7 Ways To Build Brand Trust
Today we're talking about how to build a brand to trust once you have already built out a brand.
And this is interesting because I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs feel like ‘if I build it, they will come.”
If I build this awesome and beautiful brand, they will come and they will give me their dollars and everything will be Hunky Dory. But that is not the case.
And I'm guilty of it, I totally lump myself into this category at the beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur.
So there's a lot of trust that has to be built with a brand. A brand again is just what you're putting forth, a perception where you're highlighting certain beliefs and value systems and mission and goals.
And if people are aligned with it, they will become attracted to it. And so when it comes to building the brand trust in order to compel people to take further action and maybe convert from being a curious person to a client, there are seven specific things that I believe really can help you build brand trust.
Create compelling content.
I am a content creation machine. Not everyone is like me and I understand that, but compelling content is super important. Everyone knows that content is king. The goal is not to create a bunch of noise. Content needs to be hefty. It needs to have weight and have gravity. It needs to have purpose, it needs to be solid as far as statistics and data is concerned and when the content is compelling and it's not just fluff and noise, it becomes compelling.
And compelling content helps people to take action.
There's content that entertains and there's content that compels. And so you need to take inventory of what kind of content do I need to create in the first place. And secondly, if I need to create compelling content, is this something even I would want to listen to? Is this something that I would want to read? Is this something that I would want to watch? If not, you need to change your game up.
Some people are very data driven and they're like, “well, if the numbers don't support it, I don't buy into it”.
Compelling content can also look like sharing your story. And this is something that I feel like is becoming much more popular ever since Donald Miller's book came out, Story Brand. People have really jumped onto this bandwagon of sharing their story because when people can connect with you on a personal level and they can see that you have gotten from point a to point B, they're going to believe that you can also help them get from point a to point B if their circumstances are similar.
So compelling storytelling is really important as a piece of content to have in your repertoire, especially if your personal brand, meaning you're an author, you're a wedding photographer, you are a coach, you are a real estate agent, somebody that has an element of your personal self, your personality infused into your branding.
2) Engaging your community.
Nobody likes to engage with a robot. It is frustrating when you tried to call customer service you're talking to a robot. Everybody wants to get on the phone with somebody in person. When we engage our community as a human being and don't force them through these funnels that are 100% automated and robotic, it creates trust that I'm dealing with a real human and hopefully this human is operating with integrity and is going to help me and help solve my problems.
And when we engage our community as well, they get a sense for our personality and what we can do, especially on the fly. If we're able to respond quickly and thoughtfully, that does a lot to build trust with somebody.
And this applies also in your personal relationships, right? Nobody likes to be given, you know, the silent treatment. If somebody texts you and they're like, hello, like ghost town, where did everybody go?
So engaging in your community consistently and in an authentic way is a huge part of building trust with them so that they're more likely to purchase from you later.
3) Live video events.
Live video could be something like what I'm doing here on Instagram as well as on Facebook. It could be on youtube wherever your platform is. It could be a webinar hosted on your website or some other webinar specific platform, but live video or even live speaking events does a lot for building trust.
When you can see somebody's body language and you're looking them in the eye (more or less depending on if you're on video) and somebody throws a question at them, depending on how they respond, man, that can win somebody over or lose a customer for life.
When we are live people get a sense for like our mannerisms, our personality. There's a lot of nonverbal communication going on in video and in live speaking. If you can give people access to yourself in that way, that's also going to build a lot of trust between you and the viewer, making them more likely to become a client or customer of yours.
4) Being consistent.
Man. People are watching you like it is nobody's business and they are lurking and there are watching and they are hovering in the background and they're waiting. They're waiting. They're waiting to buy because they want to be sure that you're a legit person. They want to make sure that you are treating this like a business and not as a hobby. They want to know that you can produce consistent results for others before they invest for themselves.
Consistency in your branding, consistency in your messaging, consistency in how you show up. It all matters.
If you are selling one thing one week and then a totally different thing another week, like recipes and then the next week you're talking about finance and saving money, you are going to lose them. If they don't know what they're coming to you for, they're not going to come back. Be consistent in what you're all about, especially for a 90 day period, like, obsessively all about one thing until it becomes very established people will come back.
5) Share trustworthy links
A lot of people will resist pointing to other people. I understand why. But I have come to learn that there is enough to go around and that we can feel freedom and enthusiasm as we point to other people (even in our own industry, even if they're technically a competitor). We should be able to shine a light on others without feeling intimidated. But people don't tend to want to share other people's links but when we do share links, they should be trustworthy links.
For example, affiliate links. If you've worked with somebody before, there should always be transparency. So when, when somebody clicks on it and they do want to move forward with that person, they're going off of your word that this is a good thing. Whether it's a product or a book or a service or whatever. When I'm sharing something, I’m willing to put my name behind it. That’s important. Because that's also going to build trust about my integrity.
A great example of a link that I've shared a ton about is honeybook. Honeybook is my client relationship manager software and handles my invoicing and handles my contracts and handles my communications and handles my money, like my ins and outs
So I love it. It's been a great experience for me. I’ve create tutorials on it, I love it that much.
An alternative is Dubsado. I haven't used it, so my reccommendation isn’t as strong but I know a lot of people who do use it and swear by it. I can pass on that information in full conscience and transparency.
But what we shouldn’t do is share affiliate links or recommendations for products and services we HAVEN’T used.
6) Encouraging testimonials and reviews.
So here's a little not so secret secret that has helped me to create a large database of testimonials and my business. I ask for feedback, I ask for reviews, I ask for a no holds barred, give it to me straight kind of feedback.
I'm a straight shooter, so shoot straight with me. You don't have to sugarcoat things. My clients learn this in the process, especially design clients. If you're not honest with me about what you like about a design, then we cannot produce something that you really love. And so I encourage brutal honesty because you're never gonna hurt my feelings about design. If you don't like the design, you don't like the design. Whatever. The design can be changed.
So we develop this trust, this honesty that Brittney’s not going to be offended if the client doesn't like the direction something has taken.
So at the end of our time working together and I say, Hey, was there anything about this experience that was a little bit off putting or do you feel like this could have been streamlined a little bit better?
Sometimes, we have been in a process and I said, “you know, this isn't as efficient. Let me change my process up. You don't have to do this workbook. Let's run through the questions together.”
And now I've shifted my workflow where I don't send work booklets as often. Some people still want them, but part of my workflow is that we'll work through the questionnaire together because some people like to dialogue it out and it's actually more efficient. So I get feedback about what works, what doesn't work, what could've been done better.
And if they're open to it, I will ask them like them “Would you be willing to write that as a testimonial? Because that really blessed me. And I think others who are on the fence about working with me that would assuage some of their concerns and fears. Would you be willing to write that up? Just, just the positive stuff. I'll take the negative stuff and I will rework it so that my client experience just gets even better.”
So I encourage user reviews.
This is also kind of a scary thing if you actually have a product and it's like on Amazon, like a book or something. And so when it can be a little bit scary to encourage user reviews, but I still still recommend it because you cannot know what's not working if people don't tell you. And so negative reviews, in my opinion, are great reviews because now you know what's broken and you can fix it.
Everything is figure-out-able. There's a solution out there. It's our job to fix it, especially as an entrepreneur that is our job to fix problems.
7) Generosity.
Generosity is something that, man, I have absolutely grown in leaps and bounds. Being generous, not just with my knowledge but also with my time. Also with my finances. Being a generous person builds trust.
A lot of it has to do with something that is really nonverbal that comes through when we have what I call scarcity mindset. When we feel like there's not enough work to go around, there's not enough money to go around and I've got to hide my secrets and you know, I'll give them just a little bit and then they have to pay for the rest. Building trust through generosity really looks like giving people your best and then when they pay, you continue to give your best.
Like, there's no surprise about what they're getting. They know what they're getting because they've seen you be generous a ton in the online space for free with your knowledge.
And that doesn't mean that you don't have some information that is held back (mostly because it's really overwhelming to give everybody a ton of information at once) That's really the only reason why I encourage people to hold back any kind of information. Being generous builds trust and makes people feel like you're operating from a place of abundance and not from a place of scarcity.
I think scarcity mindset conveys this feeling of desperation. Like, this person is desperate. That is always an icky feeling. Nobody wants to feel like you're coming at them from a desperate place to get their business.
So those are the seven ways that I believe that you can build brand trust starting today.
I would encourage you to look at your content and ask yourself:
Is this compelling?
Is this moving?
Is it consistent?
Is it cohesive?
What I want to listen to this?
And if not, change it up, change things up and play around with it. Have Fun with it, turn it into a game if you need to. This is where I see a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck because they see it as a chore and they don't choose to see it as something fun.
Building trust is just like building friendships.
You're building real relationships. And so pursuing people in the online space really should not be too different than how you pursue them in real life. That's my take on it.
You might have a different opinion. If you do. I would love to hear it.
If you are looking at your content and feeling a little lost on it, be sure to check out my mini-course Map Your Content.
It’s a 3 week self-paced course that will help you create up to 3 months of cohesive content in advance so that you can more easily focus on steps 1 & 2 in the list above.
P.S. for those of you who have stumbled into this particular blog post, there is a special offer in this link only!
