Today’s customer faces a myriad of choices as to which businesses they should support. So how do you differentiate your company from the sea of competitors?
Customers are more inclined to support businesses that they trust. After all, do you want to go to a mechanic who will tell you there are 20 things wrong with your car no matter what, or one who charges a fair price and gives proper assessments? With that in mind, decision makers need to devise strategies that they can leverage in order to help establish trust and build digital credibility over the long term.
Let’s take a look at some numbers from recent research that explains why customers might question a brand’s credibility after visiting its website:
- 55 percent of customers said a website that lacks contact information and phone numbers reduces credibility.
- 43 percent of customers indicated that when a website lacks a message they don’t support the brand.
- 35 percent of customers say “do it yourself” sites cause them to lose trust in a brand.
Other digital factors adversely affecting trust include stock photos, tiny text, animated ads and popups, intrusive live chat, not the right vendor, rotating banners and media that plays automatically.
Luckily, that same research highlighted factors that can help you build credibility for your brand. Websites that include thorough contact information, case studies, white papers, articles, testimonials, blog posts, company bios and more help create trust with customers.
That’s all well and good, but many businesses simply don’t have the time or resources to produce that much content. Employees are already stretched in a million different directions each day, so giving them additional responsibilities could stress them out to the point of no return. Additionally, the content they produce might not be up to par if it’s just another task on a long list.
Businesses that find themselves in such a predicament are in luck, though, because they can partner with a content strategy vendor to assist with establishing and building credibility. Such vendors help companies conceive and manage their content strategy, producing a variety of strong assets for partner businesses.
By employing the services of a content strategy vendor, businesses avoid worrying about finding time to create content. Instead, they can rest comfortably knowing that a team of professionals is taking care of that mission-critical business function for them.
