Negosentro.com | Things an Online Business Can Do To Gain Customer Trust | The Internet has democratized knowledge and connectivity like never before. With day in and day out, we keep hearing about breakout internet millionaires who leveraged the capabilities of the internet to start their online business.
Isn’t it fascinating that in this age of the internet you don’t necessarily need a legacy or inheritance to make it big?
But if it is this easy then why isn’t everyone making it big? Why are online businesses failing?
Making money online is easy, in the initial stages you can get the idea off ground and get things moving and it is really inspiring to witness the growth.
But maintaining the growth trajectory is the tricky part, even stagnation is okay but it is decline that leads to the winding up of business.
One of the things that have been repeatedly observed to conspire such events is “Trust”
People don’t do business with your products or services, they do business with YOU. People need to see a face an identity that they can trust.
Here are some things you can do to gain customer trust online
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Business License
Let’s start with basics, having an online business license is a no-brainer activity that you need to conduct if your business exists on the internet.
People ignore this activity as if it doesn’t even exist.
An online business license adds to the credibility and trustworthiness of a business. You can append the online business proudly on the website to let your prospective customers know that you are certified by a body to sell the product or service and customers find this reassuring.
The business license while helping you build credibility it also helps you in other ways such as you can introduce your business to potential clients or customers and swap your online business license this again helps you come off as proud, confident, and certain.
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Provide content that helps
Bill Gates wasn’t kidding when he said that “Content is King” I would improvise and say that ‘Content is the kingdom’ when it comes to gaining customer trust and building credibility.
When it comes to content marketing businesses online goes about it 3 ways.
- They will put only promotional content (that doesn’t get you noticed unless you are running ridiculous discounts)
- They will educate the customer about the industry where they operate
- The mix of promotional + Educational
And then there are some more variations.
The point is, the more value the content generates for your audience; the more likely they are to see you as a thought leader and every customer wants to get into the boat with a thought leader instead of a salesman or an amateur.
Always focus on value and it should echo your online brand personality attributes like trust, confidence, success.
Today if I ask you about CRM; which brand pops into your mind? I bet it’s HubSpot; I am pretty sure a lot of people thought about it, what did HubSpot do to deserve this?
The answer is providing valuable content.
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User-Generated Content
Reward your most loyal customers with acknowledgment and encouragement and in turn, they will reward you with more business.
If you have ever studied Flywheel you would know what I am talking about.
It’s Attract → Engage → Delight
Why stop at conversion? With tactics like leveraging User-Generated Content, you can make your satisfied customers promoters of your online business.
Besides, UGC is the perfect recipe for building online trust. People trust recommendations and reviews of other people whose recommendations aren’t clouded by personal motivation.
If the owner of the restaurant says come to my restaurant food is delicious; people aren’t obviously gonna take him for his word.
But a friend of yours snapped a picture at his restaurant and put that picture on Instagram stating that he had the best meal in a long time; now you see the real value and you are more likely to visit that restaurant.
Make it convenient for your customers to find you on social and tag your online business with which they create content; urge them to do so and when they do so share that with your followers.
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Humanize your online brand
What does humanizing your brand means? It means going beyond brand logos. I get it, you created an intriguing business logo that got the whole design community talking about it.
But what does your end consumer care about? The logo your brand uses or the people?
They want to see you, connect with you, understand your motives.
And you need to give it to them. Use the power of social media and introduce the awesome people that make your online brand what it is, that make that robust product great, or that online service exceptional.
HubSpot indulges in this activity once in a while wherein their employees take over their social media and post content. In fact, if you take a look at the social media of most valuable brands you will observe that it is more human in nature rather than it being more graphic and illustrative.
Take advantage of going live on your social media; it literally notifies people following you that you are going live and they do connect with you. Make it a habit of going live at least once a week. Consistency, in the long run, pays off really well.
