From ancient kingdoms to present-day countries, almost all human institutions have lived in harmony or got into bloody wars for lack of trust. Needless to say, it is a crucial element for economic success.
Today, in the eCommerce era, trust has got a new definition. The absence of physical interaction with salespeople and the abundance of alternative options make customer trust hard to attain and difficult to sustain.
However, being a social element, it is always possible to win trust. Here are some psychology-backed tips to win and keep your customer’s trust.
How to use psychology to build buyer trust
Psychology is intangible. But, it plays a major role in making customers spend or save their money. If used wisely, it can help businesses to make customers spend more. Also, it can also improve the trust that customers place in them. It is already proven that customers who trust brands would be willing to pay a premium for products/services, especially when it comes to protecting personal information (Cognizant).
That said, there are several ways how you can bolster your brand image as more trustworthy. Here are some psychology-driven ways.
Show empathy
Gary Vaynerchuk, the Belarusian-American entrepreneur is well-known on social media for his candid advice and tips on growing a business. Guess what he suggests as the best marketing strategy ever? Care.
Phrased differently, empathy is the best way you can win your customer. Any customer would be more than willing to transact with a business that is empathetic about their wants and pain points.
Apart from building a product that solves customer problems, there is another way you can be empathetic with customers. It is by providing real-time customer support. From video streaming to food delivery, customers need everything delivered instantly. Real-time is no longer a unique feature, but a habit of sorts for our generation. And customer support is no exception to that.
The top businesses of the world have excelled at offering real-time customer support. They use a plethora of tools like live chat software, social media bots, and so on to address customer queries and complaints in real-time. Painfully slow customer service is now a thing of the past and is looked down up as a sign of bad customer service.
Use social proof
Robert Cialdini writes in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, “Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
In other words, people are more than willing to follow the actions of others, even strangers if it makes it easier for them to make a decision. This makes it imperative to showcase customer testimonials, star ratings, and text reviews, on your website. These are collectively known as social proof – a term, again coined by Robert Cialdini. It is the tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it.
Social proof gives your prospective customers reassurance that the decision that they are uncertain of has already been taken by several others and that they are happy with it. It removes any form of doubt lingering in the customers’ minds and makes them proceed with the purchase confidently.
Write humane copy
Your website or social media handles are the go-to destinations for any customers when it comes to finding information. For prospective customers, it should provide maximum information without letting customers go around in a loop.
However, most enterprises make the mistake of writing complicated and jargon-heavy content in an attempt to impress customers. This not only backfires but also creates a bad customer experience.
The need of the hour is humane copywriting that flows like a conversation and makes the customer feel included in the process. It should talk to them like one would in a conversation. A conversational copy on your website that conveys the information (without being chatty) will make your customers trust you more than they would trust an enterprise that talks gibberish.
If you are looking for inspiration, nothing summarizes the art of copywriting better than this Leo Burnett.
Source: https://speechsilver.com/copywriting-quotes/
Exhibit data points
“Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.” once said the American scholar W. Edwards Deming. Data has the power to prove our inhibitions and instincts right or wrong. For prospective customers, data is like the holy grail of information that will help them make an informed decision.
Exhibiting data on your website copy, your demos, your mobile app, or anywhere the customer could be confronting a dilemma can help in winning their trust. Be careful not to bombard them with too many crucial data points. It is necessary to showcase only crucial data that will influence customers and not overwhelm them.
For example, for a cybersecurity product, a keys statistic on data privacy issues and how their product helps curbs them can act as a trust stimulant.
Psychology as a means to win customer trust
Psychology defines how we humans behave and interact in specific scenarios. Wouldn’t it be beneficial for marketers to use the same principles to win customer trust? For digital marketers, understanding customer psychology is not just a nice-to-have option, but one that is becoming increasingly crucial for long-term success.
Every marketer strives to understand who their customer is and what their pain points are. Beyond market research, psychology can help point a finger at the several ways customers can be impressed and made to transact with the business. You don’t need a psychologist to help you with it. Some of the tactics discussed above are sufficient.