Epistemic Authority Is Powerful Enough To Build Trust And Build Up Customers

When Liberty Mutual chooses a young woman to represent its customers in its advertising for car insurance, it’s building epistemic authority. It’s telling its viewers “We understand you. We’re just like you. We have the same worries and the same concerns that you have… even the anxieties that you can’t articulate.”

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That authority builds trust and that trust creates the path that leads to the sale. But what happens next? In each interaction between the company and the customer, that trust is tested. The content may lay a claim to epistemic authority but the source of that authority has to be shown to be true. As the customer interacts with the business and receives responses to questions or claims, the customer has to continue to feel that the brand understands them and is on their side.

That happens in part through good customer service. It also happens through the constant reinforcement of that authority.

Liberty Mutual’s commercial delivers a simple and strong message. The short videos that it places on its Facebook page extend and continue to push that message. Some of the videos simply deliver information about benefits that customers might not know; they reinforce the customer’s sense that they made the right decision. Other videos mark holidays and special occasions to show that the company is thinking what its customers are thinking too. They function as a virtual hand on the shoulder from a trusted friend.

Authority Delivers Endorsements

Once that authority is created and that trust delivered successfully, though, something else starts to happen: it spreads. Authority is contagious. If a brand knows something and shares that knowledge with its customers, those customers know something too, something that other people don’t know. Those customers then become figures of authority themselves.

When their friends ask them for advice or for a recommendation — whether it’s about life insurance or healthcare — they get to exercise their authority and provide a knowledgeable answer, delivered with confidence. They get to enjoy the satisfaction of helping a friend with information that they believe is as accurate and as helpful as the information that they receive from their trusted source.

Epistemic authority gives customers the trust they need to make a purchase decision. It’s also powerful enough to improve those customers by enhancing their knowledge and deepening their confidence. When that confidence and authority is maintained through the constant flow of informative content, the customer comes to depend on the brand for their sense of authority. Only by seeing those videos on their websites or in their social media streams, in their email newsletters or on the corporate blog, can they feel in touch and up to date. Continuing to consume the company’s content ensures that their authority does not leak away.

The result of an epistemological approach to content marketing goes beyond trust and is powerful enough to reach customer satisfaction, confidence and wellbeing after the purchase. Customers who trust the authority of the brand know that they have made the right purchase decision. They’ll buy again, and they’ll also be able to tell their friends to buy from the same expert source.

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