How to Inspire Trust in Your Audience
Feelings drive decisions.
You decide what feelings you give your customers – trust or uncertainty. Or worse, fear.
We make decisions from our limbic brain, which is the part of our brain that doesn’t actually speak a language. It’s the part of our brain that’s responsible for feelings – like, trust – behaviours and decision-making. It’s the visual part of our brain.
I want to show you some things that will help you inspire trust in your audience which will ultimately encourage them to take that step of faith to do business with you.
How to Inspire Trust
Download this FREE checklist to get your digital presence inspiring trust, instead of fear and uncertainty.
Available in Word, PDF and Pages format
Your digital presence has the ability to lead your visitors to feel a particular way about you.
Most brands fail to inspire trust
It’s unfortunate that 87% of websites do nothing for their brands because it’s possible for a website to be designed perfectly to inspire visitors in a sense of trust with your brand. This statistic indicates that almost 9 out of 10 websites fail at inspiring trust (among other things).
And trust, as we all know, is a major factor in decision-making.
“You decide what feelings you give your customers – trust or uncertainty. Or worse, fear.”
It’s never been easier to inspire a particular feeling in your audience given the powerful tools of our digital world but not often are these tools used to properly guide feelings and decision-making.
Guiding feelings is not manipulation
I used to have this apprehension and fear toward the “M” word – marketing.
I had this idea that it was the industry that manipulated people and made them think things that weren’t true and buy things they didn’t need. While it definitely can be used (and sadly is used sometimes) as a fearmongering tool, every person does it every day.
When you are convincing someone of what restaurant to have dinner at, you are marketing. Yes, you are deciding a simple, small life choice but you are weighing the pros and cons for what will satisfy your hunger the best and then presenting that to your friends or family.
This is what healthy marketing is.
It is presenting the reality of a great, beneficial product that truly helps people in a particular area of life. As soon as marketing strays from that core purpose it becomes manipulation.
“As soon as marketing strays from honestly helping people it becomes manipulation.”
When you guide someone’s feelings to inspire them to trust you, you are saying, “Hey, the product/service I provide can actually help you in your situation. Let me show you the proof so you trust me with this situation.” That is great marketing.
These next three things are going to guide you in inspiring true trust in your audience for what you provide (if you’re not actually trustworthy or don’t provide a beneficial service…I’m certainly not the one who can help):
3 things that inspire trust in your audience
1. Testimonials and Reviews
Letting other people do your promoting is one of the best ways to inspire trust. People trust reviews and testimonials more than you talking their ear off about how great you are. When you go to eBay to buy something what do you scroll down to before you decide to buy? The reviews!
If you don’t have testimonies or reviews send a short email to your past customers asking them how their experience was with you and the results that your product or service produced for them. Ask their permission to display the feedback or review on your website.
2. Show Certifications, Awards or Companies You’ve Worked With
When someone sees the logos of companies you’ve worked with they instantly feel a sense of peace. It says to your viewers, “Look at these people that have travelled the road before you. We’ll take care of you, too.”
The same is true of awards and certifications. They tell your audience that you know what you’re doing, you’re competent and you have authority in your field; you know what you’re talking about, so, they can trust you.
“People trust reviews and testimonials more than you talking about yourself.”
3. Present the Results You’ve Achieved for Your Customers
Some simple data graphs, tables, before and after photos, or percentages work really well. Graphics are comprehended by the limbic brain before words are. If you have choice between words or visual representation of data, always choice the visual road.
If you don’t have data on hand that you can show to your audience, start tracking some now so that you’ll be able to show the evidence to your audience.
Don’t talk about yourself
People inherently think about themselves. If you talk about yourself for more than 15% of your content you will lose people. Even when you’re talking about yourself it should only be in the context of how you help your audience.
Create brand ambassadors that talk about you for you. The best way to create brand ambassadors is to give your customers the best experience possible when engaging your product or service.
It’s common practice to use the About page on your website to talk about yourself. This is not the purpose of your About page! Your About page shouldn’t be a history lesson of your business. People are thinking about themselves. I mean this as politely as possible: people don’t care about your history.
Your About page must talk about your customer and how you help them through your values and the customer service they receive from engaging your brand.
Always focus on your audience
It might be a bit of a change of mindset from what we gravitate towards but look for ways you can always talk about your customer and focus on their transformation they’ll receive from your product or service. People feel valued and cared for when you talk about them instead of yourself. This builds trust.
Think of ways you can inspire your previous customers to talk about you and share you with their friends. This builds authority.
Next Steps
If you really want to inspire trust in your audience through your digital marketing, download our checklist below. It will help you get some really great traction for increasing your trust and authority with your audience.
How to Inspire Trust
Download this FREE checklist to get your digital presence inspiring trust, instead of fear and uncertainty.
Available in Word, PDF and Pages format
What’s keeping you from inspiring trust?
Tell us in the comments below