On Feb. 11, marketing minds convened for one particularly packed Marketing Brew event: Tactical MarTech: The Future of AI, Attribution, and Privacy. Rockefeller Plaza housed a dynamic gathering of industry leaders, insights, and mini quiches (which were pretty tasty, if we do say so ourselves).
Presenting sponsor Trustpilot took the stage for a fireside chat. Dana Bodine, Trustpilot’s Vice President of US Marketing, sat down with Morning Brew Inc.’s Kristine Wyatt to lead their segment, Scaling Trust to Drive Impact.
This discussion centered on how consumer trust can boost business success and how AI tools help brands supercharge their consumer relationships to deliver quantifiable results.
Missed the convo? Don’t fret—we’re recapping all the insights right here. Grab a seat and heat up a mini quiche.
Consumer trust
Scaling Trust to Drive Impact kicked off around the interwoven nature of consumer trust and misinformation in our modern era of information overload. The question: How can brands build consumer trust in a stable, sound way?
Bodine shared that there’s no one more prepared than marketers to meet this moment.
“Consumer trust and customer trust have been our bread and butter since…the early days of advertising,” she noted.
“Authentic reviews, authentic experiences…People looking at reviews from people like them; [they] still hold an immense amount of trust,” Bodine explained. She asked the audience to search their brand on their smartphones and raise their hand if they liked what they saw. Only a handful of audience members did so. This complements her stat that 90% of brands think they have great relationships with their customers, but only 30% of consumers feel this way about brands. Audiences may trust information and institutions generally less than they have before, but 73% of consumers trust reviews.
The catch? Trust and reviews don’t just happen. Brands need to request feedback from their customers and lean into the technology that can synthesize reviews at scale, turning them into insights that can supercharge a business.
Combating fake reviews
“We know fake reviews happen—we know fake everything happens,” Bodine said when asked how brands can grapple with the challenge of fake reviews. “The way to combat fake reviews is authentic reviews.”
She advised engaging consumers at every point of the purchase journey. Collect reviews at scale and build a huge amount of data.
Secondly, she said, work with a tech platform that can manage fake review removal and knows what to do with all the data. The more quality reviews, the better. Trustpilot removed 3m fake reviews in 2023 alone, which was just 6% of the total amount of reviews posted on the platform that year.
Bodine shared that last year, the FTC put out new guidance banning the use of fake reviews in the US. This kind of assistance exists to protect consumers and can lend a hand to a marketer’s mission, too.
The impact of customer sentiment
What can a marketer expect from collecting customer sentiment?
“I think all sentiment is incredibly valuable,” Bodine said. Collecting real, genuine customer experiences and insight from the front lines offers a huge amount of actionable data.
Brands that have implemented Trustpilot, for instance, have seen 401% ROI on their investment. Insight from reviews (both positive and negative) can clearly highlight weaknesses in a business, even down to small issues popping up in a supply chain.
Review insights help marketers get granular with the ins and outs of how their business really works. Suddenly, wearing many hats as a marketer can feel like wearing “many crowns,” as Bodine put it.
Beyond giving marketers insights into the supply chain or product delivery, review data can even shine light on sectors like ad spend, campaign performance, and SEO. Benefits of reviews are maximized when a team can analyze, respond, and action them at scale. Marketers, the C-Suite, and the broader organization can all witness the positive effects that come from giving customer sentiment the white-glove attention it deserves.
Analysis and AI
So, how does AI figure into the core human truth of authentic reviews?
“We use AI and machine learning to weed out fake reviews.…We have been doing this for 15 years. We are able to identify the ways that bots are able to replicate fake reviews, and they’re changing that all the time,” Bodine said.
Beyond protecting the platform, AI tools also offer analysis that can create and elevate a dashboard of actionable intel for companies. Bodine added that AI tools can help reduce the time needed to respond to reviews. For example, Trustpilot’s review response tools can use your brand language to craft responses to customer testimonials. These are never sent automatically and are reviewed by a human before being sent. This keeps things authentic while answering the challenge of scale.
Pitfalls around building trust and bouncing back
When asked about the difficulty brands can face when navigating negative reviews, Bodine framed it as an opportunity to have a conversation directly with a customer.
Leaning into, asking for, and collecting feedback, even if it is negative, is important because every single customer needs to feel heard. This allows for an enormous amount of information to make improvements with, as well as an opportunity to connect with your audience.
Authenticity is key, and soliciting it can be deeply valuable, even if slightly intimidating. Brand success stories can stem from what started as a negative customer review that received a thoughtful response from a business. Building trust with customers starts with letting them know their voice is heard—and valued.
And as far as reviews go, we’re gonna give this convo five stars.
If you’re interested in more discussions like this one, be sure to join Morning Brew at one of our upcoming events. There’s a whole slate of exciting conversations to be had, and we look forward to seeing you there.