Trust Signals: Why Your Growth Strategy Might Be Missing A Foundational Element

Over the last several months I’ve been talking with Executives and CMOs of B2B SaaS companies discussing growth strategies and what levers they should be considering. Most had the fundamentals in place. Strong product-market fit. Straight forward landing pages and CTAs. Product Overviews and Solution pages. But their pipeline was plateauing or flat, and they were struggling to understand why.

It wasn't how much they were spending on paid media, their SEO rankings or their ad targeting. It was in what prospects saw before they ever clicked. Many had only 10% of the reviews as leaders in their category, some had customer stories but they were generic in nature,   they were invisible in all the places where buyers form their initial impression.

They had a trust problem, not a tactics problem.

The Trust Gap Most Marketing Teams Miss

Here's what I've learned after 25 years in marketing and media roles: the buyer journey doesn't start when someone clicks your ad or visits your website. It starts the moment they become aware of a need or they have a problem to solve. And in that early research phase—often happening in places you'll never track—buyers are making rapid-fire credibility assessments that determine whether you make their shortlist. “The Day ‘0’ List”. This is the list of 2-4 providers/solutions they have decided are worthy of consideration before the RFP is built. If you’re not on this list your company's chances of being purchased are ~20% at best. 

Most marketing organizations are optimized for prospects who already trust them enough to engage. They've invested heavily in demand capture—paid search, nurture sequences, sales enablement—while under-investing in the signals that get them into consideration in the first place. 

The companies that grow efficiently understand something fundamental: trust is a system, not a checklist. You can't just add some customer logos to your homepage and call it done. You need a deliberate strategy for building credibility at every stage of awareness and treat it as something that requires ongoing support.

The Trust Signal Stack

I think about trust signals in three layers, each serving a specific function in the buyer journey. The companies that get this right are strategic about which signals they prioritize based on where their prospects are in their decision process.

Layer 1: Category Credibility — "Who are you?"

The brands that are known are the brands that get bought. Before a prospect evaluates whether you're the best solution, they need to know you exist and you're a legitimate solution in the category. This isn't about preference—it's about presence.

The trust signals that matter here are all about context and association. Being present in the right places alongside the competitors your prospects already know signals that you're legitimate. This means showing up in category-level searches (both traditional SEO and answer engine optimization), appearing in relevant analyst reports or round-ups, and being ‘on the shelf’ on the review sites where your category lives (G2, Capterra, Trust Radius).

ADVICE: Consistency and intentionality win, 1) You need to build a sustained SEO strategy around category terms, not just branded ones. 2) Invest in review sites. Make sure that when prospects search "[category] for [use case]," they appear ‘on the shelf’ next to established players in search, in LLMs, and on review sites.

Category credibility is table stakes. If you're not present where the conversation is happening, nothing else in your marketing stack matters.

Layer 2: Social Proof — "Have People Like Me Bet on You?"

Once you've cleared the "awareness" bar, prospects want to know if you're proven. And they're not looking for your opinion—they're looking for peer validation.

This is where most B2B companies have some trust signals, but they're often weak or poorly deployed. Customer logos are standard, but they only work if prospects recognize the names and see companies similar to themselves. A fintech startup isn't reassured by your healthcare clients. Reviews matter, but only if you have enough of them and they're recent. Case studies are valuable, but only if they speak to similar challenges. 

ADVICE: Don’t treat social proof as a static asset, rather than something that needs ongoing cultivation. Your competitors aren't sitting still—they're actively generating reviews, publishing case studies, and growing their LinkedIn following. If you were competitive on social proof six months ago, you might not be today.

The most sophisticated approach I've seen treats social proof as a continuous pipeline, not a one-time project. These companies have systematic processes for generating reviews, rotating case studies to stay relevant, and making it easy for happy customers to share their experience. They understand that in an era where buyers can find peer opinions everywhere, absence of social proof is its own signal.

One tactical example: This brand was a smaller player with several very large competitors. Their LinkedIn followership lagged materially behind even second tier competitors. The team invested in growing followership and over time landed in the top 5 in terms of category followers. This isn’t a vanity metric, it demonstrates to people, “we are worthy of their followership” and for those who are less familiar, made the brand look bigger than they were. 

Layer 3: Demonstrated Expertise — "Do You Actually Understand My World?"

The final layer is where most brands miss. Category credibility gets you in the game. Social proof shows you're trusted. But demonstrated expertise is what makes prospects believe you can actually solve their specific problem.

ADVICE:  Don’t confuse thought leadership with promotional content. Don’t publish blog posts that are thinly veiled sales pitches. They create "resources" that are just lead forms with a PDF attached.

Demonstrate real expertise by delivering value before asking for anything in return. It's publishing original research that gives your prospects new insights. It's building tools or calculators that help them understand their problem better. It's sharing frameworks that they can use whether they buy from you or not.

The reason this works as a trust signal: it proves you understand the problem space deeply enough to teach, not just sell. When a decision maker sees that you've published a comprehensive analysis of how companies in their industry are approaching a specific challenge—complete with data they can't find elsewhere—they think "these people actually get it."

I've seen this play out repeatedly: companies invest in creating genuinely useful content only to gate resources as a means to ‘get credit’. If you invest properly here, prospects come in already believing your company understands their challenges, which improves sell-through. 

Building Your Trust Signal Strategy

The mistake most marketing leaders make is treating these three layers as independent tactics. A blog post here, some review generation there, maybe update the customer logos every six months.

The companies that win treat trust signals as infrastructure—something that requires ongoing investment and measurement. They audit their presence across all three layers quarterly. They track how their trust signals compare to competitors. They have clear owners for each layer and specific metrics they're trying to move.

Start with an honest assessment: Where are the gaps in your trust stack? Are you invisible in category-level searches? Are you ‘on the shelf’ in appropriate categories within review sites? Do you have fewer reviews than your competitors? Has your thought leadership gone stale? Most companies have glaring weaknesses in at least one layer, often more.

Then get systematic. Building trust signals isn't a campaign—it's a capability. The companies that grow efficiently have made trust-building a core competency, and integrated it into campaigns.

Your prospects are forming opinions about your credibility right now, in places you're not tracking, based on signals you may not be sending. The question isn't whether to invest in trust signals. It's whether you can afford not to.