❓Do your customers have trust issues?

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Today’s feature story covers how hard it is to gain trust for your brand when people assume nearly everything online is at least semi-sketchy. Let’s see how to defeat this growing problem…

Be It, Before Promising It

How ironic. I did not trust the guy saying his website wasn’t trustworthy enough. A few months ago, the guy wanted to hire me to write copy to fix that. I ultimately said no, based on the lack of trust that came from a few tiny things I picked up on.

The lesson? Small things are keeping people from reading past the header of your landing page. Keeping them from reading your second email. And stopping them from doing business with you.

Don’t freak out, these trust issues can be overcome, so let’s see how.

Trust Takeaways

High-trust companies are over 2.5 times more likely to be high-performing revenue organizations ~HBR.

Just 5% of Americans trust Big Business “a great deal” (29% trust Small Business) ~Gallup

Even if your business is 100% trustworthy, you must present that trustworthiness 100% effectively

Old Trust Tactics Don’t Work As Well

When someone I just met calls me by my name repeatedly, I assume they’re trying to get me to like them.

Smart to be likable. Super smart. The problem? When they beat you over the head with your own name! Smart people notice. Even dum-dums like myself on the phone with no-trust website guy.

Even reviews are looked at as sketchy, more so every day.

CBS reported— up to 30% of online reviews are fake. Also…

TripAdvisor removed more than 2 million fake review submissions from their website in 2020.

Take action: Monitor all platforms for fake positive reviews about your brand. Potential customers can spot them and bounce from your website immediately. Plus, monitoring helps you tackle fake negative reviews also.

Looking Like Something Your Brand Isn’t

Since small business is trusted nearly 6x as much as big business (above stat), why try to appear like a behemoth brand if that’s not the case?

Lean into being the little brand that could.

A real photo of you and your team (cat, dog, & goldfish) will generate higher trust than a Canva stock photo of people who never met each other before the photo shoot.

(BTW, why doesn’t someone start a blue-collar industry stock photo service showing off people who’ve actually touched dirt?)

How To Convey Real Trust

Little word changes in your copy can be the difference between gaining trust and losing it.

Spend 80% of your time on headlines and subheads since that’s all most people will read initially.

Readers need to quickly trust that:

Your service matches their need
Other people like your brand
Your entire message makes sense

The last one seems easy. It’s not. Your thoughts do not reside in the head of a stranger who popped on your landing page. Be clear. More clear than you imagine you need to be.

Worse? People skip words, which can reverse the entire meaning of one of your headlines or sentences.

This is one reason to be cautious when using “negatives” such as “no gotchas.” A busy reader may only notice “gotcha,” – even subconsciously. Which can keep them from coming back to your landing page or opening that email when they misread the subject line.

Example: People misinterpret survey questions all the time. One reason? Excessive complexity— Using sentences that are hard to process (packing too much into a single question).

Bottom Line On Trust

Untrustworthy brands can fool some of the people some of the time. And legit trustworthy businesses can get by without worrying much about people who should trust them but don’t.

The clock’s ticking on that though as trust continues nose-diving while skepticism and cynicism grows.

Sad thing is, most businesses are trying to do right by their customers and clients. It’s the scumball-scammers screwing it up mostly.

Fight off this distrust with these 3 things to keep your brand looking, feeling, and being trustworthy.

#1 Get video reviews from human customers (hint: won’t be easy, peeps are busy)

#2 Stop using tired and played-out words like “journey” in every piece of marketing (buying deodorant is not a journey)

#3 Admit when you screw up (fake a screw up if you have to! – that’s a test, people. Do not do that😅)

Keep reading for horse power, minute-by-minute web stats, & a funnel hack.

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Knowledge Base

Knowledge is power. Horses are too.

🥇Sweep the leg! of Goliath competitors (w/ content marketing)

Launch a Shopify store | then optimize it

Freelance writing: big paydays where AI writing sucks

Handling Google Analytics 4 (without losing your mind)

Self Help

I lost 40 pounds when I was like 43 years old.

Never considered weight-loss drugs. I’m cheap. And don’t trust pill-pushers.

Unhinged hyperbolic articles like this make me trust them less.

I don’t know it all (very little, honestly). But I would investigate hard before signing up for regular doses of quick-fix elixirs.

* Inbox Hackers Shout-out:

📢Chioma at SKLD (tech-enabled manufacturing)

📢Jacob at PSDconnect (medical careers)

Facts and Stats

Viewers watch 43 years worth of streaming content every minute of every day online (More in this infographic)

Litmus survey: 20.1% of marketers say their ESP integration with other marketing channels is poorly done

Cox Media Group says consumers’ smartphone microphone data is available for ad targeting (Media Post)

Bonus: What primitive tech is making in-store self-checkout a hit with 70% of shoppers? RFID chips

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