Trust is important for any business to retain its customers and gain new buyers by increasing sales and conversions.
There are no short cuts to gain this trust overnight; one has to work their way in order to earn customer trust. There are however several ways to lose this trust in an instant, so while you work on building trust, at the same time one needs to make sure that they don’t do any mistakes that might cost them their earned trust.
Here, in this article, we are going to discuss several ways in which a business can earn customer trust.
1. Display Testimonials: Whether you are a new brand or an old one, if you are getting testimonials from your customers then you are doing good. However, these testimonials aren’t meant to keep somewhere hidden, they need to be presented, read and consumed by other customers.
Once in a while, share these testimonials on the social media. People like to read positive things about a brand they trust and value, so reading positive testimonials will help in building brand trust.
2. Incentives: Customers like to promote and recommend a brand they personally use. However, this recommendation happens more speedily if the customers are incentivized for doing so. Once you have a good incentive and loyalty program going, your customers will promote your brand which will build further trust in your business.
3. Keep the Talks Open: Talk freely about your business plans, the direction in which your business is moving, the upcoming features etc. so that your customers get to have a say in things that matters to them. When they give their inputs, make sure to listen to them and let your customers know that their messages have been heard.
4. Customer Related Events: Every business celebrates their own events. It is important to make sure that your customers important dates like their birthdays and anniversaries are remembered so that they can take a buying decision on those days. Your customers will know that the brand values them and the trust in the brand will grow further.
5. Improve Customer Service: Make sure that you have enough people on the customer support and all issues faced by the customers are promptly resolved. Any delay in support needs to be fixed immediately.
6. Feedback: Take feedback from your customers regularly in the form of surveys and contact page. Add a small feedback form in all places where your customers fills up forms like registration form, check out form etc.
7. Stay active on all Channels of Contact: Do note that contact us isn’t the only place where your customers will contact you. Make sure to check the direct messages on social sites like twitter, facebook etc. as your customers can contact you anywhere and it is your responsibility to make sure that you are present on all contact channels.
8. Keep the About Us page updated: Most people who are looking to learn more about your business is going to check out the about us page. If you have kept your about us updated with current information about your brand then just by reading the about page, your customers will gain plenty of insights about you and your business. This will grow a lot of trust in your business.
9. Show your Human Side on the Social Media: On the social media, as a company when you simply post important updates and company news, the entire feed becomes a tasteless radio broadcast. To remedy this, start showing your human nature and start sharing some of the pics that you take during your work. Simply post pictures of your office, your celebrations and fun moments that happens in your office. Keeps things natural and it will start to look better on the social media.
10. Work on Reputation Management: Some times, even after doing everything right, you will still find yourself at a loss to fix your reputation. This is where you should start looking for professional help in fixing your reputation online.
11. Do Guest Posts on Industry Sites and News and Media Magazines: Posting content and getting published on popular news and media sites helps a lot in building trust and reputation. This step isn’t easy as the editorial reviews on those sites are insane, but if you do manage to get published, the rewards are pretty awesome.
12. Get Interviewed: When you get interviewed and featured on top media websites or YouTube channels then the reputation of that source which is publishing you flows through your business and brand. People start to become a bit more trusting, once they see your face or your name on a popular site.
13. Tell your story on your Company Blog: Most company blogs are boring as they only carry important news and updates. It becomes like a robot and trusting a faceless robot is difficult. However, if you start telling your story, how you began what challenges you faced and how you conquered those challenges can be a great start in developing trust with your readers.
14. Stay away from Hype: Most businesses fail because they promise too much and deliver too little. It is important to stay away from hype because promising too much is easy, but following through and delivering is difficult.
15. Request for Reviews: There are an endless amount of places where people can post reviews about your business. If you had a positive response from any customer then it is important that you ask for a review so that you can boost your trust on several platforms and review sites.
16. Work on Site Security: It is easy to work on a lot of places but in the process ending up forgetting about the most important thing in your business. The entire online presence of your business depends on your website and its security. If it crashes or worse, get hacked, your entire trust will go down the drain that same instant. Make sure to look up your site security and have it fixed before something goes wrong.
17. Improve Site Speed and Design: A slow site and crappy design will never gain trust from customers. People expect top-notch service when they are ready to pay and thus your site needs to be really quick and have a catchy design to build trust with your customers. Any brand requires time and effort in creating trust. Customers don’t value a business overnight, years of consistent delivery of hard work and value is required for growing a trust worthy brand. The secret here is to keep working towards building a great brand and trust will follow in time.
Great article. My favorite is the incentive part.
Offering incentives to customers can be a effective way to earn their trust. Customers often like to promote and recommend brands they personally use, and offering incentives can encourage them to do so more quickly. This can be especially useful for a business that is just starting out and looking to build its reputation and customer base. By offering incentives such as discounts, free products, or loyalty points, a business can incentivize its customers to spread the word about their brand to their friends and family. This can help the business gain new customers and build trust with its existing ones.
It’s important to make sure that the incentives offered are valuable to the customer and that the loyalty program is well-designed and easy to understand. By doing this, a business can encourage its customers to not only make repeat purchases, but also to actively promote the brand to others.
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