It’s no surprise to anyone in the agency world that, in addition to all the other pressures agencies are under, trust in marketing continues to be challenged.

There’s a lot of theories out there for why that is, and I’m sure there are also a lot of suggestions on how to rebuild trust.

But Aaron Templer, the latest guest on The Innovative Agency podcast, has a unique point of view about trust-building in marketing..

Instead of focusing on marketing as a set of tactics to make sales or drive revenue, Aaron believes marketers can think of themselves as community builders, applying principles of leadership to build that trust.

Aaron recently joined meThe Innovative Agency podcast  on to share four leadership principles that agencies can begin implementing today to start building trust with clients.

1: Inspire Shared Visions

Essentially, what leaders do is inspire shared visions.

They don’t share inspired ones.

A lot of traditional agencies impose their own brilliant ideas upon markets or clients and think that will turn the corner for revenue generation or brand building — whatever it is they’re being engaged to do.

But really, the opposite is true —  it takes a lot of listening to all the stakeholders involved to truly grasp the common threads between them.

When you seek that shared vision, you’re listening to your clients more and understanding their needs better. And that builds trust.

2: Have Skin in the Game, But Focus on the Client

Lately we’ve seen a lot of consultancies give agencies a run for their money.

Agencies do have an advantage over consultancies in that they have some skin in the game, usually in the form of anticipated revenue from executing strategy..

That’s really important. But agencies can take one lesson from consultancies.

Because fees for ongoing deliverables aren’t usually on the table for consultants, they can look at things from an agnostic standpoint in terms of tactics to really provide a better strategy for the client.

It’s good to have skin in the game — but if agencies strived to be a little more agnostic about tactics, they could provide a lot more value for clients. This builds leadership-based trust between brand and agency.

3: Leverage Social Capital

Stop thinking of yourself as a marketer on social media.

Instead, think of yourself as a community builder and leader who builds and leverages social capital.

There’s compelling evidence that suggests the way we typically do social media marketing simply does not work.

Why?

Well, from a marketing standpoint, there’s evidence for this from across all of the typical KPIs around marketing. The data suggests that social marketing is not effective at hitting the most recognizable KPI’s. Neuroscience supports the premise that our brains aren’t necessarily well-wired for social media marketing to work.

The bottom line is that we need to think differently to make social media effective.

We can use the principle of social capital to do this – using social influence gained through community building and similar tactics to gain trust.

If you want to learn more about social capital, check out Social or In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work.

4: Build Influence

An additional leadership tactic you can apply to be a more effective marketer on social media is influence building.

A great resource to explore further on this strategy is the book Yes!: 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion. This book deals with strategies of building reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus – all of which are components of influence.

Influence builds trust. It’s yet another way to apply the principles of leadership to create effective marketing.

Top takeaways from my conversation with Aaron?

Leadership is a discipline we really need to apply to our relationships with clients.

By doing so, we can rebuild trust and ultimately, create more value for them.

This blogpost is based on an interview with Aaron Templer from Three Over Four.

To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Innovative Agency Podcast.

If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.