Building trust with your ideal customers is one of the most important aspects of running a business. Building trust can lead to greater brand awareness, increased customer loyalty and, perhaps most importantly, more sales.
In this article, we’re going to outline some tips that will help you win your customers’ trust. Let’s get started.
Find Ways To Prove You’re Great At What You Do
You might know that you’re great at what you do, but your ideal customers aren’t just going to take your word for it! So, you need to find ways that you can provide concrete proof to show your customers that you have quality products or services.
Here are a few different ways you can prove that you’re great at what you do:
- Highlight positive reviews and testimonials
- Show off your media mentions
- Display relevant industry awards or qualifications
- Showcase any high-profile clients you have
Using these tactics will help you to build trust with your customers, ensuring that your company is more competitive. So, make sure you display these forms of social proof where they’re most relevant, like on the related product or service pages, or on your homepage where they’ll be prominent and seen by anyone who visits your site.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of businesses that use this tactic well for inspiration.
A Gift Personalized, a retailer of custom gifts, showcases reviews on their homepage to show that they’re great at what they do. Towards the bottom of their homepage, they have a series of 5-star reviews with attached testimonials in a carousel. The reviews feature quotes from past customers outlining the quality of products, their quick shipping, and more.
People visiting A Gift Personalized’s website will want to know that they’ll receive their product quickly and without errors. By highlighting these reviews, the company is able to build trust with website visitors and make it more likely that they’ll make a purchase.
On your website, highlight positive reviews from past customers! This will prove to prospective shoppers that you’ve gotten excellent results in the past, building trust and making it more likely that they’ll spend money with you.
Purple, an online mattress retailer, shows off their expertise to website visitors in a different way. Above, notice how they highlight that they’ve received an award for customer satisfaction two years in a row. Showcasing awards like this will help to build trust with website visitors. After all, who wouldn’t want to try out an award-winning mattress? By highlighting this, Purple makes it more likely that someone who lands on the site will spend money with them.
On your website, be sure to highlight any awards you’ve received in order to build trust with your prospective customers. Don’t have any awards yet? No worries. Head to Awards Finder — they can help you find relevant awards to apply for (and hopefully win)!
Ensure Your Team Always Provides Excellent Customer Service
Your customers are going to want to feel listened to. If they do, they’ll be more likely to trust your business and spend their time and money with you. This means that, if you receive questions or your customers have concerns, you need to handle them quickly and professionally, providing excellent customer service.
Be sure to provide multiple customer service channels, as different people like to communicate in different ways. In order to choose the best methods of communication, it could help to survey your existing customers in order to determine their preferred channels of contact. You might find that your customers prefer to contact you on social media or live chat, for instance, rather than on the phone or through email.
Just make sure you don’t fall into the trap of spreading your team too thin when it comes to your customer service channels. A good idea is to leverage phone support software solutions that can help you get in touch with your customers with ease, and that too in real-time. What makes phone support even better is the fact that you can assist your customers quickly without any hassle. You could, of course, pair this up with a live chat solution to further improve your customer service. You don’t want your team to feel overwhelmed, or start missing messages. So, only implement the channels that your team can adequately handle with their time and resources.
Publish Expert Content That Demonstrates Your Skills And Knowledge
Creating website content that positions you as an expert in your field is a great way to show that you’re trustworthy! If you can help your ideal customers learn more about your products, services, or your industry as a whole, they’ll grow to trust you.
Additionally, creating high-quality website content is a great way to improve your search engine optimization or SEO. E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, is a huge consideration for search engines like Google when it comes to ranking websites on the search engine results pages (SERPs). So, if you can show that you’re an expert when you’re writing your blog content, you can improve your chances of ranking for relevant queries.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of businesses that have expert content on their websites for inspiration.
For instance, Cisco Umbrella, a leader in cloud cybersecurity solutions, has a well-written article on DNS Security that shows off their expertise in the area well. The article covers the basics of DNS security, how it works, and more. The guide is very thorough and makes it clear to the website visitor not only that Cisco Umbrella knows what they’re talking about when it comes to online security, but it can help convince prospective clients to spend money on these DNS security programs.
For your own website, think about what types of ultimate guides you could create that are related to your area of expertise, similar to the one Cisco Umbrella has. What topics do you know inside and out? What do people come to you for over other businesses? Writing content on these topics can help you to build trust with prospective clients.
On the other hand, Aerial Wakeboarding, a retailer of ski towers and wakeboarding equipment, shows off their expertise on their web page for wakeboard towers. The content, shown above, covers just about everything someone might want to know about their wakeboard towers before making a purchase, including their specific features, available packages, warranty information, and more. This web page shows that the team behind Aerial Wakeboarding are experts when it comes to watersports, and particularly where their wakeboard towers are concerned! Publishing this kind of content is a great way for them to build trust with their prospective customers.
On your website, make sure that it’s apparent to your prospective customers that you’re an expert in your field. You can do this by outlining some of the history of your company or showing off just how much you know about your products or services!
Make Sure You Show Customers Your Values
Customers are more likely to trust businesses whose values align with theirs. This means that, in order to build trust with your ideal customers, you need to look for ways to show off your business’s values and determine how you can incorporate them into the way you work.
For example, you could start your own charity initiative where you donate a certain percentage of your profits to a cause that you care about, publish high-quality content around worthy causes that support your values, or highlight the ways you’re being environmentally friendly. These are all strategies that will help your business and marketing stand out!
Let’s take a look at a few examples of companies that show off their values well for inspiration.
For example, Dainty Jewells, a retailer of modest clothing for women and girls, highlights their values in various blog posts. For instance, they have an article on the value of authenticity. The article covers how important it is to stay true to oneself, particularly when it comes to being a unique person. It’s a very heartfelt post that gives a lot of insight into what the people behind Dainty Jewells are like. It’s clear that this is a company with staff who strive to be authentic and courageous in their everyday lives.
On your website, highlight your values through your blog posts. Tell your customers what you’re all about and what traits and values you believe in. Doing this will help you build trust with your customers, making it more likely that they’ll spend money with you in the future.
Adidas, a sportswear company, highlights their values on some of their product selection pages. In fact, they have entire sections dedicated to showing off which of their products can help end plastic waste production. As you can see above, they have a variety of eco-friendly products, including ones made from recycled materials — some are made from ocean plastic, and some are made from vegan materials. With hundreds of products available, it’s clear to website visitors that Adidas cares about protecting the environment, building trust with them.
On your website, think about how your products and services align with your own values and highlight these details on your website. This will not only give your website visitors a better idea as to what your business is about but, if your values align with theirs, they’ll be more likely to trust you and spend money on your products or services
Help Your Customers Make The Most Suitable Purchases
If your customers see that you’re doing everything you can to help them make the best purchases to suit their needs, they’ll be much more likely to trust you. It will show that you don’t just care about making a quick buck, but that you actually want them to be pleased with their purchase!
There are a lot of different ways that you can help your customers make the purchase that’s right for them. Here are a few examples:
- Offer demos or free trials
- Write buying guides or comparison pieces that help educate customers about the products or services they’re interested in
- Create FAQ content that addresses common customer questions
Let’s take a look at a few examples of businesses that help their customers make the purchase that’s right for them to get some inspiration.
Best Buy, an electronics company, has a TV buying guide that makes it a lot easier for their prospective customers to make a decision. In the guide, they outline how they can help you find the perfect TV suitable for your needs. They cover details about resolution, who needs a smart TV or voice-assistance TV, LED specs vs. OLED specs, and more. It’s an extremely thorough guide that’s very helpful for prospective customers. Because the company has so many TVs available, making a choice can be overwhelming, but this buying guide provides all of the information a user needs to make a purchase, thus building their trust with Best Buy.
If you offer a lot of similar products or services, consider whether a buying guide would be helpful for your prospective customers. If you can outline details about the differences between your products and help them come to the best conclusion for their needs, they’ll be more likely to trust and buy from you.
Also, Paramount Plus, a new TV streaming service, helps their customers to make a purchase in a different way. They offer a free trial for new users to help them determine whether or not they like the service before spending money on it. This is a really great strategy, particularly because there are so many different streaming services out there — choices likely have to be made and, by offering a free trial, Paramount Plus builds trust with their prospective customers.
Consider whether it’s possible to offer a demo or a free trial of your services. If you do this, you can give your prospective customers a clear idea of what you offer. This will make it more likely that they’ll trust you, hopefully encouraging them to spend money with your business!
Ensure Your Website Provides A Great First Impression
Your website serves as the virtual storefront for your business. This means that you need to design your website in such a way that it gives prospective customers the best possible impression of your company. This will help ensure that website visitors grow to trust you and make a purchase with your company!
Here are a few different things you need to keep in mind when designing your website:
- Ensure your design is clean and not cluttered
- Have an intuitive and easy-to-use navigation system
- Only use high-quality images
- Only publish quality content that is free from grammatical and spelling mistakes
- Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly
- Have a fast-loading page speed (try to keep it under two seconds)
These are all factors that will help you build trust with your prospective customers. Polished websites reassure website visitors that you pay attention to detail and care about their experience with your business, making it more likely that they will trust you!
Summary
Building trust with your website visitors and prospective customers is an important aspect of running a business. In this article, we outlined how you can build trust using a well-designed website, high-quality content, top-notch customer service, and more.
Interested in learning more about other aspects of running a business? Check out the business archives from Technoroll. They have articles on remote team engagement, building your website, event hosting, and beyond.
Author bio
Alex Ratynski is the founder of Ratynski Digital, an online marketing consultancy that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals. He set up his company after working as a local SEO director for a dental marketing agency, where he helped to turn clients’ ventures into thriving multi-million dollar businesses. He spends most hours strategizing SEO for his clients.
Follow Technoroll for more!
Editorial Staff of the TechnoRoll, are a bunch of Tech Writers, who are writing on the trending topics related to technology news and gadgets reviews.
