Are you interested in building trust with your audience and securing more sales? Odds are, the answer is yes! Business owners and marketers know that their brand won’t make it far if consumers don’t trust their company or products.
The thing is, trust needs to be earned. You can’t expect someone to land on your site for the first time and automatically assume that you’re a reputable, high-quality brand. You have to take action to show that you’re trustworthy and want to do everything you can to help your customers find success.
Today, our goal is to share several tips you can use, regardless of your industry, to build trust with your audience. Feel free to experiment with our suggestions and build a social proof strategy that works for your business.
Let’s dive in!
Invest in Top-Notch Content
Your content, specifically your blog, is one of the best ways to build trust with new visitors. A whopping 77% of online shoppers read blog posts, so you can bet that a majority of people who land on your site will want to check out your latest content.
When a user clicks on one of your posts, they typically have a specific purpose in mind. Depending on your industry, this goal may be to find an answer, get advice, or simply be entertained. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it is to create impactful content.
Review your customer segments and make sure you’re publishing articles that resonate with their pain points or goals. If someone clicks on one of your posts and is blown away by your insightful point of view and data to back up your claims, they will click away with more trust than they had at the start of their interaction.
There’s a good reason why 47% of shoppers prefer to read 3 blog posts before investing in a brand. They want to make sure that the team behind the content is reputable, informed, and publishes top-notch content.
Display Key Engagement Numbers
Key engagement numbers are also an excellent way to build social proof and your reputation. We mainly mean factors like your following on social media and email subscribers when we say engagement numbers.
Visitors are far more likely to engage with these channels when they see other people are also involved. The thing is, you don’t always need to show full reviews across every page on your site.
We like including key engagement numbers on our blog. When a visitor reads one of our posts, they can see a subscription form on the side, along with a line that states, “Join Over 235,335 subscribers to get free conversion optimization tips and resources.” This call-to-action doesn’t just ask visitors to join; it shows them that literally hundreds of thousands of people already get weekly emails from our brand, which is a crucial trust signal.
Use Live Sales Notifications
Another brilliant way to build trust with your audience is to show live sales notifications. Simply put, these are alerts that show up on the screen for everyone on our site when a customer makes a purchase, joins or lead lists, or has another meaningful interaction with our business.
These alerts also help build social proof, but in a different way. Instead of saying, “these people trust our content,” we are saying, “these people trust our products.” You can use live sales notifications in plenty of exciting ways, depending on the social proof tool you use on your site.
You can even make it so the alerts pop up after a new visitor lands on your website. For instance, a user may see a popup that says “(Customer) purchased (product) 2 hours ago!”
Research shows that showing real-time sales notifications is a powerful way to grow your business. On average, brands that use this marketing strategy see a 15% boost in conversions.
Invest in a Loyalty Program
If you want to see more repeat customers and build rapport with your audience, loyalty programs are an excellent tool. There’s a good chance some of your favorite businesses use loyalty points to keep you coming back to their site.
Starbucks, for instance, has an excellent loyalty program that rewards users for shopping via their mobile app. The marketing team at Starbucks knows that 55% of the world owns a mobile device, so they created an easy-to-use app to simplify their reward program.
Now, visitors can rack up points and get free drinks just by doing exactly what they planned to do anyway.
You can implement a similar strategy by rewarding customers through a points-based system or cashback program. Both of these techniques are effective ways to show your visitors that you’re expecting them to come back to shop in the future, which instills confidence.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Next, let’s talk about your customer service team. We’ve all experienced poor customer service, and it’s not a good time. In fact, most people don’t bother reporting their negative experiences; they just leave and never return.
You never want to put your visitors in this position. The way your support team handles queries can significantly impact how much people trust your business. One way to strengthen connections with your customers in these moments is to spend some time getting to fully understand their problems.
The more you know about your customers’ expectations, the better chance you’ll have to earn their trust. Encourage your team to get to the bottom of issues and make sure each person is delighted when they close the customer support window.
We like to go over our support tickets every month and adjust our training to match what customers ask. So, suppose we get a bunch of questions about one specific product. In that case, we give all of our support members a refresher course so they can confidently talk about our product when these questions inevitably arise.
Final Thoughts
Trust is one of the most important things you can have as a business owner. If people aren’t sure if your company is reliable and reputable, they will find a company that meets their standards. The tips offered today will help you build rapport with new and returning visitors, which could lead to more sales, traffic, and engagement.