I’m sure that this rings a bell. You’re navigating on the Internet, looking for a product or service that you’re interested in. You go to Google and type this product or service and a couple of million results come up. Then you click the first result and start reading the website until you see their prices. Then you open four or five websites with a similar content in different labels and start comparing them: prices, quality, services included, different features, etc.

That’s probably what your prospective clients are doing with your website and products/services. And, hopefully, you’re ranking high enough in Google to be one of the labels that your potential clients are analysing!

Well, let me tell you something, there’s one way you can avoid this: trust. How many times have you gone to a restaurant because a friend of yours told you that the food was amazing? You didn’t have to search on Google for six different restaurants to make up your mind. Do you want to know how to build trust in your business? Let’s see what we can do!

 

Why is it important to build trust in your business?

People that trust you are more likely to choose you because they don’t want to risk and choose someone else out there. They don’t need to start looking for other services, which is a hassle for them.

Trust will make your prospective clients less price sensitive. Maybe you could have found a cheaper restaurant, but as your friend recommended it, you prefer to go there because you want to have the perfect date, instead of risking and going to another one, right?

How can you build trust in your business?

With simple tweaks and focusing on the important aspects of your business, you can transform these prospective clients that doubt about your business into loyal clients that will promote word-of-mouth.

1. Focus on your clients’ experience.

For example, when we’re looking for a hotel on the Internet, we take into consideration different aspects: how close to the city centre is, how clean and noisy the rooms are, the price, etc. If some of these aspects don’t match the clients’ needs, they are out. We call this pain points.

We find different pain points during the selling process of our businesses. Try to answer these questions:

• What are my clients’ pain points when they’re looking for my business? (I need a hotel in the city centre, with good transport connections and reliable to enjoy my stay in X city.)
• What are my clients’ pain points when they have already found my business and doubt about if it’s the best choice? (I want to know if this hotel is clean and quiet, if the service is good, if it includes breakfast…)
• What are my clients’ pain points just before proceeding with the sale? (Is this a good offer regarding price/quality? Is this payment method reliable? Is the website reliable?)

And now try to solve them! If you focus your services to your clients’ need they’ll feel that you’re offering exactly what they are looking for, and this will be the best first impression that you can give.

2. Make your brand more human.

People that feel that there’s someone, a human, behind your brand will sympathise more with your brand, and they’ll be more likely to trust you.

How many times have you checked a website and after a while you realise that there’s no sign of the person behind it? You can’t even find the name of the administrator, the address and sometimes even the email to talk to a real person instead of a form.

That’s why it’s so important to have an About Me page for your business. In my case, that’s one of the most visited pages. You must bear in mind that people that really like your brand will want to know more about you.

If you’re promoting your business in different social media platforms, maybe you should consider using one of them to show the most human side of your business. In my case, that’s what I use Instagram for.

3. Social proof.

People also want to know what your clients think about your services. If you paid attention to point 1, I’m sure that your clients will give you positive feedback about your services. Ask for their permission to make them public on your website.

Remember the more specific the feedback is, the better. It’s not the same “David is a great professional” than “Thanks to David’s translation services, I gained 5 more clients in only one month”.

4. Establish a personal connection.

I’m sure that you share a lot of things with your potential clients: maybe you have the same interests, hobbies, worries or concerns. If you address them, you’ll be likely to make a connection with your potential clients.

If it’s a concern, you can try and solve it for your client from your point of view. They’ll realise that you’ve been there too, facing the same challenges and you’ll be encourage them to follow your steps. If it’s something positive, you can encourage people to share their stories to promote engagement. In both cases, your potential clients will realise that there’s someone behind your business that listen to them and understand them.

5. Surprise your current clients.

One of the best ways to do so is by overdelivering. You can offer something more than you previously promised. But you have to do it in a way that it’s not a big deal for you. For example, if I tell one of my clients that he’s going to receive his sworn translation X day, and I manage to finish it a day before than planned, a good way to surprise this client is to send it one day before.

This doesn’t represent a hassle for you, and your client will be even happier with your services and he’ll be more likely to promote word-of-mouth.

 

Have you ever tried to make your potential clients trust your business? What strategies did you implement?

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