By Roman Marvaniuk
Building a successful company depends on many different factors. There’s your product, of course, as well as your ability to price it effectively, and position it so that it’s in front of your target customers when they’re ready to buy.
But while product-market fit might get you sales, lasting business success comes down to more intangible factors, such as the way customers feel about your brand or how much they trust you to deliver what you’ve promised.
According to Rare Consulting, “While general purchases are driven by price (81%), quality (80%), and convenience (55%), loyalty is about likeability (86%) and trust (83%).” Reader’s Digest’s 2015 Trusted Brands Survey confirms this, finding that 79% of participants “would choose a brand that’s been identified as ‘trusted’ over another brand when product quality and price are similar.”
Simply put, your price, quality, or convenience might score you sales, but your brand’s likeability and trust win you relationships. The following are different techniques you can use to develop that all-important trust with your customers online.
Define your brand promise
You can’t create a trustworthy brand if your business model is built on deceiving consumers or tricking customers into buying from you—(at least, you can’t in the long run).
Take the example of Craigslist, which data from Alignable suggests is one of the least trusted brands in the hiring space. You can say plenty of good things about the way Craigslist democratized hiring and peer-to-peer selling, but given the number of scams that continue to be perpetrated across the network—despite internal crackdowns—you’d likely call it anything but trustworthy.
Building customer trust begins with the process of defining who your company is and what it stands for. Researchers at Gallup call this your company’s “brand promise,” and define it as representing “everything a company stands for, it is the unique statement of what the company offers, what separates it from its rivals and what makes it worthy of customers’ consideration.”
Unfortunately, Gallup reports that “only half of customers believe that the companies they do business with always deliver on what they promise. When asked, only 27% of employees strongly agree that they always deliver on the promises they make to their customers.”
So what does an effective brand promise look like? The good news is it doesn’t have to be lengthy or complicated. Stella Service highlights several examples from well-known companies:
- Geico: “15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance.”
- Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
- Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”
- Marriott: “Quiet luxury. Crafted experiences. Intuitive service.”
- Walmart: “Save money. Live better.”
Some of these brand promises focus on financial savings; others focus on experience. In all cases, however, the advantages the company offers and the promise it makes to consumers are clearly and concisely stated.
Spend some time iterating your brand promise. The specific wording of your statement may evolve over time, but the benefit you’re offering to your customers—not just in terms of your specific products or services, but in the broader problems you’ll solve—should be made clear from the start.
RELATED: 5 Personal Branding Hacks Every Entrepreneur Should Know
Improve brand credibility
Having a thoughtfully-derived brand promise is important. Deploying it to your target audience is even more so.
Your brand promise shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. For it to make a difference in your prospects’ purchase behavior, it needs to be both actively promoted and fundamentally believable. To answer the question of how you can make a brand promise believable—as well as how you can disseminate it to your followers—we can look to the four types of credibility, defined by Stanford University researcher, BJ Fogg:
Presumed credibility
Presumed credibility is based on our general assumptions and is the easiest of these four types to improve upon. We tend, for example, to view known brands as being more credible than those we don’t. So then if knowing a brand automatically makes it more credible, the simple solution is to make more people familiar with your company.
This is achieved through your marketing efforts. For example, you could:
- Maintain an active social media presence.
- Contribute guest articles to blogs in your industry.
- Send out press releases to get featured by the media.
- Purchase paid ads.
- Sponsor events in your industry.
The list goes on, of course. You’ll want to choose the marketing tactics that are best suited to your industry.
Measure your progress to ensure your actions are having the desired effect. Use Google Alerts to gauge how often your brand is mentioned online, along with tools like HowSociable or Cyfe to track the sentiment surrounding these mentions.
Reputed credibility
Reputed credibility comes from third-party references. These may occur in the form of referrals from friends or family members, or from reviews left online by past customers. Because you’re drawing on the experiences of a diverse audience, there are a number of different strategies you can use to improve your reputed credibility.
To access a prospect’s direct contacts, test the impact of a referral marketing program. These schemes enable your customers to refer others they know to you, typically in exchange for a one-way or two-way discount. Referral marketing programs work because, as Nielsen reports, 92% of consumers trust referrals that come from the people they know.
Implementing a referral marketing program doesn’t have to be complicated. RewardStream offers a great tutorial on how to get started.
In addition to tapping your customers’ social circles, you can persuade them of your trustworthiness through the effective use of social proof. According to BrightLocal, 74% of consumers say reading a positive customer reviews increase their trust in a local business.
Marketer Shanelle Mullin defines social proof as leveraging third-party influence to sway prospects. She says, “When you’re browsing a landing page and see a testimonial from an industry expert you respect, that’s social proof. When you’re cruising a pricing page and you see that an industry giant is already using the tool, that’s social proof. When you sign up for a demo because you see the tool solved the exact problem you have for a similar company, that’s social proof.”
Using social proof effectively requires two things: a method for capturing it and the ability to display it effectively. And as you gather social proof, remember that not all examples are created equally:
- A testimonial that provides specific evidence of benefits (e.g., “I made $72,567 with this system”) is likely to perform better than a vague example (e.g., “I made money with this system”).
- Testimonials that appear to be from real people (e.g., those that include the reviewer’s name, picture or website URL) will likely perform better than those without attributed sources.
- Multimedia testimonials (e.g., those incorporating product pictures or video reviews) will likely perform better than those using text alone.
That said, however you choose to handle gathering social proof, you’ll also need to display it appropriately so that it’s visible at key points in your prospect’s purchasing process. Smart places to publish social proof include:
- Your website home page
- Your website’s landing pages
- Your website’s product pages
- Your website’s pricing page
- Your social media profiles
- Your print advertising materials
- Your email opt-in lead magnets
Test different arrangements and different types of social proof. What works for one business may not work for yours.
As a side note, don’t worry if your reviews aren’t perfect across the board. Research by GetApp found that “product purchases were most influenced by reviews with an average star rating between 4.2 and 4.5.”
Surface credibility
Surface credibility is “gut feel” credibility. When you visit the website of an unknown brand, do you trust that the company in question will deliver on its brand promise? Improving your brand’s surface credibility is a relatively straightforward process, as the guidelines for creating a reputable web presence have been well established.
All you have to do is think back to the early days of e-commerce—when handing over your credit card details felt like a gamble every time—to derive some of these best practices on your own.
At a minimum, ensure your website:
- Uses appropriate spelling and grammar
- Has a professional design with engaging imagery
- Displays safety signals, such as an SSL encryption badge
- Clearly states your customer policies (such as your return policy or privacy policy)
- Protects any personal information collected from your customers
- Is explicit about what actions (if any) will be taken using this information
You may also find it helpful to showcase the logos of brands you’ve worked with as trust signals, or to use your site’s content to calm consumers’ fears.
According to Susan Solovic, an expert on small business, addressing possible objections in your site’s copy can go a long way towards building trust. She writes, “You probably know the objections prospects have to buying your product or service. Address those head-on in your marketing materials and on your website. The more honest and forthright you can be when you take on possible objections, the more your prospects will notice and appreciate it.”
Earned credibility
Finally, earned credibility comes from our own personal experiences. Did you have a positive customer service experience? Were you disappointed by the produce you received? You need to ensure that any actions you take as a company aren’t unintentionally sabotaging the trust you’ve built using the credibility indicators described earlier.
Ask yourself the following questions to be sure:
- Are you overselling your product or service’s benefits?
- Are you honest about the limitations of your offerings?
- Are you transparent about your company’s operations?
- Do you own up to the mistakes you’ve made?
- Do you keep customers in constant communication when mistakes occur?
No one wants to feel as if they’re being taken advantage of. Yet, operating behind closed doors can create exactly that perception—whether or not you’re trying to rip-off customers.
Thomas Smale, founder of FE International, writes: “Being transparent means recognizing and being open about both your strengths and weaknesses. If your product isn’t right for one of your leads, you should be secure enough to guide that lead in the right direction, even if that act means boosting your competitor’s bottom line.”
It can be tempting to want to sweep mistakes under the rug. But in today’s digital sharing environment, every customer interaction matters. Don’t try to save face at the expense of opportunities to build trust and leverage earned credibility.
Build trust with online customers
Today’s consumers have more choices than ever before. As a result, the purchase decisions they make take into consideration a larger number of factors than businesses have ever dealt with.
Make sure your company comes out on top by establishing a strong brand promise and following through on its deployment by leveraging the four types of credibility available to you. It’s a long-term game, but the results will be worth it.
RELATED: The Secret to Attracting More Customers to Your Business
The post The Ultimate Guide to Building Trust with Your Customers Online appeared first on AllBusiness.com
The post The Ultimate Guide to Building Trust with Your Customers Online appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Guest Post.
from neb biz feed 1 http://ift.tt/2h0pOuP
via Nebula Biz Local Loans
No comments:
Post a Comment