How Trustpilot pulled the levers on brand affinity

Trustpilot used brand tracking to understand – and then influence – awareness and affinity in 10 global markets.

Brand tracking
Technology
New York, US
250-1,000 employees

Challenge

Reviews site Trustpilot knew they had varying levels of awareness and affinity in their different markets, but they didn’t have a way to quantify that. They wanted reliable answers to three big questions:

1. What does Trustpilot’s regional saturation look like, and what is the correlation with affinity in those regions?

2. What levers can be used to impact saturation, awareness, and affinity?

3. Does Trustpilot have the same levels of awareness and affinity year-round, and what are the factors that impact that?

What we needed was a brand tracker. We wanted to measure prompted and unprompted awareness, NPS and affinity and we wanted to do that globally across our 10 most important markets so we called Attest.

Lauren Sims, Head of Consumer Marketing, Trustpilot

Solution

Following the launch of their quarterly brand tracker in July 2021, Trustpilot made some key discoveries about their different regions. For example, in the US, they found they had low awareness but very high affinity, meaning the consumers who knew their brand loved it. 

In the UK, on the other hand, they had high awareness and medium affinity, highlighting the need to address the concerns of vocal detractors. And in Italy, they had medium awareness and very high affinity. This was interesting because Trustpilot had done little marketing in Italy.

We took these learnings and decided to run some campaigns to figure out how we could impact the awareness and affinity.

Impact

Trustpilot planned a raft of activity in response to the findings from the brand tracker. In the UK, this included addressing negative sentiment driven by fake reviews and saw Trustpilot launch their first legal action against bad actors on the platform. This succeeded in improving affinity, with the brand considered more “trustworthy” in recent trackers.

In Italy, Trustpilot did a big out-of-home campaign, leading to a 35% increase in site traffic, alongside an uplift in demos and business sign-ups. Meanwhile, in the US, where the reviews market is very mature, Trustpilot identified the fintech sector as a key vertical in need of a recognisable trust mark. 

They ran a two-sided campaign (for B2B and B2C), partnering with journalists to write unbiased fintech guides for consumers. Post-campaign research found that Trustpilot had earned very high affinity with consumers with intent to purchase fintech – much higher than in their nationally representative sample. 

One of the things we love is the hands-on support Attest gives. We come from a business that doesn’t have a marketing insights department. The fact that we as marketers can feel confident in being able to run really interesting insights surveys is why we continue to work with Attest.

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