When growing a business, increasing revenue is by far and away the main goal for most entrepreneurs.
While there are many ways to carve out a successful business, there are a few general principles that every business should follow to maintain its brand and a solid stream of customers. One of these essential principles is to build a good reputation for your business, one that people coming across it can find valid reasons to trust.
Building a trustworthy brand is a multi-step and continuous process. It can take months or even years for the hard work to pay off, but once it does, it’s easy to reap the rewards of building a solid reputation. But it can also fail to bear fruit if the strategy is suboptimal.
Building a good brand is especially difficult for Australian-based businesses, as many local consumers tend to be nitpicky about who they choose to engage with. For startups that are relatively unestablished, it can be an uphill battle trying to build customer trust and invite them to give you a chance.
If you’re keen to keep your business’s growth momentum, then you’re in the right place. This article will provide you with five ways you can earn your customers’ unfailing trust before they even enter your storefront or buy a product online.
Let’s jump right into it.
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Use an Inbound Number as Your Main Communication Line
Australian startups can benefit by presenting their business contact details professionally and memorably. An inbound number achieves just that, giving your business phone number a differentiating factor that makes it stand out from traditional personal phone numbers.
In Australia, there are two main inbound numbers that businesses can use: a 1300 number and an 1800 number.
A 1300 number allows callers to share the cost of the call at a local rate, regardless of where the call is from, as long as the caller’s origin point is within Australia. On the other hand, a 1800 number is generally free for customers to call from landlines and many mobile plans, but businesses shoulder the full cost of calls.
Both options incentivise customers to make a call, bringing leads into the funnel reliably. They also make your business look more established due to their unique starting sequence. Businesses can even choose inbound numbers with a sequence of numbers that correspond to their business in some shape, like 1300-FLOWERS for a bouquet crafting shop or 1800-LAUNDRY for a laundromat.
In any case, having an inbound number is a good way to get clients from all over Australia to pick up the phone and contact your business. Besides putting up a professional front, these numbers also have business-specific features that allow your business to scale its telecommunication channel rapidly.
Some features that these inbound numbers offer include:
- Call routing to multiple open devices handled by a variable number of CS agents
- Custom menu options with voice speech
- Call tracking and analytics for performance insights
- Flexible pricing plans for scaling upward or downward
If you’re relying on physical phone numbers, then you’re not only presenting yourself as a small-time business owner, but your likelihood of scaling is also severely hindered. Consider getting one of the cheap 1300 number plans from Telcoworks to give your business a quick but guaranteed reputational boost at an affordable price.
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Strengthen Your Online Presence
Another way to get clients to view your startup as a trustworthy one is by being intentional about how you curate your online presence.
While leads can come from foot traffic and physical marketing campaigns, a good percentage of customers come from online spaces like social media and search engine websites.
There’s a lot of noise and ads in these spaces, so getting potential customers interested enough to click to view your website and potentially buy something is something you, as a business owner, should strive to do.
There are many ways you can go about enhancing appeal for your business’s online presence.
For one, you should try to create a channel across all social media platforms that your primary customer base may flock to. In Australia, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram are some of the most commonly used platforms, so creating a business page in these places can help you establish a footprint in their respective digital spaces.
Secondly, you could also consider creating and filling out information in business listings such as Google Business Profile and other online directories. These third-party websites are also often used for people to post reviews, so gathering positive feedback from your current customers can be a good way to build confidence around your business.
Moreover, on these websites, you can post information about your business. Putting real-time information on your contact details, operating hours, and other relevant details helps make your business look active and legitimate. This, in turn, helps make online customers more likely to trust what you have to offer.
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Showcase Social Proof
Besides designing a visually pleasing social media page and a functional website, you should give some space for customers to share firsthand experiences about your product or service offering.
Social proof is one of the most sought-after indicators of customers looking to trust the business or not, and failing to capitalise on this is a massive disservice to potential customers looking to figure out your business’s level of quality and reliability.
There are many ways you can publish social proof. You can feature testimonials directly on your website. You could also put up a “Brands worked with” graphic on your website and social media page. If you offer continuous service, you could also create a case study that outlines how you’ve offered value or helped an existing client overcome a specific problem.
Besides that, you should also engage with reviews on third-party websites like Google Reviews. Respond to negative feedback professionally and appropriately, and use that opportunity to showcase your business in a positive light if at all possible.
By creating a means for outsiders to determine for themselves your business’s reliability, you can naturally get them more interested and more trusting of your business.
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Be Transparent With Your Process and Offering
While you don’t want to reveal all your company’s tricks and secrets, letting your customers understand the scope of your offering is a good way to let them decide whether to trust you or not. Giving them this power makes each lead more likely to follow through with a purchase and buy your product with confidence.
Transparency naturally builds trust. When customers know what to expect, they’re less likely to hesitate or second-guess their decision to engage with your business—which can lead to an uptick in sales.
You can improve business transparency to customers in various ways. Some may be as simple as outlining the buying process step-by-step. You could also reveal timelines of deliverables and explain what happens after an enquiry is made.
Moreover, you should also be responsive to questions they may have about the process. Putting up a FAQ page on your website and social media page can help reduce customer anxiety and make them more inclined to buy a product or engage with your business.
By optimising business transparency, there will be less friction in your sales process, thereby helping convert more leads into paying customers.
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Maintain Consistent Branding Across All Touchpoints
Lastly, Australian startups should also strive to provide a consistent tone and brand across all of their established touchpoints, both in physical print and digital media.
Consistency gives customers an idea of what to expect from your brand. If there’s a mismatch in identity, visuals, or tone of voice across two or more platforms, this could hinder your business’s credibility and give the impression that your business is not intentional about the way it presents itself, which is not professional.
On the other hand, if the messaging cues are consistent across all platforms, this solidifies your brand identity well. In turn, this can make your business more memorable and recognisable. It’ll also solidify customer trust before they even reach out to your business.
We hope that these tips can serve you well as you navigate building a startup in Australia. All the best in succeeding in your venture with these business tips!
