) on these signals as a testimony to the long game of building trust in your company as a whole, through your brand, product, and content.

The 4 trust commandments: Simple (not easy) bets to build trust

Trust is hard-won and easily lost. The brands that are doing it well can be harder to spot because building trust often isn’t headline-making work. It’s quiet interactions between a prospect and a seller. It’s a deeply helpful content piece that doesn’t go LinkedIn viral but does answer burning questions for a niche group that will buy. It’s spending countless hours on survey questions to give back to a community of buyers. 

Want to make those kinds of investments? Live (and market) by these rules.

Empathy: Look at the world like your buyer does

Salesy content that promises value but delivers a pitch is everywhere—it’s also part of why buyer trust is so degraded. You rebuild trust when your marketing is generous and, as Amanda Natividad says, “relentlessly helpful.” Tell stories, offer original advice, and provide frameworks that help your reader succeed, whether or not they buy. 

“Brands need to help each customer feel like they matter—like they have a voice and they’re not just a number. That’s how you rebuild trust.” — Renee Lynn Frojo

Empathy should force you to think about what your audience wants to do when they click. If your CTA is “learn more,” take them to an educational resource—don’t link to your demo page. If you promise a pricing page, don’t gate the info behind a demo; tell them about pricing on that page. “Be honest about the intention for the audience,” Ashley says. 

Think about what your audience wants from your content. If you don’t know, ask. Listen to a Gong call, talk to your SMEs, or take your first steps toward original research. 

‍Measure this: Look at shares, mentions, engaged discussions, and conversion rates after someone clicks a CTA.

Authenticity: Put people front and center

Human-driven marketing can be messy. It’s inefficient, unpredictable, and not always easy to measure. But there’s something ineffable about it that we flock to, whether the person involved is an employee, industry leader, or someone like us. 

“If I can build a relationship with you and feel that I know you, I can trust you. Brands that successfully build trust show the humans behind the brand. They don’t just say, ‘Trust us as a logo.’ They say, ‘Trust this leader with the brand or the expert who authored this asset.’” — Ashley Faus

Renee proposes that content shouldn’t be strictly a broadcasting channel. “It’s a vehicle for relationship-building at scale. There’s so much opportunity in communities that help your ideal customer with whatever they are struggling with.” Create spaces (and content) where your brand’s voice isn’t the only one in the room; make space to listen to your community. You’ll learn what your content should be about and build trust with the right people.

‍Measure this: Performance of human-led content, community membership, and engagement across channels

Logic: Stay transparent and take the right risks

Risk is a dirty word (especially for the stakeholders who want to know exactly how much revenue every marketing effort drives). But when a marketing risk pays off, it pays off big time for building trust. 

Original proprietary research is one of those marketing investments that can do wonders for building trust—when you’re not just running a biased ego survey. “Don’t ask, ‘On a scale from 1 to 5, do you trust me?’ That’s a leading question. But statistically significant surveys with unbiased questions designed to reveal something new to the audience can build trust,” says Ashley. 

Survey your audience. Compile platform data to tell a specific community how others like them are tackling their problems. Run in-depth qualitative interviews to uncover research insights that are audience-serving (not self-serving). Do these things right, and you give people a very good reason to trust you.

Competence also comes through when you own your brand’s choices. If you use AI, say so. If you don’t use it at all, claim that differentiator, too. 

When you mess up, own exactly what happened, what went wrong and why, and what you’ll do to take accountability. This doesn’t erase what happened (or win back all the trust you lost). But the more open you are, the faster you’ll rebuild. 

‍Measure this: Performance of proprietary assets and unsolicited mentions, social listening and sentiment analysis

Consistency: Keep your promises

What’s your company like when no one’s looking? Do your buyers and customers have the same experience with your brand on your website versus on a sales call versus in-person at an industry event? Does your content boast a great user experience and incredible features, while the product constantly changes for the worse?

Audiences spot these inconsistencies immediately—they see when a company is lying or simply not delivering what it says it will. And that whiplash is a major trust-breaker. “Is the product keeping its promise? Is it doing what it said it was going to do, or are you overpromising and underdelivering? It’s much easier to lose trust than it is to build it,” Renee says. 

Your brand and your product should create a cohesive narrative and experience—from there, your content is a megaphone that further boosts that same story, wherever would-be buyers encounter you. This is really hard work. You need strong bonds across teams, supportive leadership, and willingness to put customers before profits. And that’s exactly why trust is so hard to come by. 

Be the rare brand that does what it says at every turn. One content leader can’t do this all on their own—you can’t shoulder responsibility for the trust of your entire company. Start small by listening to customers, being genuinely helpful, and delivering what your headlines and CTAs promise, and do it over and over again.

Focus on converting one skeptic at a time. Give them every reason to trust your content and, pretty soon, others will, too.

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