Customers Who Click
Building Trust Through Personal Reputation
April 26, 2022
In episode 108 of the Customers Who Click podcast I spoke with Bant Breen, the founder of Qnary who provide reputation management and talent branding solutions. In this episode we explored why building personal reputation is so important, and can really drive trust in a ecommerce brand. Leveraging that human voice is critical to building trust in a business. Some of the most powerful campaigns I’ve run for my clients have involved personal style communications. Ones that come from an employee and are written as if they are from a person. Consumers want to engage with brands that they feel are run by real people, and this is why building personal reputation is so important. If you’d like to connect with Bant you can find him on LinkedIn or head over to https://www.qnary.com/.
In episode 108 of the Customers Who Click podcast I spoke with Bant Breen, the founder of Qnary who provide reputation management and talent branding solutions. In this episode we explored why building personal reputation is so important, and can really drive trust in a ecommerce brand.

Leveraging that human voice is critical to building trust in a business.

Some of the most powerful campaigns I’ve run for my clients have involved personal style communications. Ones that come from an employee and are written as if they are from a person. Consumers want to engage with brands that they feel are run by real people, and this is why building personal reputation is so important.

If you’d like to connect with Bant you can find him on LinkedIn or head over to https://www.qnary.com/.


Key highlights:

01:43 - 08:53 - Biggest Opportunities for D2C Growth - Building trust is so important, and a great way of doing that is letting customers see the people behind the brand. Have your employees become advocates of the brand and the industry that you’re in, encourage them to be active on social media, get them into your emails so that customers feel like they’re really engaging with someone. The biggest impacts will come from the founders and executives though. If people follow and engage with your senior staff, they’re more likely to buy from your company.

09:03 - 22:30 - How to Get Started Building Your Reputation? - Have you published any thought leadership pieces? Are you on podcasts? Interviews? Blogs? What happens when someone googles your name? Even channels like Tiktok, in fact, especially Tiktok now, are great opportunities to get in front of customers as the brand owner. You’re essentially becoming an influencer for your brand, and the best one for it because you know the story, the values etc better than anyone.

22:50 - 31:56 - Which Brands Does This Work For? - It works for anyone really. Think of your small local shops, you might know the owner or the staff that work there, theyre friendly and it makes you want to shop there more. I went to a restaurant recently for the first time in a few years and the manager recognised us and brought us a whisky at the end. I’m sure you all frequent a business which has better competitors, but you buy from them because you like the people.

32:31 - 34:59 - What Mistakes Should You Avoid - Avoid being too salesy, too promotional, thats not what this is here for. You’re building reputation not trying to generate a few extra sales, they’ll come eventually anyway. Don’t give up, you need to be consistent, keep at it for a sustained period of time. These things take time.

57:12 - Who Would BantLike to Take For Lunch in the D2C Marketing World?

Someone from a huge, disruptive company, something like Airbnb.

58:15 - Bant’s Must-Have Ecommerce Tools:


If you’d like to hear more from Bant, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or head over to https://www.qnary.com/.