7 ways to build trust with marketing.
- Marketing
- January 14, 2019
A client once cancelled a marketing deal because of my Instagram handle – that was a first lesson with establishing trust for marketing.
I imagine you are as shocked as I am. But the story goes way more than just that. That was my first experience with establishing trust with clients. This would not be a post to argue if my intended client was right or wrong. What we will do here, is focus on ways you can grow trust with your current clients and even get trust from new intending clients without having to meet them physically. As you go through this post, I expect you’ll fashion out plans to establish yourself, your business and the brand in question so you can gain all the trust needed to land new clients.
Web 2.0 came with many new possibilities for everyone. From the tech expert way down to the brick and mortar store owner. This gave us all a chance to explore or own a bit of 2.0 via profiles on Social media, websites they own or some other form of internet usage. Among those making the most of Web 2.0 are new businesses that may not be able to afford marketing agencies for their marketing efforts. These businesses include start-ups, medium business enterprises and many more examples. If your business does not have an in-house marketing agency or a marketing support staff you may want to pay more attention here.
Everyone swears by marketing. They say it makes growth easier when you do proper marketing and it makes sales even faster. But they forget to include that most agencies who handle marketing prefer to work for the big corporations that already have clear cut budgets for marketing even before the year began. So how does a small company looking to earn a bit of the market position themselves to attract clients to patronize them?
Any small company just fresh into marketing will face a couple of struggles consistent with the marketing field but the most important situation they would face would be – where should we start from? It would have been easier if they had a guideline of sorts to help them mark things they need to do and points they need to start. That’s what I hope to provide with this blog post. So, let’s get started.
1 – Are you the business? The first stop for you would be deciding if you want to be known with the business or you want the brand or business to stand alone. However, you wish to play this would determine if the following branding methods would apply to you or majorly to the business brand. For pointers, if you have plans to scale the business into many other things, you should consider having the business as a brand and not in your name. You can also opt for having a branding experience for yourself and another for the brand which would be stand alone.
2 – Create a style guide. – In helping you understand how a style guide works, we need to understand what you need the uniformity for. As a brand or a person, people would expect some form of consistency in the things you do, say, use and how you share your thoughts. Asides giving people the confidence they need and the trust to know you or your brand always, it also helps them quickly recognize you easily. A style guide gives your business a couple of basic standard things such as a brand tone, brand color and a lot more. It informs your logo version, the colors your brand will be known for and many more.
3 – Let’s create uniform Social media profiles – You are done deciding how you want to brand yourself and the business. Our next decision would be knowing what social media platforms your business needs to be on. Quick note, you don’t have to be on all social platforms. Which ones are more relevant to your business? Choose your top 3 most relevant sites and let’s move to the next thing. In naming your social media handles, we would suggest a uniform name across sites. Uniformity helps you by making it easy for prospective clients to see the same detail on that platform. Also ensure you have similar bios or introduction on each platform. That’s another trust measure. Then make plans for posting on these pages per time. You may need to create a schedule for this. You can use these tools to make your task easier.
4 – Set up a website – When looking to create websites for you or for the company, we always recommend professionally designed websites. 46.1% of online users claim the web design of a company helped influence their decision to do business with the company or not. Also, for your web design, ensure it is mobile compatible. There has been a 222% increase in mobile traffic in the last 7 years. Ensure you make navigation quite easy on the website. Most search engine sites recommend that 5 clicks should get you to any part of a website. Also ensure your contact page is clear and people can easily reach you there.
* Hint – use a contact form on your contact us page.
5 – Be human – Regardless of how you decided to showcase yourself – as an individual or as a brand, please note that in both situations, you have to be human in your approach and dealings with people. Use every moment you can to let your prospective clients and people who jump on your page know that you are quite relatable to. No one wants to feel unwelcome to your page. Make plans to add some human touch in your dealings. If you are wondering what the human touch will be, it’s not a big deal. It basically shows in how you interact with your followers and how you react to current things happening in the society that could affect your followers.
6 – Share quality content – You now have a website that maybe includes a blog or not. And you already have social media handles for your followers. It’s essential you share relevant and useful content for your followers to learn from. For content, you need to make use of tools like content calendars so you have a grip on how content flows, what days you share content and what content you will share to people. For more ways to be human with your content, try having some user generated content on your pages if it fits your style and business.
7 – Testimonials – Have you successfully concluded business transactions with a couple of persons? Did you give them a satisfactory service or quality products? If yes, then it should be easy for you to ask for testimonials. Testimonials come in many formats. You could use text testimonials, have them leave you a review on social media platforms that allow for it. Facebook pages and Google have spaces for reviews. Video testimonials are very recommended and are even better if you can get them. If you are able to persuade them to do a video testimonial, give them this format to state what issues they were facing with their business or the product they needed and why they needed it, how they met you and how you both had a great experience while transacting together. Then get them to recommend you to anyone facing similar issues they overcame with your help.
It’s becoming way too easy to spook people off easily without trying so much. Considering how wary people could be of online transactions without the traditional method of meeting people physically, people tend to be more guided in making decisions on who to trust with their hard-earned money. Your job, is to make sure they have no reason to doubt you before they do business with you. Implementing the things listed above will help you clear the first set of hurdles and basic trust issues other businesses face. If you need more help on starting out, use this contact page here to reach out and get prompt help.
Leave Your Comment Here