For new and developing companies, reputation is the ultimate goal. Budding firms must instill a sense of trust in their customers.

The stakes have risen and to remain in the game, retaining and attracting new customers through the ability to deliver on a promise is crucial.

Businesses must integrate authenticity and ensure their brand’s voice addresses customers directly. Reviews gathered by an online review manager and customer feedback must be considered and responded to promptly.

New companies can take advantage of these ten detailed tips on how to build brand trust:

What Is Brand Trust?

Companies are faced with this question, but what is brand trust really? And how can we develop a lasting relationship with consumers? The below definition should clarify.

Brand trust is customers’ confidence in a business to deliver on its promises. It is the integrity earned when companies ensure the demand of their target market is consistently met.

1. Tell a Product’s Story

A simple reason why we are here, or a product story can help new businesses build brand trust. Telling your story allows consumers to relate to your brand and see themselves as part of its growth. Often, this simple trick can be the stepping stone to succeeding in the market.

A company story may be highlighted under the following headings: About Us, Our Mission, and Our Vision. New companies should captivate and solve the problems of a target group.

2. Communicate in an Authentic and Humane Voice

Trust is laced in the company’s voice. How polished, authoritative, conversational, or humane a brand’s voice is can determine how much trust customers have in a company.

Businesses’ messages should be conversational to reflect the intention of the people behind the brand. Holistic and hyper-polished language is sometimes necessary but doesn’t reflect friend-like or real-life interactions. Authentic conversations are what bond brands with their target audience.

3. Treat Your First Client Like a King

Your first client is the harbinger of either good or bad reviews. A company’s reviews depend on how well its customers are treated. Treat every client as king by setting the bar high, going above and beyond, and portraying that your company will do what is required to keep them satisfied.

If a solid foundation of connection is created with clients, businesses will begin to operate on a platform of referrals.

4. Develop Friendship

As a new company, building brand trust is similar to starting a new friendship. You give your friend (new customers) what is required by investing heavily in what’s important to them. Awareness of the impact of all interactions with a business clientele establishes trust and creates a template for subsequent interactions.

5. Provide Excellent Customer Service

Enhancing a new company’s reputation is catalyzed when care, dependability, honesty, and giving are incorporated. Providing customers with excellent customer service is a great way to show your business cares.

Incorporating 24/7 customer service that attends to their needs day and night can give companies an edge.

6. Request and Value Feedback

Soliciting feedback from your business audiences is essential and tangible for every company. Such feedback is requested or collated by creating a quick survey, online review manager, polls, or using social media. When most businesses engage in online surveys and get positive reviews, they gain insights that play an essential role in identifying customer buying decisions.

7. Create a Unique Experience

This is a paradigm shift from the conventional method of branding. Businesses and marketers no longer create brands out of the blue; brands are now built with people-centric notions. Creating unique experiences through authentic events and promotions sets many established firms apart.

8. Deliver Superior Service

Brands that deliver excellent services gain their customer’s trust rapidly. Considering shipping services for qualifying orders, discounts for customer loyalty, offering self-service and automated support, and promising money-back guarantee builds brand trust.

9. Introduce Your Product or Service to the Market Through Influencers

Celebrities, social media influencers, and industry experts are effective human resources for creating a visual representation of your brand. Using them to make a grand opening of a new company product in a crowded market is an excellent idea.

Celebrities and influencers are already famous and have huge social media followings. Hence, their new product and service recommendations will likely enhance customer responsiveness.

10. Show Yourself

Hiding behind the scenes can impact brands negatively. Why? Because customers love transacting with people they can see. New companies must be courageous enough to appear on their websites, social media, and other business platforms.

Photos and videos of staff doing what they love on your website show customers that they are not dealing with a faceless company.

Conclusion

Building a respectable brand in the market as a new company requires much diligence from all members on board. Begin by giving your customers reasons to be emotionally attached to your brand through product story and diligently apply the other tips outlined in this article.

Organisations should build on pandemic CSR social media messaging to retain customer trust in times of crisis.

A study which examined the corporate social responsibility (CSR) messaging of Fortune 100 companies on Twitter during the pandemic has found that organisations could better communicate with their customers during times of crises by strategically embedding their CSR response into international marketing plans.

Researchers from Cyprus University of Technology, Ctl Eurocollege, Cyprus, Nottingham Business School (NBS) and the University of Sheffield analysed 2,858 CSR-related tweets across 93 international companies between 1 February 2020 and September 2021. The sample included 20 from the technology sector, 18 from medical and health, 15 from financial services, 13 from transportation and services, 11 from retailing and the remainder from a variety of other sectors.

During the pandemic, the companies tweeted messages related to their relief actions, programmes and campaigns in response to Covid-19 pandemic. However, researchers saw that not all companies integrated and coordinated their communications channels and strategies to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about their organisations.

Babak Taheri, Professor of Marketing at NBS’ Marketing and Consumer Studies Research Centre, said: “For many organisations, CSR messages are largely related to internal issues or campaigns, designed to improve reputation and build trust among their stakeholders. However, the pandemic provided organisations with a platform to regularly communicate a variety of additional CSR messages.

“Existing research mostly concentrates on the outcomes of CSR, while the communication of CSR strategies during the pandemic remains largely under-researched. We explored the how, what, and why of messaging and found that companies were motivated to communicate their CSR activity during the pandemic for a number of reasons, including to highlight their organisational values; to improve their reputation during a time of crisis; and to act responsibly towards their customers and society.

“There is now an opportunity for the positive CSR practices which emerged during the pandemic to be improved and embedded into long-term strategic marketing plans, rather than as an on-off response to any similar crisis in the future.”

In light of the findings, the research suggests organisations adopt a proactive, engaging approach to CSR communication to be ready for future crises.

This includes using available data and technology to improve CSR communication strategies by offering, for example, more relevant, targeted, influential and creative messages to audiences.

It is recommended that CSR strategies should be communicated as SMART objectives – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timed – and organisations should be more specific on how they have been more agile and adaptive against crises. This approach can build consumer trust in international companies, particularly as global corporations may be met with criticism over their legitimacy in operating beyond national boundaries.

The selected CSR response plan to a crisis should be in line with the general marketing plan as well as the vision of the business. In other words, audiences may not positively engage with a CSR response plan that is not aligned with the company value, mission, and vision

Depending on the type of crisis, its impacts on communities may vary from local to international scale, so agility in developing marketing commutation strategies against global crises is needed.

The effectiveness of the CSR campaign should be evaluated using rigorous measures to be able to improve future communication plans. Audience feedback should be collected both during and after the crisis through establishing a dialogue and integrating their views in CSR communication and response plans.

Professor Taheri added: “Consumers are much more aware of CSR in recent times and companies must ensure their strategies make a real difference to society. The sampled companies are recognised as CSR champions in their industries, as such they are expected to revisit their internal policies to not only ensure CSR is a fundamental part of their DNA but also of their company vision, mission, marketing plan and marketing communication plan.

“Thus, we recommend to policymakers developing contingency strategy plans for emergency communication management, particularly for international crises, as they need to remain socially responsible and accountable to their stakeholders both in normal and challenging times.”

For further information on the Marketing and Consumer Studies Research Centre at Nottingham Business School visit the website, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Adopting Artificial Intelligence is just the first step, the second is unlocking the true potential of AI to boost customer confidence with a focus on data.  Henry Jinman of EBI.AI reveals his 3-step formula for winning hearts and minds in the quest for consumer trust in the age of AI.

The post pandemic world will be a dramatically different place, with more people working from home and shopping online than ever before due to COVID-19.  As a result, we are living in an increasingly digital world.  There is no turning back with at least 500 million tweets, 294 billion emails and 65 billion messages on WhatsApp being sent around the world every single day.

We will see technology and in particular Artificial Intelligence (AI) having an even greater role to play in helping organisations to adapt, drive new business and keep people safe and secure.  No longer a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must have’, AI presents a significant opportunity provided it is harnessed and applied intelligently.  Success depends on good quality data otherwise, in the words of Ajay Bhalla, President of Cyber & Intelligence Solutions at Mastercard, “we’re in danger of creating a society without trust” and “without trust, you can’t do business.”

Global research from Capgemini reflects this sentiment, revealing that 62% of consumers would place higher trust in an organisation whose AI interactions they perceive as ethical.  Get it wrong and 34% of consumers would stop interacting completely with that company, while 41% of business executives have abandoned an AI system altogether in the event of an ethical issue being raised.  Such issues include collecting personal patient data without consent in healthcare or over-reliance on machine-led decisions without disclosure in banking and insurance. Get it right and 61% of consumers said they would share positive experiences with friends and family, 59% said that they would have higher loyalty to the company and 55% said that they would purchase more products and provide high ratings and positive feedback on social media. Therefore, ethical AI is an opportunity not to be missed.

The question is: How do organisations maximize the benefits of AI technology to build consumer trust?

AI and consumer trust – a delicate balance

To benefit from the delicate balance between AI and consumer trust it is necessary to create an effective data-driven strategy followed by a plan to use the latest conversational AI solutions for customer service.  Follow this 3 step formula to ensure the right data and customer service offering to boost customer confidence:

1. Data quality – successful AI implementations begin and end with good quality data and the best AI providers bring years of experience, helping organisations to deliver excellent data-driven outcomes that inspire consumer trust.  For example, one of our customers Legal & General Insurance was able to adapt quickly when Coronavirus hit the UK only one month after its Virtual Customer Assistant (VCA), SmartHelp, went live on the household section of the L&G website.  The organisation accelerated training of the VCA from an initial 88 household-related cases to an additional 212 pet and landlord cases, enabling SmartHelp to provide over 300 different answers to thousands of the most commonly asked questions.  SmartHelp is also used to speed-up customer identity checks and to provide personalised responses to policy queries while remaining compliant with data regulations required of insurers.  AI self-service has been well received with over 7000 customers using SmartHelp in the first two months of operation, far surpassing the company’s original expectations.

2. Transparency – is essential when it comes to AI and should be combined with high levels of transparency, where organisations make it absolutely clear to consumers how, why and when their data is being used. Consumers need to know that brands are not just amassing customer data to sell more products and services.  For example, insurance companies might use data to offer loyal customers better policy quotes, or retailer Coop Sweden has the ability to use its grocery AI assistant to suggest a vegan recipe to a customer who mentioned they were vegan when completing their online basket a few months previously. Demonstrating how the use of AI benefits customers by saving time and adding value can quickly build trust and confidence in the new technology.

3. Privacy first – all consumers have the right to meaningful information about the logic, significance and envisaged consequences of automated decisions or what is also called ‘the right to explanation’, as laid out in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meanwhile, it is the duty of care for all organisations to consider and then publish clear statements on how they apply AI technologies, only using personal information when it is needed and with the user’s consent.

Follow this formula to build consumer trust and confidence. Without trust organisations will find it difficult to build a loyal customer base and without customers there is no business.  New technology allows consumers to have a stronger connection with their favourite brands, therefore it is time to use AI to build trust through an effective data-driven strategy and greater transparency.

For more ideas and to learn from real-life success stories, visit www.ebi.ai

About the Author

Henry Jinman is Commercial Director of EBI.AI.

Established in 2014, EBI.AI is among the most advanced UK labs to create fully managed, Enterprise-grade AI assistants. These assistants help clients to provide their customers with faster and better resolutions to their queries, and liberate front-line customer service agents from the dull, repetitive and mundane.

EBI.AI selects the best AI and cloud services available from IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and others, combined with bespoke AI models to deliver its AI communication platform, called Lobster.

Combined with it over 19 years of experience working with big data, analytics and systems integration it has successfully implemented AI assistants that now handle hundreds of thousands of conversations a year across Transport & Travel, Property, Insurance, Public and Automotive industries.

For more information, please visit www.ebi.ai

Dr Valerie Bram shares some key insights into how companies can ensure they don’t lose their customers’ trust.

The current trend in national and multi-national companies is to create personal relationships  with customers, and to treat them as individuals. Communication is more informal and is designed to convey the values of the company: caring, empathetic and trustworthy being the most frequently chosen characteristics that organisations want to project.

How would you like to do business with a company you could trust – absolutely? Who wouldn’t want that?

Roderick Kramer, a social psychologist, in his article on ‘Rethinking Trust’ says that “human beings are naturally predisposed to trust – it’s in our genes and our childhood learning – and by and large it’s a survival mechanism that has served our species well.”

We not only want to trust, we need to trust.

What a perfect foundation on which to build a powerful brand. Coca Cola promises to ‘refresh the world in mind, body and spirit.’ Apple guarantees ‘to create products based on seeing the world a little differently, and they promise to inspire their customers to do the same.’ British Gas vows to ‘look after your world.’ These are phenomenal undertakings. The ideas are inspiring and the words highly seductive.

There is no doubt that words and phrases do have a powerful emotional impact.

But the problem for many companies lies in the gap between what’s advertised and what’s actually delivered. Very few organisations make sure front-line staff know the implications of a corporate persona, or the values, attitudes and behaviours that go to make up a personality. And even fewer teach their staff to deliver those concepts in a distinctive tone of voice,

Of course, marketing and copyrighting teams have the skill to do this, but call centre staff or complaints handlers – they are often without the specialist know-how that would allow them to speak or write in a way that matches the brand. Yet across the world they interact with millions of customers every day and as far as the customer is concerned, they are the company.

Tracking Trust World-wide

Trust is such a vital commodity these days that there are armies of people tracking it. The Edelman Trust Barometer Report for 2018, based on responses from 33,000 people in 28 markets, shows that things are not good. Two-thirds of the countries surveyed were “distrusters”. That is there is under 50% trust in the mainstream institution of business, government, NGOs (non-Government organisations) and the media.

Edelman Trust Barometer 2018
The graph and table above show a five-year trend in Trust in Industry Sectors. 

Trust is defined as ‘a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.’

It’s what creates a bond, ‘the foundation of healthy relationships, between romantic or platonic partners, close friends, parents and children’ – or companies and their customers. And a bond is characterized by the two major emotions – trust and affection.

The ESPC Europe Business School says much the same in its report. It states that ‘Trust is created through both emotional and rational bonds,’ over time and that between them, these bonds drive 22% and 44% loyalty.

Reliability, truth or the ability of someone or something – that’s what human beings are programmed for.

Which is why – when customers buy into corporate promises – the damage is irreparable when they find themselves let down.

There are usually three major outcomes. First, there is often a financial price to pay. Enron’s accounting fraud saw its shares drop from $90 to $0.26 on its last day of trading. Its collapse affected thousands of employees and shook Wall Street to the core. In Europe, some €25bn of Volkswagen’s stock market value was lost when the emissions scandal first emerged.’ The company acknowledged the problem, owning up to the outcome of its behaviour and begging forgiveness.

Second, reputation takes a knock, sometimes never to be recovered. This timeless principle is eloquently expressed in “Othello’ by Cassio in 1603, who gets drunk, is caught in a brawl by the general who then strips him of his title as lieutenant. Cassio laments, ‘Oh, I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.’

And it’s certainly true that a damaged reputation can last forever. Note the customer’s complaint about Ea-nasir, who promised to sell Nanni Fine Copper in 1750 BC. We’re still reading about it 3,786 years after the event.

Nanni to Ea-nasir Fine Copper 1750 BC

It reads, “When you came, you said to me: ‘I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.’ You left then but you did not do what you promised me. What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty handed several times, and that through enemy territory.”

By putting the complaint in writing Nanni makes sure there’s a written record for others to read.

This is why Social Media is the preferred weapon of choice in this today’s world, somewhere all three outcomes can come together: financial loss, a damaged reputation and cathartic relief for customers determined to exact revenge.

Let’s take one simple example – the video posted on YouTube by a Canadian singer whose $3,000 guitar was damaged by United Airlines. The clip has been viewed, 1,322,582 times at the last count. The whole world knows that the airline was totally indifferent to the customer’s loss. And the company’s shares dropped 10% as a result, racking up a loss of $180 million. So a financial loss, a damaged reputation and world-wide bad publicity.

Three Tips to Sustain Trust

So what can companies do to ensure they don’t lose customers’ trust?

First and foremost, they should keep their promises. These can be the big brand promises full of superlatives that PR and Marketing craft, or everyday promises that staff make when they promise to call customers back or provide a service within a deadline. It really doesn’t matter what the magnitude of the promise is, it’s still a promise. This commitment to ethical behaviour has to be made at the top – and the entire organisation should live up to it.

Naturally, there are occasions when a customer service representative doesn’t have the information the customer is expecting, in which case a telephone call to report on progress can head off accusations of unreliability. It just takes one broken promise to do the damage.

There are people who say that it’s mature to expect that promises can’t always be kept. Try telling that to small children. They cut parents no slack if they’re in receipt of a promise, so as a parent, I quickly learned to say, ‘I’ll do it if I can – but I’m not promising.’ This is all about value systems and whether people can rely on you to do what you say you will.

The second thing that generates trust is attitude. It’s what customers can hear coming down the telephone line, or what shouts at them from the page. In the words of the song, ’It ain’t what you say, but the way that you say it … that’s what gets results,’

Paralanguage is an incredibly powerful aspect of telephone conversations and easily mastered with practice. Most of us know that words only constitute 7% of a message, 38% is in the paralanguage: volume, pitch, pace and tone. Creating tone in a written message usually involves mastery of five or more technical tools: register, active v passive verbs, sentence focus, harsh v soft negatives, degrees of formality. Anything that smacks of an indifferent or uncaring attitude is never going to engender trust.

And finally, there are the words themselves. For centuries people have known that words can have a powerful effect on relationships – they can help forge bonds eliciting affection and trust.

The truth is that it’s been scientifically proven these seven words are certain to make a good impression on customers, and you can be pretty sure to get you the right emotional response you want.

The latest neuro-scientific research involving MRI scanning machines has long proved the impact of words on the emotional parts of the brain – of both sender of the message and receiver.

Given the current trends tacked by the Edelman Barometer, it’s obvious that trust is rapidly diminishing all over the world. So it behoves companies to remember that the trend to treat customers as individuals and speak to them on a personal level, means that any perceived betrayal cuts deep and last long. Once lost trust can never be regained.

About the Author

Dr Valerie Bram is a Director of T2 Linguistics – www.t2linguistics.com.
She specialises in the application of Psycho-Linguistics in the corporate world. For the past 28 years she has provided consultancy to major organisations world-wide. She has published extensively and spoken at international conferences. Currently, she is working in Dubai.

I was sitting in my doctor’s office. She’d just done an exam for causes of my vertigo (fortunately benign) and was speedily typing her notes into the computer. A little hesitantly, I said, “I forgot, I have another question”. She immediately stopped typing, and swiveled her chair to face me, expectant. I asked my question, and after fully answering it, she turned back to the computer.

Wow, I thought. That was an awesome example of presence. I felt seen. I felt heard. I felt important to her.

That kind of presence has unfortunately become more rare in the business world, as we all feel pressed for time. We all have many tugs on our attention and time.

How often do you see people attending a meeting and instead of listening to the person speaking, they’re staring at their laps? They’ve tucked their phones out of sight and are busily texting.

As the speaker, how do you feel when you look out and see people not paying attention? How do you feel about those who are looking at you and listening actively?

Our focused attention and engagement, our presence, affects how people see us.

The times we spend together are an opportunity. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, “what you do screams so loudly that I can’t hear what you say”. It’s not enough to tell someone they’re important to you. You have to show them.

When you choose to pay close attention when you’re with someone, you’re sending a message that they are important to you, that they are valued.

You build trust and connection when you offer customers, team members, vendors, and colleagues the gift of your presence. They know that they are appreciated.

This kind of sincere connection can’t be faked. It has to be sincere.

No matter what you’ve done before, you can change right now, in an instant. In the next interaction you have, you can choose to be fully present.

As a leader, your presence lifts people up, leaving them feeling a little bit better about themselves.

Your presence makes a big difference. Make your customers feel they matter by the extraordinary power of presence.

About the Author

Ursula Jorch mentors entrepreneurs starting their businesses and seasoned entrepreneurs in transition to create the work, the business of their dreams. Her coaching programs provide knowledge, support, clarity, inspiration, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to empower you to reach your goals.

“You don’t have to like your banker, you just have to trust him”. I read this quote of Honore Balzac in an article on the web and thought it would be perfect to start an article on trust. Trust is the key to building relationships even today. Balzac, a French writer, was born in 1799. Some things don’t change!

Watching Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Citibank and Bank of America, it is hard to trust banks and the financial industry as a whole today. And that feeling of distrust pervades the business environment today and affects the relationships you are trying to build when you network.

The dictionary defines trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”. In his book, “Endless Referrals”, Bob Berg says that people do business with people they “know, like and trust.”

So if the people you network with are not sure about trusting you, what can you do to earn their trust?

Establishing trust is at the heart of relationship building and that is what networking is all about. Here are three important steps to help you build
trusting relationships.

The first step in building the relationship is to listen to the other person. It is imperative that you clearly understanding his/her needs. As simple as this sounds, it is often difficult for people to be quiet long enough for the other person to say what he/she has to say.

The second step in building a positive relationship with someone is to adjust your communication style to that person’s style. People tend to trust people who are more like themselves so it is important to adapt your style to theirs.

If you are speaking with someone who is very goal oriented and competitive the person won’t waste time with small talk. He/she will want to get straight to business. People with this style are in a hurry and won’t like it if you slow them down. Networking with them will be very different than networking with someone who is a people person and loves to talk.

Finally it is most important that you deliver on your promises. Once you are clear on the person’s needs and make a promise to deliver something, be sure to fulfill that commitment on time every time. Follow the lead of Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks who says in his book “Pour Your Heart Into It”: “Every step of the way, I made a point to under promise and over deliver. In the long run, that’s the only way to ensure security in any job.”

In the current environment gaining the trust of people can be more difficult. In spite of the current cynicism you can still build your network through steady consistent networking and adhering to these three steps: listen carefully, notice and adjust to the other person’s communication style and deliver on your promises.

About the Author

Alvah Parker of Parker Associates has impacted the personal and professional lives of hundreds of clients by helping them to create successful careers and businesses. She has expertise in career coaching, business counseling and a specialty in law practice development and management. Alvah coaches clients to find, use and expand their natural talents in order to integrate them into their chosen work.

Honesty really is the best customer care policy. Find out how you can get your customers to trust you.

If you didn’t offer a particular service, would you say that you did anyway? Would you say you were open a certain time when you were not? Or that you accepted a particular type of payment even though you didn’t?

I used to work for a company that did just that. Everyday the owners of this business were flat out dishonest. Why? Just to get people in the door.

But in essence all they managed to do was waste people’s time and upset them. The owner’s never had to deal with the backlash of irate customers. The employees were left to handle the mess.

Many times employees actually had to lie to the owners and say they lied to the customers. Crazy, right? Not a very healthy environment. And it’s one of the reasons I don’t work with them anymore.

It’s also one of the biggest mistakes a business can make. If your customers don’t trust you, how can they comfortably refer their friends to you? How can your employees feel confident about promoting you?

What should you do instead?

Why not try being honest? If you’re honest you build trust. Not destroy it. Even if that means you lose a customer because you can’t service them properly. They’ll appreciate you helping them find someone who can. And they’ll remember that when someone they know may need your help.

And in an economy like today’s, trust is extremely valuable. Because it allows people to feel good about what you do.

What happens when people feel good about your business?

They promote you of course. And these people are far more credible than anything you could say about yourself. This is why testimonials are very important on your website.

Testimonials give people a chance to see who you work with. Potential customers try to put themselves in their shoes. They ask themselves, “Is this person like me? Do they have the same problem I have?”

This is why it’s best to use full names, credentials and pictures if possible. Pictures are extremely important. Again potential customers are looking to see if they fit in with your business.

Now you may be thinking, do people really read testimonials?

The answer is yes. If they’ve got some substance to them. Have you ever read user reviews on Amazon? But when they’re only trite, glowing remarks people develop what I call, “Testimonial Blindness.” Much like the ad blindness many of us have today.

How do you avoid “Testimonial Blindness?”

One way is to allow your testimonials to overcome the obstacles a potential customer may have. There was some type of hesitation on the part of your current customers before they chose to work with you. Ask them what it was.

Most likely someone else will face the same obstacle. If a satisfied customer can put their mind at ease, you’ve just made it easier for a potential customer to do business with you.

But remember, it all starts with honesty.

And a great service of course. But if your customers don’t trust you, they won’t be willing to promote you. It’ll be all that harder to get repeat business. And attract other customers you’ll enjoy working with.

Do you have testimonials on your website?

Start collecting them now. And use them strategically to support your copy. You’ll also learn a great deal about your business and how your customers perceive you. That’s never a bad thing!

About the Author

Dave Charest is the owner of Case Ace Copy, a copywriting company for small businesses.