How To Build Trust In Uncertain Times
Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been massive shifts in the way consumers are behaving.
Whilst some are happy to keep spending, other customers are keeping the purse strings a bit tighter.
You may be finding it a bit trickier than normal to find new customers, which is why we’re going to talk about building trust with new customers.
When customers are in what we call the awareness stage, they are researching a few brands and products/services that do exactly what you do.
What we want is to build trust with people when they’re at this stage as it will move them down to what we call the consideration stage, where they are ready to make a purchasing decision and are ‘considering’ who to buy from. It will then make the chances of them choosing you a lot more likely.
In uncertain times where people are more reserved, building trust is no walk in the park. Here are the main methods that we focus on for trust-building.
Problem Solving Content
This is a key part of building trust with your potential customers, especially if you offer a service that isn’t straightforward. If your customers have questions, providing free content is the best way to answer the questions – this will make you stick in their mind when it comes to purchasing.
The trick is to provide enough content to answer their question but not enough so that they can do it without your service/product. It may be a blog series based around your most frequently asked questions or an industry-related article, but you need to think about what your customers enjoy consuming and what their concerns are.
Landing Page Experience
The user experience has became one of the most important aspects of web design in recent years, with many companies putting UX design before their own concepts and strategies. It’s no surprise then, that as a digital marketing strategy, landing page experience is one of the most important aspects of increasing conversions. Landing page experience also plays a vital part in SEO, so be sure to split test and tweak where necessary to ensure your users are catered to precisely.
Social Media Marketing
In this day and age, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find a company whose target audience is NOT on social media. Social Media allows businesses to reach their clientele instantly, whether it be through organic methods or PPC ads (Pay Per Click). It also offers a platform for you to engage with your customers, answering any issues or queries whilst also posting engaging posts as part of your content marketing strategy!
You’ll also need to decide what your strategies are for each social media platform, as something that may work extremely well on Facebook, won’t work the same on Instagram or LinkedIn.
The Rule of 7
There’s an old saying in marketing that before a user is ready to make a decision on your brand, they have to have seen or communicated with you at least 7 times. Whether this be through your email marketing efforts, google ads or even organic rankings in search engines, there needs to be sufficient brand awareness there before there is intent.
This approach can also help you in building trust with potential customers, as having an array of content and materials spread across different platforms will allow you to present your company as a reputable brand.
Email Marketing
The rule of 7 is going to come in handy when writing up your email marketing strategy. Trust building takes time. That’s why your automated email journeys need to be planned out in at least 7 introductory emails before any sales emails. If you have the option on your website for potential customers to sign up to an email newsletter, this is the perfect way to walk these new users through your company.
When setting up a trust-building email journey, it’s always best to work out what you want each email to say and what your call to action will be. For instance, if the user is completely new to your brand, an introductory journey may benefit your company, where each email walks through various aspects of your business, services or products offered.
Create an engaging email design that works around what you’re trying to say with clean and consistent branding with the aim of increased brand awareness on various other mediums as you branch out your online marketing presence.
Video Content
Video is a great trust-building tool for two main reasons; firstly, it will show a brand and its values in a way that consumers enjoy. It delivers information without forcing our short attention spanned customers to read a chunk of text.
Secondly, it is the perfect way to highlight how great your product or service is. If you are a solicitor and you have one of your customers providing a testimonial; it will show to everyone in that consideration phase that you deliver a great service. If you offer a product, let’s say you sell the best ceramic mugs in the UK, a video will clearly show the quality of your mug for everyone to see.
Of course, other elements tie into building trust such as your customer service. This can be adding a chat to your site so that people can ask you questions or having your social links readily available on your site so people can look at your profiles and see if they like the brand.
It can be tough deciding what content is right for your potential customers and right now, it’s more important than ever that your brand’s marketing strategy is perfected.
Yellow Marketing Programme is a digital marketing agency based in Liverpool with vast experience in all things digital marketing, from market research and text ads to materials that will show your business return on investment in under 3 months.
If you want the help of an expert marketing team to help streamline your strategy and create that content for your potential audience, get in touch with the YELLOW Marketing team. Contact us by clicking here.
