How to Build Trust with Customers (and Make More Sales)

Establishing trust with your audience is the key to building a business and a brand. People will only buy from you if they’re confident that you can deliver on the promise you’re making to them.

There are more benefits to showing you run a trustworthy company. It can improve your search engine rankings, drive more high-quality traffic to your website, and earn you more leads.

In this post, I’m going to share my top tips for earning customers’ trust that will help get more customers through your door.

1. Create content that showcases your expertise

Creating content that positions you as an expert is a great way to show that you’re trustworthy. You can provide valuable and educational content in the form of blog posts, articles, white papers, infographics, videos, and more to attract new customers.

Google also puts a lot of emphasis on E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness). This is a term that comes from their search quality rater guidelines, so showing off your expertise can do wonders for your SEO too.

However, turning knowledge into valuable content marketing isn’t always easy. Here are a few ways to get started.

Create content that answers customer questions

If your customers feel like you understand them, they’ll be more likely to trust you. One of the best ways to do that is by creating content that provides answers to some of their concerns, needs, and pain points.

Here’s how you can identify and answer the questions your customers have:

• By selecting questions from comments on social media
• By looking at Google’s “people also ask” section or using keyword research tools like Buzzsumo or Answer The Public to find relevant questions.
• By paying attention to the questions your customer service team gets

Creating quality content that answers FAQs helps you optimize your website for search engines. That way, you’ll have a better chance of ranking well for relevant queries.

Let’s take a look at some companies already doing a great job of creating content that answers questions their ideal customers might be asking.

FreshBooks is an accounting software provider that caters to small and medium-sized companies. So, they have created a piece of content that directly answers one of the FAQs that some of their customers have: “What is cloud accounting software?”

By providing a detailed post on the subject, FreshBooks shows that they are knowledgeable in this field. They prove that they are taking steps to identify the questions on the minds of their target audience. This type of content increases the trust that their audience has in the company because it tells users that the brand not only helps with their accounting needs but also cares enough to educate them on the topics that matter.

Another example of a company that creates content to answer customer questions is Roadside Dental Marketing.

As a marketing agency that focuses on helping dental companies to market their services, they have created a guide to local SEO. Their guide highlights how SEO can benefit dental companies, and the best practices for localizing the websites of dental practices.

By providing detailed information backed up with relevant statistics, Roadside Dental Marketing will build more trust with customers. They also show them that their company is dedicated to making sure their customers understand this helpful topic.

Content like this indicates that they are not only focused on selling a service but also on answering relevant questions. This helps to build more trust with customers in the long run.

Publish guides that show you know your products and industry inside out

To build trust and stand out from the competition, you’ll want to show your ideal audience that you’re passionate about your sector, and know exactly what you’re talking about.

There are a couple of different ways you can demonstrate that you’re a true authority in your field. Here’s an example of content from a business that is already using this tactic well.

Service Provider Pro is a platform that helps companies with various tasks like project management and order placement. So, they have created an in-depth blog post on why agencies need client portals.

This article clearly shows that the company knows exactly what agencies need, and how equipped they are to help their target customers. It outlines the pros and cons of using a client portal, while helping readers imagine themselves using a tool like this.

Their post also makes it very clear that Service Provider Pro is an expert in the client portal field. It’s obvious that they’ve studied the options out there, considered what agencies actually need, and created a platform that could well be better than all the rest.

This content also allows the company to promote their own product without a hard sell—a technique you could use on your own website. Create content that explains why people need your products and demonstrates why yours are the best on the market. This will earn readers’ trust and help you make a lot more sales.

Write guest posts for reputable sites to get your name out there 

Guest blogging is the art of writing content for other third-party websites. By sharing your expertise on other websites, you can position your brand as an authority in your field while creating more awareness and sending qualified traffic to your website.

Guest blogging can also be a good tool for improving your website’s SEO rankings. Most websites that accept guest posts allow their contributors to add a link to their website. With this, you can build more high-quality backlinks to your own site, which will have a positive impact on your SEO.

When looking for guest post opportunities, you’ll want to focus on sites that are relevant to your niche or industry. And, when you do find them, we recommend checking their domain authority to see if they are a good fit.

Domain authority is a score from 1-100 that shows a website’s ability to rank highly on search engines and scores above 50 are considered good.

Checking a website’s domain authority gives you an insight into how probable it is to get quality backlinks that can help improve your own rankings. So, this is a step that you should take when deciding which websites to guest post for.

2. Encourage your customers to leave reviews

Social proofs on your website are powerful, and you can accomplish it by adding reviews and testimonials to your website.

There are several ways you can secure reviews for your website. You could:

• Include review requests on your invoices or receipts
• Send post-purchase emails asking for feedback
• Regularly post on social media asking for customers’ opinions of your service
• Call your clients to ask for a review post-purchase
• Create a dedicated web page where people can leave their thoughts

Just ensure you make it as easy as possible for people to give you their feedback. Nobody wants to take a lot of time out of their day to leave a review, even if they’ve loved your services.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to displaying reviews on your website—it just depends on how much information you want to share with your prospective customers. You could show them star ratings out of five or more in-depth testimonials.

For example, Bay Property Management Group  manages rental properties. They have a testimonial section on each of their location pages, which gives an insight into how the company has already helped a lot of happy customers.

Next, Baby Riddle sells baby clothes. They collect user-generated content to show off their happy customers and build trust.

Showing the real people behind your customers’ reviews can give them a sense of legitimacy, and will build even more trust with your prospective customers.

So, if you can, try to put a face to the reviews that you receive. If clients send you photos of them enjoying your products or services, that’s ideal. But even a headshot can make a review seem more credible and help you to earn your customers’ trust.

If your products or services are going to be a significant investment, prospective customers will want to collect as much information as possible before taking the plunge. And very in-depth reviews can help with this.

There’s no harm in trying out a few different ways to display reviews on your website. You could try using simple star ratings, user-generated images, or more detailed written reviews. You’ll eventually find the right option for your service-based or freelance business.

3. Show off your credentials and accolades

If someone has never bought from—or even heard of—your business, they’ll want concrete evidence that you can be trusted with their money. One of the ways you can provide this is by giving details of your credentials and accolades.

For instance, Florin Roebig is a law firm that offers legal services following traffic accidents. To emphasize their credentials, they’ve included a section on their homepage that displays accolades received from organizations in their niche.

One key thing to note about these accolades is that they are all distinguished recognitions within the same niche. This makes it clear that they’re experts in their field. It also helps to build trust with their customers who will see that they have been recognized as offering quality services.

Depending on your field, you might also want to highlight your team’s relevant qualifications. This will be especially helpful for building trust if you work in the likes of the medical or financial sectors.

For instance, Helix Hearing Care, focuses on providing care services for those with hearing impairments. They obviously understand the importance of showing customers that they have the required credentials to treat them.

The company has an entire page dedicated to outlining the qualifications of their staff. These range from advanced university degrees to other examples of training, specific to their field.

By displaying how every member of their team is qualified to provide their services, they can build a lot of trust with both existing and prospective customers.

Media mentions are also a type of accolade, so make sure you mention if a magazine, newspaper, or reputable website has featured your business. You can do this by either displaying the logo of the source or using an excerpt of the mention given, along with the name of the person or body who gave it.

For inspiration around this, take a look at Boomerang for Gmail. Boomerang can be integrated with Gmail for scheduling emails, setting reminders for follow-ups, and also providing read receipts to let you know when people have read your emails.

On their website, they have included a section that shows mentions of their product on various media outlets. They’ve used logos from The Guardian, LifeHacker and The New York Times—all publications that have mentioned the tool on their websites.

Displaying these accolades helps to build trust with their customers as it shows that the tool is good enough to receive shoutouts from these reputable organizations.

4. Keep your social media profiles active

By responding to your customers on social media, you’ll show you are a trustworthy company that is available to address whatever needs and concerns they have.

You can properly engage with your customers on social media by:

• Posting content consistently
• Responding to their questions in comment sections
• Hosting contests or giveaways that promote engagement
• Using the interactive features on each platform like Instagram Stories or Reels, Twitter Fleets, or Facebook Stories.
• Starting a social media community like a Facebook Group

One key thing to note is the importance of consistency. Your audience can only interact when you provide fresh and engaging content on a consistent basis and, while it might seem like posting every day is difficult and time-consuming, it doesn’t have to be.

You can make things easier for yourself by bulk scheduling social media posts so that they go out automatically. There are many social media scheduling tools that help with this process and using them will help you free up more time to interact and engage with your customers.

5. Make sure your site looks professional and offers a positive experience

Your website acts as the virtual storefront of your business, so it needs to give prospective customers the best possible impression of your company. If you have a poorly designed and glitchy site, people will be far less likely to trust and buy from you.

Here are some characteristics of a high-quality website that you should keep in mind.

High-quality images

By investing in professional-looking images, you can ensure that your customers will have a more positive experience on your site. High-quality images also help you tell your brand’s story so you can build more trust with customers.

Quality content without spelling or grammatical errors

How do you build trust and show your audience you are serious about their needs if you can’t even be bothered to proofread and edit your content? This is why it is important to not only create quality content but also use tools that help aid your writing and grammar. Tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor can improve your content and ensure it is free of any spelling and grammatical errors.

Easy-to-use navigation

When designing your website, take care to include a navigation menu that allows customers to visit different pages on your website with ease. Keep your wording simple, use clear and contrasting colors, and put everything in an order that makes sense, so people know just where to look for the information they need.

Accessibility

When creating your website, remember that there are people with impairments that make it harder for them to browse the internet. Good practices for improving the accessibility of your site include ensuring your site is compatible with screen readers, adding alternative text to your images, and providing transcripts for your videos.

Search engines prefer to send their users to sites that are going to be easy to use and browse. So if your website is difficult for people to navigate, your rankings are likely to suffer.

Establish trust and make more sales

Your customers may come to your website with fears and misconceptions. So it is crucial that you do what you can to alleviate their fears and establish trust that will allow them to do business with your brand.

By focusing on trust-building strategies like creating valuable content, building a professional website, keeping your social media interactions consistent, and guest blogging, you’ll be well on your way to improving the level of trust customers have in your brand.