Building trust is arguablythe most crucial element to a successful marketing campaign. After all, customers don’t buy products or services from people they don’t trust.
Trust has the power to create a positive reputation for your brand while inspiring loyalty in your customers. Without those things, your brand would have trouble existing. It’s loyal, repeat customers who come back to your business and share their personal experiences with other potential and existing customers.
These days, a lot of a business’s marketing takes place online—through electronic means like digital marketing campaigns, search-engine optimization and social media channels.
So how can you build trust in your business online? Read on to find out.
Get Social
Social media gives businesses the opportunity to create vivacious, enticing and engaging brands that will inspire trust in their audiences. Social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, are a two-way channel—businesses can communicate information to their customers, and their customers can communicate right back. This gives your brand the opportunity to build a lasting emotional bond with your audience, which, ultimately, will build trust.
Try these tips for building trust with social media:
- Create conversations regularly. Answer customers’ questions, address their concerns and post updates for your business. You have to connect with your audience if you want to build trust.
- Keep your audience engaged. Ask their opinion on your latest product or service offering. Whether they like it or not, the fact that you asked shows that you value their opinion, which goes a long way toward inspiring trust.
- Open up to them. Get personal with your audience: share your goals, struggles and achievements with them. Show them that a human, not a robot, runs your business.
Tell a Story
Storytelling is powerful. You know that feeling when you’re up late reading way past your bedtime? “Just a few more pages,” you tell yourself. But you just can’t put the book down, and, before you know it, it’s 3 a.m. That’s the power of a well-told story. It draws you in and gives you that irresistible urge to keep reading so you can find out what happens next.
As a business owner, you can use storytelling to draw your customers in. Tell them your story—who you are, who your employees are, how you started your business—on your website, blog and social media channels. And keep them coming back for more. Sharing your story helps you build a relationship with your audience. It creates an identity for your brand and gives it a voice that’s worth trusting.
Be Transparent
“To err is human,” wrote 18th-century poet Alexander Pope in “An Essay on Criticism.” So when you make a mistake, own up to it. Be direct with your customers about the situation and what you’re doing to correct it and prevent it from happening again. Most importantly, follow through with that plan. Your customers will understand and value your honesty and transparency.
Share Your Location
Your customers want to know that you’re a real business—that you’re not just a nameless, voiceless entity behind a computer. Let your audience see that you’re a real, credible business by sharing your location on your website and social media pages.
Don’t have a physical location? Share the city and state your business where your business is based so your customers can get an idea of where you’re working.
Nourish Your Customer Relationships
Building trust, above all, is about nourishing your relationships with your customers. Show them that you value them and that you care for their wants, needs and desires, and they’ll reward you with loyalty and trust that will keep your brand thriving.
Remember, trust isn’t built in a day—it takes time and effort to create lasting relationships. Once you’ve laid a solid foundation for those relationships, by following the guidelines above, you’ll be well on your way to establishing an online presence that will inspire customer loyalty and, above all, trust in your business.
