Credibility can be the deciding factor in whether or not a customer completes a sale. If they don’t feel your brand is reliable or honest, they are more likely to step back and reconsider. Here are some easy ways to give your small business credibility and show customers that your company is the right choice for them.
Create a Consistently Positive Experience
No matter if your business is brick-and-mortar or online, customers should have multiple avenues to interact with your brand. Their experience interacting with your team and your content should be consistent, from social media to phone calls to the language on your product. Any aspect of your business that a customer interacts with deserves some investment to ensure that they see your brand’s best side.
Achieving a more reliable customer experience can be accomplished in a few ways, but one of the best areas for businesses to focus on is the website experience. Even in-store, customers might inspect the website to look for products they don’t see or to find answers they don’t feel they’re being given. Making sure that your site not only has that information but is fast and performs well too can give your business more credibility in the customer’s eyes.
See Customer Reviews as an Opportunity
Customer reviews are an increasingly important tool for businesses in the modern era. Word of mouth is an incredible asset, but online reviews are easy to view as a liability. Change your perspective to view all reviews as an opportunity, and you’ll find that even negative reviews are a chance to show your brand’s human side and relate to your customer’s needs.
There are many kinds of testimonials out there of which a business can take advantage. Guest blogs, online publishers, review websites, and social media influencers are all forms of PR that can be used as a tool for improving your business’ visibility and reliability.
Highlight Successes Without Going Too Far
Customers will notice if you list any awards your company has won or big brand names that your service has worked with. Great metrics, when translated to be digestible by their target audience, also lend your business a good amount of credibility. There’s little reason not to celebrate your company’s accomplishments, and how you choose to do so can be a great way to showcase your company values too.
However, too many positives can be overwhelming or feel disingenuous. Pick and choose the accomplishments you highlight and focus on the human aspects more than the numbers.
There are many ways to give your small business credibility, from things as big as brand visibility to as small as the tone used by customer service. Customers who are interested in your product or service are actively looking to find out if they can trust your company to do right by them, so any steps you take to demonstrate your brand’s trustworthiness are steps in the right direction.
