“If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.” – Zig Ziglar
We have discussed several times that for customers to remain with a company or become encouraged to start an association with it, they would require to trust and be able to rely on the company. These two components are essential for the success of a business relationship (actually any relationship) and without them disillusionment and strife are certain. Maintaining trust with existing customers is lot easier – building trust with target audience, now that is another ball game. It is essential for a company to understand its target audience before it can carry out activities aimed at building trust with this customer base – companies that do not do this well, will drive away both existing and prospective customers.
Without credibility and building trust with target audience, a business would never be able to form a connection with itself and its brand. Despite flashy advertising and lavish spending on promotions, it would be extremely tough to convert ‘visitors’ and ‘leads’ to actual business, if a company fails at building trust with target audience. Without credibility, a business has no power of attraction for its customers – without customers there will soon be no business. To help a company in its efforts of building trust with target audience, the good news is that there are a number of ways to do so. Social media comes out on top as it enables companies to get closer to and interact directly with, their existing and target audience. Of course, given the high visibility of these sites, it would be imperative for companies to manage the interactions closely and regularly. Any mismanagement and lacking on the part of the company could easily spiral into a wave of negativity and it would ‘out there’ for all to see.
A company must be judicious while using social media for building trust with target audience – it does not require maintaining a presence on every social media site. The company must instead, focus on a few based on where most of its target audience have a presence and reach out to them through those. Doing so, will help the company’s endeavours of building trust with target audience since the efforts would seem customized and aimed at making things easier for the target customer base. This in turn would lead to the feeling of community and help to build a foundation of trust between the company and the target audience. Maintaining a presence on too many sites would stretch the company’s resources and block them off in a losing endeavour. With the aim of building trust with target audience, a company should remain focused on a couple or so active and popular social media sites, post getting a clear understanding of which sites seem to be preferred more by the audience they wish to attract. It would be a good idea to make also an assessment of which sites gain more traction for the company’s direct competitors and make amends to your own strategy based on the results.
When people visit the website and or social media sites of a company, they do so with the aim of understanding the company and gaining knowledge. There is an expectation that they would learn something of value and that there would some additional reading material on these sites to help them with their issues and problems. Put up high value, updated and insightful content in your efforts of building trust with target audience. This will get your company noticed and become known for its expertise in key areas that would reduce some amount of the issues the readers face. It is important to have consistently high quality content on these sites – a thorough research of the issues and needs of the target audience would provide vital clues on what they would be interested in reading. Articulate and easy to understand content provides genuine value when it addresses the issues and problems of the readers. By providing solutions, sharing knowledge, exhibiting expertise and authority on subjects, a company’s efforts of building trust with target audience would most certainly be successful.
Trust and credibility come about by complete honesty and transparency in any relationship. The same applies to a company’s efforts in building trust with target audience. It is important to maintain complete transparency through your website and other social media presence. It should be easy for visitors and customers to find information, buy the offerings, return them if required and most importantly be able to make their displeasure known. Social media is a highly visible and volatile platform and anything shared on these becomes accessible and viewable by a very large audience. People will speak about a brand and a company – both good and bad but it is the onus of the company to manage these comments well and take responsibility when things do go wrong. In doing so, the company would display its commitment towards improving and making effort to serve their customers well. This perception would go a long way in building trust with target audience.
Written content, as mentioned has a deep influence on the perception of people. In addition, the colours and graphics on websites, social sites, and other promotional material have the potential of making an impact – it could be negative or positive. In order to build trust, a company must use colours and graphics that would match the psyche and personality types of their target audience. For example – a site for teenage clothes and accessories would need brighter and eye catching colours and graphics, as opposed to a company site whose business is to sell funeral materials. While these are extreme examples, they present a clearer picture of how the use of colours and graphics could affect the target audience.
We have pointed out several times that potential customers are more easily convinced by existing customers and by the opinions of top influencers. Every industry and market segment does have a set of people – high profile customers and industry experts – who would have useful insights and opinions on a range of topics. It would be beneficial for a company to get a thorough understanding of which of these people the target audience relates to and solicit their support to reach out and build trust with the target audience. The more trust a company can build for itself, the higher its chances of gaining more customers and expanding its business and profits.
The key to building trust with target audience lies also in never bad mouthing competition. Instead, a fair and transparent comparison of your company’s products and offerings versus that of competitors would make your company appear confident and more trustworthy. A company that knows its strengths and has nothing to hide, would be a lot more successful at building trust and confidence for itself even in the face of stiff competition. The fact is that by placing all the options before the target audience, your company would be displaying a commitment to giving them what they want. They would have the right to choose and do business with whomever they want.
A company that treats its existing customers and employees well would have the edge and would be more successful at building trust with target audience. When current customers and employees speak well of a company, their words would provide the required confidence the target audience need to think about associating with the company. The testimonials and reviews provided by existing customers are most often read by people trying to make up their mind about doing business with a company. In addition, employees that are well taken care would be happy and energized, which in turn would make them contribute to their optimum level and provide top class customer service. Such employees would ensure that the company remains successful and is able to gain more customers and business and in addition, would stay with the company longer, ensuring continuity and service excellence. With so much positivity and top class service, building trust with target audience would not be too difficult a task.
A business cannot survive without customers and hence it is the onus of a company to not only keep its existing customers close but also make every effort to attract more customers. It is through building trust with target audience that a company would be able to expand its customer base and gain a solid reputation in the market for its business.
