How to Build Trust in your Target Audience
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
Building trust builds more sales:
If your audience doesn’t trust you they aren’t going to buy from you, work with you, or listen for you. Trust builds more sales, but it also builds stronger connection with your audience. If your audience trusts you they will search for you on social media, they will await your new blog posts, get excited for every podcast episode drop and actually read your emails, let’s talk about it.
5 Ways to Gain Trust With Your Target Audience!
Let's talk about:
Why your target audience needs to trust you,
Different ways your audience can trust you
Things you can do to create more trust within your business.
First lets talk about WHY your audience needs to trust you:
Trust is the number one factor in why people want to be your consumer. People want to make sure they can trust that your products and services are what you say they are and will give the results that you say they will BEFORE they start working with you. If they can’t trust you they won’t buy from you. The only way to do that is by showing them how they can trust you. Things like..
Social Proof
Testimonials
Reviews
These are the quickest ways to show case to your target audience your products and services are what you say they are, but how do you get that if you can’t even make a sale to begin with?
Well there’s a few ways.
Here are 5 major ways to gain trust with your audience without social proof:
Free value:
Sharing free value is the number one way to show your audience what you know. I’m not just talking surface level value, I’m talking powerful, life changing information that can truly help your target audience.
You’re probably like “Danielle! You’re nuts! Why would I give it all away for free when I can make money from it”.
If this was your initial thought, well, one you’re not. And two - not everything needs to have a price point. Here’s why - now a days unless you create a brand new concept, majority of the time the information that we are teaching or sharing with others is in a book someone could buy online for $19 and read it for themselves. People hire you for your methodology, for the way you teach it, for the way you talk about it, and for the way you do it.
If you want more free advice on how to add value, check out episode 024: How to Provide Value For Your Audience
Beta Testers:
A beta tester is someone who purchases your product or service for an extreme discount in exchange for a review on the product or service. This comes in handy when you are trying to test run a service based business and want to better understand what your target audience is actually looking for. Beta testing your services not only gives you experience, allowing you to adjust your programs or products, but it also pulls in direct feedback from your target audience.
One of my clients did a beta test on her 1:1 service and realized that she was talking to the wrong target audience. She was completely bored helping her beta clients and realized that she needed to adjust how she talked about her service in order to speak directly to the people she actually wanted to work with.
Consistency:
By now I hope you all know that I’m not one to tell you to be “more consistent” and instead I’m the person thats going to tell you to find your consistency. Figure out what consistency looks like to you. BUT! Remember this, consistency can be the easiest way to show people they can trust you, and it can also the quickest way to show people they CAN’T trust you.
This is why it’s extremely important for you to figure out what your regular schedule of posting on social media looks like. Showing up every morning on stories teaches people they can trust that you are part of their morning routine. If you have a YouTube channel and you post every Sunday, telling your audience “I’ll see you next Sunday” teaches your audience you show up on Sundays. It’s ok to take breaks, just like any good tv show, we need a season break to create hype for the next season, but make sure it’s an intentional break. Apologizing for “being gone” makes it look like you didn’t plan it, and that can make people feel like they can’t trust you. However, if you went through something life changing during that unplanned break and want to share the story, that can help you connect with your audience and gain more trust in them.
The easiest way to think about this is to ask yourself, “Would I trust a content creator if they did blank”. Check out episode 022: How to Show Up Powerfully to learn how to harness your voice and feel empowered to be exactly you.
Sharing your credentials:
If you’re new to being self-employed but not new to the field you are in, its can be extremely helpful to present your credentials to people. Not only does it place you as an expert in your field, but it also helps people disable that little judgement factor that lights up when we’re on social media. If you have low followers or low engagement people have a tendency to question your standing. Because while we know follower count and views don’t equal experience or money, some people still do. AN example if I wanted to share my credentials on a TikTok could look like: “here are 5 Different Ways To Gain Massive Trust from Your Audience - I’m Danielle, a creative consultant and brand expert for over 10 years and today I’m going to teach you how to gain trust with your audience so they’ll want to work with you!”
I always like to do a hook first, and then introduce myself, share a snippet of my credentials and then repeat the hook in a different manor to remind them why they need to stay.
Sharing your personal success story/results:
Have you seen those social media managers and TikTok experts show you their journey of how they went from 100 followers to over 100,000 followers in less than 3 months and I’m going to teach you how I did it. This is how they gain trust with you from their experience, they note the struggle you are also facing, share their results, and then provide the value you are looking for. They also usually follow it up with a “follow along if you want to grow your account” or “if you want to get to 100k”.
Another example I just recently saw was this content creator named Lexi had a verified personal account, but wanted to start from scratch with a new name for her business. She was still using her real name as her business name but wanted followers who were her target audience. So rather than keeping an account with a million followers who she knew wouldn’t turn into consumers, she created a brand new tiktok account, and as a way to show case her success story of growing an audience, she would show a screenshot of her verified account.
Cases studies are extremely helpful to teach future clients what you are able to do all while keeping your clients information private. They also are great when you are allowed to share your clients name. Case Studies make great content that gains the trust of your audience as well as educates them on what you teach and how you teach it. Case studies are similar to sharing your personal journey but have a stronger impact because its showcases that people want to work with you, they find success with you, and it gives your potential clients a chance to see how you talk about your clients.
An example of how to do this on TikTok can be:
This is EXACTLY how I got my one of my members to go from feeling iffy about trusting their intuition and constantly playing catch up to completely prioritizing what she knew in her gut to be the best move for her business…
And then I can go on say she joined Morning Pages everyday and followed the prompts that I provide to help her process her ideas, think about her long term goals and figure out exactly what she wanted out of her business. Then she took advantage of EVERY group coaching call, and got all of her technical questions as well as her questions she uncovered during morning pages and from listening to my podcast every Monday. This go her to work through her physical and mental blocks stopping her, feel confident in her trusting her gut, and silenced her imposter syndrome.
After pointing out the different aspects of the membership and how they benefitted her, I would want to make sure I pointed her tangible success as well, which would sound like - After 3 months of showing up in my membership she booked 3 high ticket clients equalling $15,000 in sales and signed 2 consulting contracts totaling $10,000. She went from doubting herself to leveling up her business and you can too.
Case studies are fun because you get to brag about your clients and all of their successes.
Alright my friends! That’s all for this episode, I hope you take these 5 power tips to gain trust in your audience when you have not clients and turn your followers into clients so you can also write your case studies and brag about them! In the mean time, I’d really appreciate it if you sent this podcast to at least ONE friend that you think would benefit from gaining trust in their audience.
More Resources
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Until next time!
xo Danielle
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Danielle’s TikTok: @her.messy.bun