5 Things You Can Do to Build Trust and Increase Sales
If you want to increase sales online, then you must build trust. Unfortunately, trust is far easier to destroy than it is to build. Creating trust is a lot like building a sandcastle - it's beautiful once it is complete, but it takes only one mistake to bring it all down.
Listed below are five things you can do to build trust and increase sales:
Practice the "Soft Sell" - Instead of screaming "Buy! Buy! Buy!" in people's faces all the time, try soft-selling instead. Great copywriters will focus 80-90 percent of their time researching their market before ever writing a word of sales copy.
The reason for such extensive research is to "get inside" your readers head and join the conversation that they are already having with themselves. This makes the copywriting process much easier and profitable. Unfortunately, research seems to be most people's weakness. If you want to build trust and increase sales, then you MUST perform extensive research, first.
Acknowledge Objections - If there are potential objections to your product or offer, and there will be, than the best thing you can do is to address these upfront. Do not simply turn a "blind eye" or pretend they aren't there, doing so dooms your efforts at building trust.
For example: if you know that the bookmarking software you're promoting doesn't list every possible bookmarking site, but the major ones only, than acknowledge it. Customers will more than likely read about this in product reviews and forums anyhow. Deal with the objection upfront, therefore making it less of an issue by comparing it to the benefits.
Invest In Your Web Design - The argument has been made over the years that "Ugly sites sell!" And in all honesty, they do... but most often when it is for a one-time sale only. However, if you want to build trust and increase sales, repeat sales even, than you must invest in your web design and create nice-looking sites.
Ugly, outdated sales letters and websites hurt sales. If you can't perform the necessary work to your sites yourself, than outsource it. All you need is one good design and two slightly modified sales letters (usually the headline) for split testing.
Make A Bold Claim And Back It Up - When you "know-that-you-know" you can make something happen, then make a bold claim and back it up. Sometimes your boldness (belief) is what potential customers need in order to trust you. However, under no circumstances do you ever make a bold claim that you can not back up. Doing so is the kiss of death in your efforts to build trust and increase sales.
Make a claim, even it is a smaller one, that you know you can back up. Even a small claim that is less impressive to you, will generate extra conversions with those who may not have reached that level of expertise. In other words, sometimes it is easier to catch a lot of little fish than it is to try and catch the "Big Kahuna" all the time.
Build Your Brand - Your brand helps to increase traffic, thus increasing your chances to build trust and increase sales. It is, perhaps, the most overlooked aspect by online business owners.
Never underestimate how many potential customers may learn about you before ever visiting your website. Because of social media, online forums and people's "inner circles" - there is a very good chance that the quality of your product, your credibility and what other customers have experienced, will be known before they ever land on your site. You can bet these factors will influence their buying decisions.
Be ever mindful of your brand. Create and promote only high-quality, in demand products and services. It may not seem very profitable immediately, but it will payoff big in the long run.
The 5 things you can do to build trust and increase sales, are:
Practice the soft sellAcknowledge objectionsInvest in your web designMake a bold claim and back it up, andBuild your brand.Until next time...
Be good to yourself,
James
Content Marketing Strategist and CEO at Artre International, James Artre has a combined 20+ years experience in direct and Internet marketing. James shows online business owners how to harness the power of content to increase website traffic, grow their opt-in subscriber's list and make more sales online. Learn more when you visit James' blog by clicking Here
(C) 2012 James Artre - All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Category Article Build, Increase, Sales, Things, Trust
