Truth be told, customers have a lot of options available to them in today’s day and age. Getting loyal customers is a luxury that every marketer dreams of. Although this task may appear to be difficult, it doesn’t really have to be. As long as a brand stays relevant and provides satisfactory services, it stays connected. However, staying relevant and building customer trust isn’t a one-day journey. Many brands opt for content marketing to build a relationship with their customers. But they may get too involved in tracking SEO scores and the right keywords to focus on the actual task.
Looking to get traffic to your website content makes sense when you are trying to justify the ROI. But if you do not engage or create engaging content, you will not be able to drive traffic for long. The idea is to tell your brand’s story. A story with which your customers can relate.
Content Marketing Tips for Building Customer Trust
If and when someone lands on your post and engages with it, they are mostly there to engage in a conversation and educate themselves. Trying to force a conversion with them might have a reverse effect. Start with building credibility for your brand image and building genuine relationships with your audience members.
1. Being Honest and Ethical
Nobody likes being lied to. And when you work with integrity, you gain loyal customers who spread a good message about your brand. Global Neilsen reports that about 78% of 26000 customers surveyed said they purchase a product based on a recommendation.
If you are claiming something which your product can’t deliver, you cannot hope to gain leads from any positive word-of-mouth. On the other hand, you could potentially lose customers.
2. Express your Expertise
Everybody believes an expert. So make sure to let your audience know about all the research and experiments you’ve done to bring them your product. Use your expertise to provide value to your audience members before you expect them to make a purchase.
- Solve problems, answer questions!
- Engage with your audience on public forums.
- Send out relevant information on your social media accounts and email newsletters.
People will start believing in your brand the more you reach out to them with valuable information. When a prospect is asking a question, it is an opportunity for you to share genuine information and gain a loyal customer.
3. Understand Buyer Persona and Customer Journey
Every customer has their own way of engaging with and exploring a brand before they can place their trust. Most customers don’t like to be sold products/services. They like arriving at the decision themselves and build trust through educational/non-transactional content. Every brand needs to be sensitive to the perspectives, needs, and wants of customers and avoid badgering them with “Buy now” radio buttons.
4. Use Social Listening
Every tip mentioned above can be supported if you have access to the right tool. Social listening tools are the perfect assistant to your analytics and content team. When we suggested that you invest time in studying your audience, we did not ask you to do it manually. That would be quite some task for a human being especially because sometimes users do not even tag the official handle while talking about a brand.
Social listening tools track every mention, every comment anyone is making about your brand or industry. It further analyzes the data to tell you about your target audience’s general sentiment, demographics, and so on. This data can help you build powerful content-based campaigns.
Focus on the larger picture. Building a long term customer base would require you to focus on conversations rather than conversions. This is exactly how you build customer trust in today’s virtual world.