How To Get Customers To Trust Your Business — 8 Online Tactics

Have you ever had a friend tell you that he tried the best vanilla ice-cream from cafe Dingo and it was the best one he had thus far and that you MUST try it too?

Or have you ever had a friend watch a hilarious movie and now she highly recommends you to watch it too? Sounds familiar? Happens to all of us. What that basically is a “Word of Mouth Marketing”.

Word of Mouth has been the most powerful and effective tool of marketing that has been in effect since centuries. Why is it so effective? Because it comes from the mouth of someone you love and TRUST. You TRUST that your friend, who is recommending you to try this vanilla ice-cream wants the best for you and has no ill-intentions for you. And thus, your friend’s opinion has a lot more credibility and weight as compared to a marketing brochure of Café Dingo claiming that they serve the best vanilla ice-cream.

The keyword here is TRUST. It is because of the trust, that a customer buys from any business.

People don’t buy from companies they don’t trust.

Now let’s try to replicate this scenario in the online, digital scene. How does the word-of-mouth marketing look like online?

You ever go to the Trip Advisor website before booking a hotel for your next vacation? Why do you go there? To see the reviews from other people who stayed at the same hotel you want to book. You want to see how their experience was, and based on their reviews, you make a decision whether you want to stay in this hotel or not. What just happened there? You TRUSTED the opinion of the people who ACTUALLY stayed in and experienced the hotel.

That’s digital word of mouth

Or as Gary Vee calls it “Social media is the word of mouth on steroids”

There is a very big opportunity for businesses to build TRUST with their customers because of the social media. They don’t have to rely on the slow process of offline word-of-mouth anymore. Although, it is very important to state here that even today, despite the digital age, the offline word-of-mouth still holds a lot of weight.

Lets see how you can build an online presence which may help in getting customers to trust your business. Following are the key strategies to help you build the trust with your customers online.

1. Set Good Intentions

I want to start by laying this foundation and I cannot STRESS this enough. That before you move forward with applying the strategies, you MUST have the right intentions to do so. If you are planning to deceive people by building a false trust with these strategies. It is only going to backfire and will do more harm than good.

2. Clear Communication

Be Clear About your Business

Be very clear about what your business does. Don’t be vague and don’t leave them wondering. They should be very clear about who you are, what your product does, what services do you provide, who is the founder and who are the key team members. The more transparent you become, the more trust you build with them. Mystery can be sexy in dating, but not in business.

Also, be authentic. The more authentic you or your business can be, the more people will be able to relate to you and hence trust you.

3. Professional Looking Brand Image

Have a clean, professional looking website. Don’t make it look like it’s made by a 5-year-old kid.

Have a professional looking outlook of your business with a professional looking logo, high quality pictures and an overall professional brand image.

People don’t take businesses seriously with an unprofessional visual outlook. It is equivalent to you meeting with your client in a nice, crisp suit and shiny boots versus in a t-shirt, shorts and slippers.

How you visually communicate about your business can make or break your trust with the customer.

Invest in a good graphic designer.

4. GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

We have already discussed how the law of giving helps in building trust. If you keep GIVING them something of value, related to your business, then it may not seem to show you any ROI in terms of money, but it pays huge ROI in terms of building trust.

GIVE them the information, knowledge, inspiration or entertainment on social media. If you own a beauty salon, share the beauty tips with them for free. Your potential customers will notice that your business is genuinely interested in helping them, and cares about them, without ASKING for anything in return from them.

To read full details about this concept, you can read the article here “6 Steps to Cleverly Sell Without Selling, using your Digital Content”

5. SOCIAL PROOF

Social proof is a term coined by Robert Cialdini in 1984 in his book called Influence. It is an entire subject of its own. But to sum it up, if more people around you like the same thing, then you would tend to like the product too. This is a human psychology which stems from a deep desire to belong to a social group.

Politicians, governments, businesses use the social proof to push their ideas. Anyways, in your case, you can build social proof by

1. Getting more likes and followers on your social media following.

2. Building a community of followers for your business. The more followers you have, the more social proof you have.

3. Getting video or written testimonials, posting them on your website and social media platforms. Get your satisfied customers to write reviews about your business on Yelp, Trip Advisor, Facebook, Amazon or other review sites relevant to your business.

A new potential customer who will see all of this social proof online, is likely to trust you more based on the reviews of other people who have already tried your product/service.

6. Celebrity/Influencer Endorsement

Associate yourself with someone whom people already trust

If you don’t have trust but you have got money, then there is a way to earn trust quickly. Use your money to buy the influence of someone who is already a trusted figure among the community of your target customers.

If you don’t have the trust of your own, associate your business with someone who is already TRUSTED by his/her followers.

Take the example of the explosive Makeup Eyeshadow Palette collaboration between Morphe and Jaclyn Hill. Morphe is a makeup brand which had a large number of extremely well-known competitors. To gain more TRUST capital, Morphe made Jaclyn Hill it’s ambassador. Jaclyn Hill is a very well-known makeup influencer on YouTube, followed by 5.48 million makeup fans on YouTube alone.

This collaboration was a super hit and it sold 1 million palettes within a few months in 2017, and it is still selling like hot cakes in 2020. The reason because Jacklyn Hill already had a huge community of people who already TRUSTED her.

7. Never Promise What You Can’t Deliver

Have you ever been catfished? If yes, then you know how betrayed you must have felt. When you project an exaggerated and distorted persona of your business on the internet, you set a very high bar of standard in the customer’s mind, but then if you don’t deliver to that standard, it leaves the customer feeling betrayed, disappointed and catfished.

Be careful with what you are promising.

It is better to promise less and deliver more, instead of promising more and delivering less.

8. Product/Service Quality

At the end of the day, it is all about the quality of your product/service. All the above-mentioned online strategies are in vain if your product does not leave your customer satisfied. Being consistent, being on time and having an exceptional customer experience is paramount in building and keeping your customer’s trust.

As Seth Godin quotes, the famous author of “This is Marketing”

“If you use money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising”