Do you want to skyrocket customer trust and increase your sales? Most entrepreneurs and marketing teams know you won’t make it far with your online business if people don’t trust your company.
Building organic trust and showing consumers why they should have faith in your business is an excellent way to grow your sales and engagement while cultivating an active audience.
Due to all of the marketing tools and strategies available, it can be hard to determine which techniques will help build trust and which are a waste of time.
We want to help you cut through the noise today by showing you 4 useful things you can do, regardless of your industry, to get more people to trust your brand and become customers.
Deliver on Your Promises
Has a friend ever failed to keep a promise they made to you? Odds are, you didn’t trust them in future situations because they let you down when you needed them most. This same sentiment can be used to describe customers and their connection to businesses.
Consumers expect companies to deliver on their promise because, as we know, there are countless other competitors out there offering a similar product or service. If you can’t show that you’re reliable and trustworthy, there’s a slim chance people will stick around after their initial encounter.
There are a couple of ways you can deliver on your promises. Lead magnets, for instance, are pieces of content sent to users in exchange for their email address. The goal of these interactions is to start building trust and show consumers your position as an expert.
The key to making your lead magnets work is to send them as soon as the user signs up. Include a link to the download in your welcome email, and you’ll see a much higher open rate because you followed through while still fresh in the mind of potential customers.
Similarly, you should check over all of your marketing material to make sure you’re not making false claims about what your product can do. After carefully reviewing this information, you can create a fine-tuned marketing experience that actually exceeds your promises, which goes a long way towards building trust.
Look for Opportunities to Increase Exposure
Exposure plays a massive role in trust. Consumers are more willing to trust companies that they see working with other brands or featured on prominent social media platforms. The more you can get your company name, product, and values on the web, the better chance you have at building trust with first-time visitors.
One way to increase your exposure is by writing guest posts for publications that operate within your industry. Believe it or not, 60% of bloggers write 1-5 guest posts a month, and that number is quickly increasing from the eCommerce side of things.
The key is to find publications that feature content that’s relevant to your industry. You always want to help the website (and its visitors) by publishing content that provides data-driven facts and actionable solutions. Ideally, this will become a win-win situation for everyone.
Even if readers don’t immediately click-through to your website, they still get exposure to your brand name. Now, when they see your company on social media, they are more likely to click the follow button because they have built-in trust from seeing you on a reputable website.
It’s worth noting that this process works in reverse too. If someone finds your brand on social media because they are interested in your value proposition, they may start looking for your blog or guest posts on other sites. The end goal is the same, to get them back to your website and trust your company when they see you on the web.
Use Trust-Building Tools
Marketing teams have a whole bunch of trust-building tools they can use to skyrocket consumer confidence. Each tool has a purpose and can help you see significant boosts in sales and engagement.
One of the most popular options is testimonials. Adding these handy little reviews to your sales page can boost conversions by an impressive 34%. Consumers tend to make purchases with companies that feature plenty of reviews. Including testimonials on individual landing pages can result in more people taking action because they see personalized experiences from customers.
We also recommend using trust badges on applicable pages throughout your website. Some eCommerce stores choose to put trust signals from security websites like Norton on every page’s footer, while others stick to putting them on optin forms and payment pages. Either way, trust badges are the perfect way to show users that your brand is trustworthy.
You may want to consider adding other types of trust signals to your websites. Some brands use on-site notifications to show users what other customers are doing in real-time. For instance, showing new visitors that people are subscribing may be the social trigger they need to enter their email address.
Improve Customer Service
We’ve all had a poor customer service experience that resulted in us losing trust in a business. The way brands handle customer service can make or break their sales and customer retention rate. You have to know what kind of problems your customers will face and prepare your team to handle these issues.
The best way to get a handle on your customers’ mindset is to spend some time learning about your target audience. Review feedback forms, social media engagement, and blog post comments to better understand the people visiting your website.
Once you’ve thoroughly uncovered your customer personas, you can start training your customer service team. Go over the common pain points, objections, and problems, and offer tangible solutions that the representatives can use in live conversations. Preparing your team for these needs will result in smoother customer service experiences, which helps build trust.
If you want to expedite service, consider adding chatbots to your website to reduce the total number of active tickets. Chatbots can help consumers with common questions so your live team can handle more complicated tickets throughout the day.
Final Thoughts
There’s no doubting the importance of trust. All good relationships are founded on this principle, including the connection between business owners and consumers. You should do everything you can to build trust with new and existing customers so you can continue growing your business and building an audience that’s dedicated to your brand.