6 Tips for Better Time Management. Learn how to make time to smell the roses. A New York-based productivity expert and author of Take Back Your Time. 'People talk too fast. We're always in a rush.
- 10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Storey
- 10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Store Bought
- 10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Store Online
- 10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Stores
- Customer Service Tips 1. A smiling face is sure to make your customers feel welcomed. It sets the tone of conversation, makes you more approachable. A practical example of this is the Walmart 10 Feet Rule. Sales executives approach any customers within a 10 feet radius, smiling and offering assistance.
- Facebook is all about people. The original intent of Facebook was to interact with friends, not advertise your business, but it’s easy for marketers to forget this. The problem is, pushing solely product-related messages is only going to take you so far. You need to show the people behind the brand to connect with your audience.
When your prospects and customers you, they are more likely to buy from you. When you have their trust, you can also command a higher price and boost the lifetime value of each customer.
Related: Secrets of the 10 Most-Trusted Brands
But building trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to remain consistent in your messaging, understand your buyer personas and deliver on your promises over time. Only then will you become the go-to provider in your niche.
There is a tremendous upside to building trust in your , but it takes time and specific strategies. Here are those strategies:
1. Be accessible.
Be available to your customers and allow them to interact with you. Customers often have questions, and if there’s nowhere for them to go to get their queries answered, or you don’t respond in a timely manner, you could begin to lose .
James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness has several strategies in place to maintain regular interaction with his prospects and customers. His customer support staff answer questions that come in. His paid membership includes a forum where like-minded entrepreneurs regularly interact; and he also has a yearly event called SuperFastBusiness Live, where owners can learn how to grow their online ventures.
These are some practical ways you too can use to make yourself available to your customers. Consider how Schramko has provided a point of contact for all inquiries, started an online community and organized an event to bring awareness to his brand. You might try these actions, too.
Also consider setting up a proper customer-support infrastructure, using help-desk software like Desk.com, and attending conferences and events. In these ways, you can answer questions in person, which is a great way to increase your likability and accessibility and provide support to your customers.
2. Have a reliable product.
People tend to buy on emotion, not logic. The challenge your business faces is that when its product arrives on the customer’s doorstep, those customers be impressed with the quality of the product to justify their purchase. Talking a good game and turning around and selling a low-quality product is sure to draw negative reviews, leading to mistrust and decreased credibility in the market.
One simple way to ensure your product's quality is to put it through a rigorous testing process. You can also put together focus groups and ask your what their needs are and what kind of product would solve their challenges.
Eric Ries popularized the idea of the (MVP) and methodology. The idea is to speed up the product-development process and get it into the hands of the customer sooner than later. Too many companies spend hundreds and even thousands of hours on research and development, but when they finally launch their product, customers may not even want it.
The MVP approach allows you to go to market sooner, test out the viability of your offering and learn from what your customers liked and didn’t like about it. In this way, you can test your product, improve upon it and then launch it more broadly.
Related: How to Overcome 5 Major Brand Trust Issues
3. Be honest.
Being transparent means recognizing and being open about both your strengths and weaknesses. If your product isn’t right for one of your leads, you should be secure enough to guide that lead in the right direction, even if that act means boosting your competitor’s bottom line.
This is one of the ways the Smart Passive Income blog’s Pat Flynn differentiated himself from his competition. When he was first getting started, he didn’t see many entrepreneurs talking openly and honestly about their journey, especially in the money-making niche. So he decided to be that entrepreneur:
Today, Flynn's income reports continue to drive traffic to his website month after month and inspire would-be entrepreneurs to take the same transparent approach to online business.
Honesty shows you care about your customers and their needs, and your willingness to help them gets them the results they’re looking to achieve.
4. Bring value to your client.
Do you put your customers first, or do you put revenue first? People know when they’re just a dollar sign to you, and while they may still buy from you if they believe your product solves their challenge, this does not build long-term trust or encourage repeat sales.
I Will Teach You To Be Rich CEO Ramit Sethi relates in a podcast that he doesn’t make some of his products available to customers who are in debt. Is he missing out on revenue opportunities by doing this? Absolutely. But is he also building trust in the process? Unquestionably. He believes it’s important to take a stand on this issue, and it makes sense that he doesn’t want customers who can’t give his resources the attention they deserve.
Delight is in the details. Take the example of Online music story CD Baby. Its legendary CD shipping confirmation email is both humorous and value-adding. It also proves that bringing value to your client need not be complicated.
5. Maintain .
Maintaining consistency ensures that your prospects and customers know what to expect. You can set both internal and external goals to maintain the quality of service.
As Bo Bothe, Will Cunningham, Elizabeth Tindall and Leslie Rainwater of BrandExtract write in a blog post: “A consistent brand helps increase the overall value of your company by reinforcing your position in the marketplace, attracting better-quality customers with higher retention rates and raising the perceived value of your products or services.”
They go on to explain how consistency can help your employees understand what their role is within your organization. The building blocks of a consistent brand include:
- Your message. Your brand message should be an extension of your actions and behavior. If it isn’t true to who you are, or you can’t deliver on it, you are being inconsistent. Your brand’s overall tone also factors in to your message -- in other words, how you position yourself in the market. Do you want to be perceived as dependable, aggressive, helpful or some other characteristic? Stay focused on the image you’re developing.
- Your design. Creating consistent imagery across your logo, website, social networks and print materials is an easy win that can help you build trust with customers.
- Your delivery. How will you communicate with your target audience, through what channels and how often? Knowing your prospects makes it easy to answer these questions and deliver the expected brand experience.
Final thoughts
Trust is a byproduct of a commitment to quality and excellence. If you can deliver the right results to the right people over the long haul, they will come to believe and trust in your product and service offerings.
Related: 7 Ways to Build Credibility, Trust and Character That Will Grow Your Business
Once you’ve carved out your identity in the marketplace, be vigilant about your . Back up who you say you are with tangible actions.
It’s rare for a day to go by without me scrolling through my Facebook feed. And I’m not alone: According to DMR, 65% of Facebook users log on daily.
As marketers, we know how critical it is to have a business Facebook presence, but we also know that it’s becoming increasing challenging to stand out among our peers. With over 1 billion daily active Facebook users, marketers need to be smart in terms of how they grow their audience and business through Facebook.
It’s tricky, but it’s not impossible! Here are 10 smart Facebook marketing ideas to help you stand out in the crowded social sea.
1. Target an Insanely Specific Audience
Did you know that you can target French and English speaking women, between the ages of 31-56, who live in a 10-mile radius of Boston, MA, who are “fit moms” of grade-school kids? Don’t believe me? Check out my article on the 11 unbelievably specific Facebook audiences you can target.
10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Storey
The super-sophisticated level of ad targeting is one of the main reasons to be excited about Facebook marketing. Hopefully, you’ve dedicated time and resources to analyzing your customer base and forming buyer personas; now you can put those personas to use and go after the people that are most likely to be interested in your products or offerings.
Caution! If you go too specific this strategy can work against you so, keep an eye on the audience definition tool to ensure you’re not getting so granular with your persona targeting that nobody sees your stuff.
2. Run a Simple Contest to Up Engagement
Facebook contests are nothing new, but that doesn't make this Facebook Ad tip any less helpful. You’ve likely been exposed to many, and have potentially even entered some (I know I have). But have you actually tried running one yourself?
Running a contest with a tempting incentive is one of the best ways to spur ad engagement on Facebook. What beer lover wouldn’t want a free trip to one of the best beer-fests in Boston (see ad below)?
The best thing about running a contest is that it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Follow Harpoon’s lead for instance, simply asking people to submit photos with your product in them, and then choosing a winner at random for a fun trip.
3. Create Short, Enticing Video Posts
So, you’ve tried marketing your company with videos on Facebook, but people just don’t seem to be interested? This is likely due to one of two reasons:
- Your videos are too long
- Or, they’re just not engaging enough
Facebook users are looking to be entertained. They’re spending their time on a social platform, likely to kill time or stalk their friends, so you need to divert their attention quickly, with entertaining content. What better way to do that then through video?
Other marketers are catching onto this trend. The amount of average daily video views on Facebook doubled from 4 billion video views per day to 8 billion, bewteen April and November of 2015!
Companies like BuzzFeed have figured out the recipe to driving video engagement – keep it short and sweet, with a visually engaging thumbnail. I spent about 2 hours the other night watching these short video recipe posts on BuzzFeed Food’s Facebook page.
As a bonus for you, the marketer, short videos are easier to film and edit! Here are 15 tips for filming and editing marketing videos.
4. Use Eye Contact in Your Images to Direct Attention
People follow directional cues from other people. If everybody in the room looks up, you’re going to look up too. This is human nature.
“Human beings have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others, and we have been coached since birth to follow arrows directing us to where we should be looking/going,” says Help Scout’s Gregory Ciotti.
Take advantage of this fact to focus viewers’ attention toward the most important part of your Facebook ad. For instance, if you have a strong call-to-action, you could show an image with a person looking at or pointing to that text.
Check out Moz’s Facebook post below – the image shows a clear journey of where to direct your eyes, starting with Rand’s gaze and then following the red arrows.
10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Store Bought
5. Post Images of Dogs Acting Like Humans or Babies Acting Like Adults
I’m aware that this tip sounds bizarre. But it works! Why? Because who doesn’t love dogs and babies?
Oh, dogs and babies aren’t related to your brand? Who cares? Make them related to your brand by giving them hilarious, brand-related captions. Bark Box happens to be in the pet industry, but they truly excel at this with adorable images of dogs with human-like captions.
When you’re doing Facebook marketing, it’s a good idea not to take yourself too seriously. Inserting some playfulness into your posts will grab busy, distractible people’s attention, and this is the perfect formula to do just that: Baby + headset and suit + adult-like caption, always makes for a good laugh.
6. Target the Leads You Already Have on Facebook
Did you know that you can upload a list of emails right into Facebook and then show your ads to that audience? Through Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature, you can target the leads you’ve captured from your newsletter signup or other lead gen efforts, or perhaps a group of your current customers that you’re trying to upsell.
In addition to focusing on insanely targeted audiences (see tip #1) you should also be crafting ads to the contacts you already have, but in an even more personalized way. For instance, let’s say you have a list of people who downloaded a guide titled “Introduction to Building Your Own Website.” You can upload that list of people and target them with a highly specific ad that refers to that guide and what the next steps are to take their website to the next level.
10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Store Online
7. Clone Your Main Revenue-Generating Audience
We’ve discussed a few strategies for creating relevant audiences; once you’ve acquired enough data, you can clone your top-performing Facebook audience. Facebook’s Lookalike Audience feature allows you to take an audience you already have and expand your reach by finding new leads that have similar attributes. You can pretty much clone your best customers. It’s that simple!
8. Humanize Your Brand with Fun Employee Photos
10 Easy Tactics To Make People Trust Your Stores
Facebook is all about people. The original intent of Facebook was to interact with friends, not advertise your business, but it’s easy for marketers to forget this. The problem is, pushing solely product-related messages is only going to take you so far. You need to show the people behind the brand to connect with your audience.
There are a lot of companies that do this well – take Unbounce. They use their Facebook business page to show off employees in a humorous and relatable way.
9. Only Pay to Promote Your Best Content
You’re likely reporting on a bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis to see which content is resonating with your audience in terms of page views, shares, comments, and other engagement metrics. With all of this knowledge at your fingertips, you should be using this data to decide where to focus your promotion budget. Put some money behind your best content to get it even more exposure.
It might seem like common sense, but it’s easier then you’d think to let rockstar content fade away and acquire dust in the corner. Stop doing this, and run Facebook ads to give a second life to your content superstar performers. Evergreen content will still resonate with a larger audience if it did well when it was originally published. (This is especially effective for content that isn’t ranking well in organic search.)
10. Use Emojis in Your Facebook Marketing
In May of 2015 WordStream’s beloved data-scientist Mark Irvine found that ads with emojis get far higher click-through-rates than ads without. Unfortunately, Google quickly caught on and emojis are no longer allowed in AdWords ad text.
According to AdWeek, 92% of online users use emojis, and frequent users feel emojis express their feelings more accurately than words. Emojis are kind of like dogs and babies, people just like them. Moral of the story, use emojis in your Facebook marketing posts to add personality and emotion to your text.
It’s just that easy. Before you know it Facebook Advertising might become your fastest-growing marketing channel!