As per a recent survey, two-thirds of consumers have stated that trust is an essential factor for the success of any business. Once you earn a loyal audience, it becomes 10X easier to increase your sales and productivity. Here is a small example to make you understand this concept even better.
Let’s assume you provide assignment help to students online. You know what you are talking about. Your friends, colleagues and existing clients trust your services. Things turn different and difficult online. You need to show your competence, credibility and reliability online to win over the trust of your target audience. It is only through trust that you will be able to gain more leads for your business.
You must think that gaining trust online is pretty hard. Well, it need not be if you are familiar with the right techniques. You can’t gain trust automatically. You have to build it. Take a look at the five scientifically proven ways to attract a loyal audience to your website. Let’s dive in.
1. Identify the buying cycle of your target audience
Every customer follows a buying cycle until he/she makes the final decision. As per Forrester, your buyers can be anywhere from less than halfway to 90% of the way in their journey. Consider each buying cycle carefully to leverage all the stages with the utmost precision. Your customers demand different interactions at different stages of their buying cycle.
The three main stages of your customer’s buying cycle are:
Awareness
In this stage, your potential customers are not looking forward to buying your products yet. They have just started to know about your brand.
What do you need to do?
You need to deliver informative blogs to help your target audience find solutions to their problems. You can share e-books, tip sheets, educational webinars, how-to videos, etc.
Evaluation
Now that your potential customers are aware of their needs and your services, they will start evaluating your brand. This is when the buyers decide which company to trust.
What do you need to do?
You need to show some real data and statistics to gain the trust of your target audience. You can share product webinars, samples, FAQs, case studies, demo videos, etc.
Purchase
This is where your target audience will finally make a decision.
What do you need to do?
You need to compel your potential clients to opt for your services. You need to give them some undeniable reasons to choose your company over others. At this stage, it is better to share free trials, consultation, demo, training videos, coupons, estimate, etc.
2. Make your clients feel valuable
Clients always fall for a client-centric approach. You can’t expect long term trust if you treat your clients as mere dollar signs. Try solving their problems and provide valuable suggestions to help them out. You don’t have to be a people pleaser. You just have to be honest, smart and reliable to earn the trust of your target audience.
I came across a podcast shared by Ramit Sethi, the CEO of ‘I will teach you to be rich.’ He said that he did not make certain products available to people who are in debt. This certainly cost him a handful of revenue opportunities. But, he also gained trust in this process. His clients will have an idea that they are dealing with a reliable company. Ethically speaking, Ramit’s decision makes absolute sense.
Take Online music story Baby’s CD shipping confirmation email, for instance. It brings humour and value to the recipients. You can try providing discounts, a smooth refund policy or loyalty gifts to attain the trust of your target audience.
3. Use the right content strategy archetype
Many companies assume that content of any quality will work for the success of their business. But that is not true. Some clients may like to read content in lists, whereas others may like to read interesting tweets rather than large chunks of texts. Thus, you need to get hold of one particular type of content and base your content strategy on it. Check out the five different content archetypes and use the one that suits your purpose.
You can try creating serial content to persuade readers to come back to your website for more. Serial content consists of evergreen ideas. You can even share the idea of each blog series to build momentum amongst your target audience. You can also share case studies to build customer loyalty. Choose the type of content that will drive more traffic to your website and is relevant to your client’s buying cycle.
4. Be consistent
Nothing affects the trust and decisions of your target audience more than consistent, high quality and engaging content. Consistency determines the success of your brand and the success of your business. It ensures that your target clients know what to expect from your brand. You can set external and internal goals to maintain the quality of your services. Some of the factors you need to consider to maintain consistency are:
Brand message: Stay true to your words. Your brand message is the indication of your position in the marketplace. Do you want your target clients to perceive you as ‘Reliable?’ Then you have to show your reliability through your actions and behaviour.
Design: From logos to print materials, you need to create consistent imagery by considering all the aspects of your online presence. Consistent images are usually an easy win that will help you build trust with your clients.
Communication channels: How do you create consistent clients? You engage with them regularly. Yes, that’s how it works. You can’t expect a loyal audience if you reply to them after hours. From Facebook to Twitter, you must open all communication channels to engage with your audience.
As per the study conducted by McKinsey & Company, consistency is the secret ingredient to earning a loyal audience. Research by TechiPedia also suggested that consistent brands are worth up to 20% more as compared to other brands with no consistency. Embrace the ten ways that will drive consistent traffic to your website and help you build trust.
5. Try external marketing strategies
I have been working as a content marketer for over seven years, and I have experienced both success and failures in my journey. I have realised that it is always a good idea to get off your site and connect with other people (your target clients.) That is how I gained an online breakthrough. Once you get off your website, engage with people through different mediums, it shows that you care about them. Outcome? You gain a loyal audience 10X faster.
Some of the most common external marketing strategies include email outreach, guest blogging, press releases, etc. Tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts generate the most qualified audience for your brand. In fact, social media traffic can build you a consistent and loyal audience, almost 6.9% more than organic search traffic. Shopify, for example, has grown ten times in 3 years solely due to external marketing techniques.
Wrapping it up
I assume all of you already know how impactful content marketing is. However, you need to earn the trust of your clients to make content marketing strategies work successfully. You have to prioritize user experience and communicate better to build a successful and thriving business. Gaining visitors is not enough these days. You need fans for your brand. Try out these techniques and let me know how these worked out for you.
