How Can You Prove Your Business Is Credible As A Start-Up?

It can be very difficult to get a foothold in the start-up world without a big name behind you or tons of investors funding your activities, but it is possible to employ certain tactics to increase trust online, getting your name known and broadcasting information about the quality of your work as a result.

 

How to Make Customers Trust Your Brand

 

Launching a new business is understandably nerve-wracking, you should take comfort in the fact that building brand visibility and increasing the credibility of a startup is now far simpler than ever. The internet and social media allow you to have a clear presence on the world stage and make it easy to promote your work to a wide range of audiences for very little money, while enabling you to accurately measure levels of interest and discover where your customers are coming from.

The first step towards cementing your company as a major name within your chosen field is building credibility online. You can do this by harnessing “social proof”.

 

Social Proof

 

The term “social proof” refers to a part of human psychology that sees us assuming the behaviours of other people – usually the majority. The reasoning for this is that the more people are seen to be doing something, the more it looks to be the right thing to do.

It’s possible to use this phenomenon in online marketing and the building of trust. So what are the “trust signals” you should be aiming for to develop social proof of your company’s credibility and ensure your brand will do well?

 

How to Prove Your Credibility and how to Make Customers Trust Your Brand

 

A great online presence is always an excellent start when it comes to building a positive image for your brand. Here some tactics to improve your trust online that you should utilise:

  1. Create a well-designed, attractive and regularly updated website. Make sure that the site is as user-friendly as possible, and that its content is engaging and encourages audience interaction.
  2. Create profiles for your brand on all popular, relevant social media platforms. Ensure that these profiles are regularly updated and create links to each on your website, encouraging users to follow you.
  3. Be as active as you can on social media – starting conversations, running competitions where possible and following relevant accounts with high numbers of followers. This will help to build the number of followers you have.
  4. Use a service like Trustist’s that allows you to integrate all of your reviews and star ratings and make them clearly visible on your website and your Google listing, showing that you are a brand upon which consumers can rely.
  5. Set up accounts with Yelp, Tripadvisor and as many other ratings platforms as you can, being sure to upload full information and attractive images to each.
  6. Take Search Engine Optimisation seriously. If you research popular keywords and utilise them in an organic way across all of your online accounts and website, you’ll pop up in a higher position on the Google search results.
  7. Do good work. Having a great presence and the potential for hundreds of reviews is a very good idea as long as the majority of those reviews will be positive.

 

What Happens if a Brand is not Credible?

 

If you fail to build your audience’s trust in you, you’ll fall behind your competition and give the impression that your products and services are of an inferior quality. You’ll also put off future customers by failing to connect with users in a way that makes them feel engaged and interested in your activities.

As a result of these issues, it’s far more likely that your products and services will achieve poor uptake and that your business will eventually fail. This is all down to the nature of social proof – it’s vital to show that a good number of people are using your business and enjoying it to ensure that others will do the same.

 

What else does Trustist do?

 

Because Trustist generates a constant flow of high-quality ratings and reviews on Google, it can ensure higher levels of customer engagement by sending your brand further up the search engine results. The service also optimises your individual location Google+ Local pages at scale and generally enhances your SEO.

For more information about Trustist and how you can begin to use website reviews to build your credibility, contact us today.

 

Reputations are built on happy customers

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