Copy And

13. Beat the Trust Recession with Copy That Connects with Buyers

• Sam Burmeister | Conversion Copywriter @ Nomad Copy • Episode 13

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Everyone’s talking about a trust recession, but fewer people are talking about what actually rebuilds trust in a skeptical market.

In this episode, I break down what the trust recession really is, how we got here, and how service-based businesses can create a trust renaissance using human-first, psychology-backed copy. If sales feel slower, buyers need more reassurance, or your audience seems harder to move, this episode shows you exactly how to rebuild trust and increase conversions in a changed marketplace.

Key Points Covered in This Episode:

  • What people actually mean when they say “trust recession” and why buyers are more cautious
  • How modern marketing (AI, scams, over-polish) has changed how audiences evaluate credibility
  • The role copy plays in building trust before someone ever buys
  • How to write copy that makes people feel understood, safe, and confident saying yes

Resources Mentioned:

Find Donna and the CEO Sprint podcast at this link!

To find Danielle at DM Squared Media, go to dmsquaredmedia.com/nomad. 

Connect with me:

Nomad Copy Services → sales pages, emails, websites, and more.

Get on my calendar → if you’d like me to write your sales copy for you!

Free Opt-In Copy Bot → Write high-converting opt-in pages in minutes

Watch episodes with subtitles on my YouTube

Nomad Copy Agency writes copy that CONVERTS for service-based businesses. Inquire about done-for-you services here.

Hello and welcome back to Copy and the marketing podcast where you learn how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. If you don't already know me, my name is Sam and I'm the founder and lead copywriter at Nomad Copy Agency. Where we both write copy and I help people write copy that sounds like them, but converts better Inside of copy on demand. Today we are talking about trust because yes, the word on the street is that we are in a trust recession, and I have been. Hearing a lot about, um, blaming low sales on the trust recession. So I wanna talk about what the trust recession is, how we got here, what makes and breaks trust, and how we can build trust in our copy to ultimately sell more, not just to overcome the trust recession, but to build a business that people love to buy from. As I was preparing for this episode, I thought about this quote that I used to have written inside of my notebook. In high school, we had those like school provided planners, and on the inside I had written down Trust takes years to build and seconds to lose, and I really think that that is the simplest way to describe what has happened with the trust recession. It is been talked about again, almost as this excuse, but also it's as if it's this fact that like we are in a trust recession and that's just what it is. So we need to move forward as business owners and marketers, and really I think what we have an incredible opportunity to do as business owners is lean into a trust renaissance. Not just rebuilding trust, but building our businesses from this foundation of trust so that when somebody says your name in a room on the internet. On, say, threads or Instagram that people immediately think of as a positive association. And again, somebody that they just love spending money with because they know that they're gonna get the results that were promised. So let's dig in. Let's start with what is the trust recession and how did we get here? First of all, the trust recession is very real. As I was researching this episode, I was looking at journal articles from Stanford and Harvard, as well as from across the pond. It's not a uniquely American thing, but there aren't really exact parameters around it. But ultimately, the trust recession just means that people's ability to trust blindly has gone away. We can't do it anymore, and there's a lot of reasons for that. How did we get here? Honestly, let's call it out. Ai. We can share videos and like, I'm sure everybody's parents have sent them an AI made video where it's like, Hey there, Karen, you know that this wasn't real, right? But we're getting bombarded with images and messages that weren't made by people. So that's thing one is like we don't even know what is real and what is human. Then there's also this erosion of trust from institutions that we previously could trust to an extent, right? That may be the government, it may be other companies that you could previously buy from that have decreased in quality. It can be on a macro or a micro level. So we say macro. That's the big side of things of like, we used to be able to trust companies. We used to trust the government at least in a different way. And then on a micro level, that comes down to everyone and their mother. Selling something and the erosion of quality that we've gotten specifically, I'll call this out in the online space in the last couple years, but it's not necessarily that people are scamming, it's not necessarily that nobody is trustworthy. It's that we have become more judicious as buyers before we spend our money. I'll give you another example. I think this one's wild. A good friend of mine was recently reached out to and asked to be on Amy Puller's podcast. This friend is an influencer, so she wasn't totally surprised, that a big name would reach out to her. It wasn't completely outlandish and ultimately. She didn't get fully scammed, but she did find out way too late in the game that it was not real. Like she was packing her bags to go be on the podcast to fly to la. And it turns out as she did some research, that there were other people getting scammed. And so now there's this community of people who got scammed by fak, Amy Polar on our personal level, catfishers have been around forever. That's why things like the Sweet Bobby podcast exists or why the SAMA Podcast and then documentary exists is because people have been scamming people out of money. It's a tale as old as time, right? But again, on both a macro and a micro level, so many things have happened that just feel so freaking personal that our trust has eroded as buyers. There's another side to this though that I don't think gets talked about enough, and that's the erosion of trust in ourselves. And I have a degree in marketing. I do marketing for a living, and I will be. So honest with you is that a lot of marketing messaging hinges on you not being enough. You're not pretty enough. So you buy a face cream, you're not smart enough, so you buy Duolingo. You're not savvy enough at whatever you're doing in your business. So you buy a course, you're not good enough at writing, so you buy chat. GPT Pro, we've been taught not to trust through experience, to not trust others, but we're also seeing an erosion of trust in ourselves. So this trust recession and how we got here comes from this lack of trust that is global. And then we are outsourcing our trust into other people or into products that are supposed to make us more or make us enough. So what happens is, is people become judicious buyers. And again, I said this at the beginning, I think this gives us, as marketers in our own businesses a huge opportunity. To change the way that we reach people because people are not in a spending freeze. When we hear about a recession, we immediately think that people aren't spending, because when we've heard the term recession in the past, it means that. Our GDP is down as a country, but people are not in a spending freeze. They're in a validation freeze. They need to take a beat. They take a little bit longer to purchase, and they need the space to validate that what they are purchasing is going to give them the result that they want, especially at a consumer level. It's also changing who people are buying from. Whether that be online or big brands, we see people changing who they're buying from. Again, as a political action or as a personal action, but ultimately in a trust recession. What you need to know is that the relationship is becoming increasingly important. We wanna see the face of the people and the companies that we are buying from. So that's how we got here. That's the trust recession, right? Is that it's simply a new way that we get to market ourselves. And the way that I'm calling that is the trust renaissance. We get to build a renaissance of how people interact with us and our brands. So how do they do that? What builds trust and break trust. Let's talk about not copy first. First things, proof of humanity. This is the seeing you on the internet, seeing you in real life. I was recently with a friend who said that her number one lead gen last year, because she did almost no marketing online, was simply going to conferences and talking to the people that she knew she would wanna work with. She went to like three events last year and was booked out for the entire year. So you, if you can't go online or in person to places, then there's ways to be seen online. That means putting your face on the internet. Honestly. That means showing and educating people on why you are the best person to work with. That means not leaning into faceless marketing and whatever those courses are that are being sold, it means showing videos. And honestly, this is a weird one to even say out loud, but real photos of yourself that are not AI generated. Am I anti ai? No. However, your brain's threat detector, so we're gonna go into sales psychology here for just a second, is your amygdala and your amygdala will flag anything that feels off or imperfect. This is something that is meant to protect you and if your amygdala senses that something is off, your walls are gonna go up When you are real, you are. Decreasing people's walls. You are helping them to disarm and trust you, and then that's when the brain can understand how you can help them, rather than understanding simply that you are not going to hurt them. That's why a slightly messy video on the internet where you're stumbling over your words or, maybe you have hairs out of place, or you're saying the wrong thing, you misuse a word. That's why a slightly messy video is going to outperform a super polished one because somebody's gonna say that is relatable. That feels like a real person behind the screen. So yeah, you can show up in person, you can show up on the internet, and you can show up with your messaging. This is where copy comes in. So how can we use our words on the internet? To connect with people so that they trust us. Couple of ways, the first, as I mentioned previously, is mistakes. But how do we make a mistake? Honestly is by writing it yourself. I don't have a degree in writing. Even though I'm a copywriter and I have always used the M dash. So when this whole conversation about like AI and the M dash came up, I was confused, but I realized when I started playing with AI, that AI used the M dash like super grammatically correctly, and I did not, basically, there were no spaces before or after it, and it was one character longer than what I was used to using. I was used to using, I would hit hyphen space, and it would be like three hyphens long, the way that AI uses it. So part of my humanity is like actually consistently making this grammatical error. I'm not telling you to go use AI and then make it wrong. I'm saying that like when I just showed up as myself, that story that I was telling came out with some slight mistakes, and that was okay because it meant that it was a person writing it. So that's one way to connect with people. Another is through storytelling, and we go back to like third grade when we learned B Me beginning, middle, end. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that is absolutely correct. That is the basics. Of storytelling. However, if you go back to, let's see, I think it was episode four, which was defining your ideal customer and writing for the transformation. That's what I talk about is the transformation and the, when we talk about storytelling and marketing, it's simply telling a story, not necessarily about yourself, but helping your clients see you in. As seeing you as part of their story when you become an inevitable part of their story. So when I say how that we tell stories to build trust, yes, we can absolutely tell stories about past clients and their successes and use that social proof to build trust. We can also understand what the transformation is that our ideal clients want to see. And then when we think about beginning, middle, end. The end of their story is not when they work with you. That's the end of your story because your goal is the sale. However, their ending of the story is what happens after they purchase from you. Again, I would encourage you to go back to episode four, which is about finding the transformation, but remember that the beginning is where they are now. The middle of their story is when they make a purchase, and the end is the transformation that they see as a per from your purchase. And you can tell this story and use vivid language in this story to help them see that you understand them and what happens after they work with you. You can also just share your story that doesn't necessarily have a sales story behind it. And I'll tell you this, this was really weird. So we have parasocial relationships with everybody on the internet. It's just what it is, right? So I was on a sales call the other day with somebody who ended up signing as a client and she's in the fitness industry, and she said something to me that I thought was really random, and she mentioned that I had recently PRD on my bench press. And I think one time on a day that I was just not into working, I had posted a picture of me working out, or maybe it was a video saying like, work with a copywriter who can do it all. Or, something like that. Like it was not a serious post. I just shared who I was as a person on the internet. And this person, after she had reached out to me and had been following me for a while said, you know, part of the reason that I wanna work with you is because you understand physical fitness. So I know that you can work for me as a fitness brand and a wellness brand because I'm not gonna have to get you up to speed on the language that I want to use. So I thought that that was really interesting. That I built humanity simply by like not even talking about work. I just literally dropped a fun fact about myself and it helped her to understand that I was the right person to work with because there is an entire person there to work with. Couple of ways. We talked about the trust recession, what builds and breaks trust? What builds trust is being a whole person and bringing that whole person into your work. And then how can we build that trust in our copy is understanding that trust is a precondition for desire because you can't think about things you want when your safety is potentially compromised. And so when your safety is compromised, again, this goes back to the amygdala being the part of the brain that's gonna put your walls up if something isn't right, and when something is right, then we can start thinking about wants versus needs. And you just can't tell to somebody if they're bracing for disappointment. So to be human. Is to be able to build desire for people. Another thing with sales psychology here, we've talked about this in the past, but Maslow's Pyramid, Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the very basis, the bottom of this pyramid, the foundation of humanity is food, water, shelter. Then it jumps into relationships and love. And then at the tippy top is self-actualization. People aren't buying for survival anymore. If we were buying for survival, we would all live in super simple homes and eat like super simple meals. We are buying, and the people that you're selling services to on the internet are buying for identity, belonging and self-actualization. So when we're telling stories. When using our copy to connect with people and build trust, we can't just jump straight to this is what it is and why you should want it. There has to be some sort of story there that you can align with them, that they are telling themselves that feels real to them. That feels tangible. That feels. Like you understand. So there's also this humanity of like understanding when we connect with people, that they are going to be able to trust us because they understand that we are like them. So it's not, you got me as far as like, you made the sale, it's you get me and therefore will make the sale. So that's how we build trust in our copy is through storytelling, is through being really human, honestly, making a few mistakes. But how do we then use that trust to sell more? So here's the thing. Copy is a container of trust in your business because copy is what gets people onto your website. It's what gets people to click on your ads. Your copy is what gets people to click on buy buttons. It's what brings people from your blog to your website, from your website to your sales pages, from your sales pages, to your emails, from your emails back to your sales pages. Big brands use copy, individuals use copy, right? Great copy at the end of the day, does not manipulate it mirrors and understands, by mirroring and understanding your audience, you are building trust with them because it helps people see themselves in your words, drop their resistance and say something like, oh, she gets me. I think this person actually understands what I'm going through and where I wanna go, and therefore I'm going to buy from them. So as you look to build trust, as you participate in the trust renaissance, here's what I want you to know if your sales are down and you are using tools that make you seem inhuman online, and you are jumping straight to dropping your prices and having more sales and asking for the sale more directly, but you aren't building relationships along the way, I can help you do that. I want you to build trust with your audience and build self-trust as you communicate with your audience, as you build these relationships. And here's how we're gonna do that is copy on demand opens on December 15th. It'll close for a while. It'll open up again on January 5th. If you believe that you are experiencing a trust recession, that your sales are down, that it's harder to get people to understand what it is that you do, why they should buy from you, then you need to be building relationships and building trust in your copy because your copy is what scales your business, so I want you to take a look at Copy on Demand. The link will be in the show notes or it's at nomad copy agency.com/copy on demand. But what you do inside of Copy on Demand is you become a better copywriter in your business on your own copy. This is not a course, this is done with you copywriting where you get my eyes on your business every single week. I can help you brainstorm what do I need to write to build trust so that I can lead to a sale. I can help you edit the copy that you already have and make it better. We can take a look at things like your open rates, your click-through rates, and see where there are gaps in your copy. Because here's the deal, I have reviewed over 1600 pieces of copy this year. I have worked on two dozen client launches and campaigns, so I'm in there getting my hands dirty. I see what's working and what's not working, and what's working. My people who are building trust are the ones who are selling more. My people who are being really freaking real online and writing their own copy. Or hiring somebody to write their copy for them, but to have a person writing that copy is what is selling, and that's what's gonna carry us into 2026 as well. So go to the show notes, check out copy on demand. If you end up listening to this retroactively and copy on demand is closed, I still encourage you to reach out to me and see if there are other ways that we can work together. You can always reach me@nomadcopyagency.com. I'm on Instagram at nomad dot copy, and I look forward to hearing how you change what you're doing to build trust so that more people feel that they can have a working relationship with you and your brand.