We have all heard about the term Brand Equity but what does it really mean? It means the commercial value that is obtained from the customers’ point of view about your brand name of a product or service. If you’ve greater brand equity that means your brand name is trusted in the market and thereby customers feel at ease whilst purchasing your products and services.
But with all that said, it’s important for businesses to know how they can obtain greater brand equity. The answer to this question is through building customer’s trust within their products and services. Below we have listed down a couple of ways they can pursue the strategy mentioned above:
1. Value Propositions
When a business begins to take its first flight, it needs to make sure that its value proposition actually defines its core purpose. Value propositions are mere short sentences that describe the business in a succinct manner and the best ones are those that provide both competence and benevolence.
Competence in this term basically means to actually stand true on ones’ promises and benevolence means to deliver customers what they require. For example, Uber has one of the best value propositions in the world, such as The Smartest Way to Get Around. Surely Uber delivers this promise as the cabs pick you from wherever you want, be it your home or office or side of the road. Your driver has a map to guide him to exact drop off and the customers need to pay in cash. What’s more, is that it was benevolent in recognizing the need for hassle-free cab services as are the conventional ones.
2. Content
The second most important component in building trust is the content a brand shares with its consumers. The content needs to be educational rather than related to marketing and sales. Why? Because customer wants to know more about your brand trust, your product or your service and how it helps solve their problems.
It also creates a bond of affiliation, although it may be one-way communication, the consumers feel that the brand feels responsible for their wellbeing. Moreover, this process of communication creates a recognition which in turn leads to the development of trust. The content may share a common trait across all its posts, it could be a logo or a voice or sign.
Thirdly, we would like to mention how social proof is necessary to build trust. Imagine a hypothetical situation in which you have to buy a costume for holidays, for example, a joker suit, now you have searched up a few online websites that sell Joker Suit but you end up buying from the website that as the greatest positive reviews.
Why is that? It is because psychologically humans tend to follow the majority and if the majority is satisfied with a certain business it’s most likely that others will end up being satisfied too. Business can attain this self-proof by enabling review for couch tuner game of thrones features below their products on their official websites and social media pages.
Businesses can ask customers to share their experiences and testimonials and get in touch with an influencer to have him/her share her experience. Thereafter, businesses should share these responses on their social media websites to encourage other customers to try their products and services out.
4. Return Policy
Whenever an eCommerce website receives customer traffic, less than 50% of it is converted into successful sales. One of the major reasons behind the given success rate is because customers are often wary of online purchases. Most of them fear to receive a product that that looked different in the ad than does, or sometimes receiving damaged goods. However, to counteract these troublesome thoughts, we have come up with a return policy strategy.
With a solid return policy, customers feel at ease whilst they make online purchases. They believe that a brand that offers to return a product has the same confidence in its products’ quality that it expects from its customers at the time of purchase. Moreover, the customer realizes that during such a purchase customer satisfaction is placed at the top of everything, thereby the purchase successfully harnesses customer value. Therefore, there are plenty of ways that a brand can adopt to commit to an excellent return policy that will help convert an e-commerce’s webpage visitor into a customer.
a). Make the policies visible
Firstly, the customer needs to be able to view the policies in order to know they exist in the first place. Therefore, webpages need to make sure that their return policies are either mentioned on their homepage or have a dedicated a spot on their main menu drop menu. Moreover, for customers that face slight difficulty when doing their online shopping, like the elderly of any given community, webpages need to mention about their return policies on their FAQ page or forums.
Once the customer has found the section on returns, he should be able to know which situations will allow him to return a given good. Situations in which returns are strictly prohibited, such as a product that has been used or damaged by the customer should clearly be cited.
b). Return period
Another great way to ensure an unbeatable return policy is shifting to long lengths of the return period. The length of your return policy is directly proportional to the amount of confidence your customer has in your product. Additionally, it serves you a superior competitive advantage especially at the time of holidays season. Why? Because customers prefer to buy gifts from businesses that let their recipient exchange or return whenever possible.
c). Contact method
Furthermore, it’s essential for your customer to know where to knock whenever he wants to avail the return policy. It’s the business’s responsibility to fully disclose ways to communicate such as live chats, email, toll-free number or a postal address. Businesses should ensure that these modes of communication are free and if not then they should offer reimbursements such as in the case of mails.
5. Overdeliver
I am sure we had you on this one, but don’t worry businessmen we do not mean that you cut down on your profits to go an extra mile. What we mean to suggest is that businesses should promise to give less whilst having the full potential to overdeliver.
Some of the brands tend to promise customers returns, exchanges, or deliveries that fail to successfully administer later. Such a situation causes customers to lose trust in a brand and thereby the brand loses a customer forever.
However, in most cases, some businesses fail to deliver on their promises is because of unforeseen circumstances that arise along the way. They may include, weather conditions, natural disasters, delay in supply and so on and so forth. Since the customer is only concerned with the promise made, he eventually ends up losing interest in the brand.
In order to prevent such cases, we recommend that businesses should promise less and give more, for instance, if a business can and shall deliver a product within 4 working days, it should tell its customers that the product is most likely to arrive within 10 working days. Suppose the product arrives within the expected 4 days, the customer is going to be delighted and thereby build a natural bond of trust for the brand to overdeliver.
6. Customer Service Team
A foundation holds a building upright if the foundation shakes, the building falls. Similarly, customer service teams act as a foundation to the rest of the ways we mentioned above to building trust within your brand.
Creating valuable customer relationships helps make profits in the long-term. One reason why is because customers tend to shop with businesses that respond to them effectively and efficiently than the one that doesn’t. Customer may stick along even if your product was the right fit for them only if your business seemed to show enough care for their needs and wants.
All this discussion brings us down to the major question. How to build effective customer service teams? There are two ways we can achieve the goal:
i). Train your employees
A business should train its employees to deliver remarkable customer shopping experience. It should train its employees the native languages of the community, so it can communicate with both the educated and uneducated segment of the market. The business should also train the employees to use live chats and email services promptly.
ii). Empower your employees
Businesses can reduce their costs and double their profits by simply empowering their employees. Empowering the employees involves giving them enough authority to solve customer issues and queries on spot. This act creates a sense of responsibility within the employee, who tends to deliver more to his job than otherwise.
Also, prompt service increases customer satisfaction and may contribute to long term relations with the customer. The reason behind this is that customers prefer to shop with businesses that can easily get back to them in case of a problem than the ones that make them feel abandoned after purchase.
Final Words
It’s true that there’s no denying the impact of the trust of your customers on your brand or business. This could be the source of building or ruining your business. Hence, make it a priority so that your consumers will find a difference within and so will you.
Now, the time has been changed and the interactions between brands and customers have evolved. Get onboard through the experimental integrated marketing policy. Engage your customers by encouraging them to contribute to your brand. If you’re not an expert on that you can make a job search for a brand marketing specialist to make it happen for your company.
Branding is a great journey and makes it fun while dealing with! I hope, this article helped you to understand the Brand Trust for Better Conversions. If you want to share anything regarding the topic, feel free to share your opinion in the comment box below.
Since my husband is also in marketing, I couldn’t agree with this more. It’s so important to make sure your brand is seen in a positive way. You won’t have sales if the customers don’t know what you have or trust that it’s reliable.
It’s brutally true and I appreciate your understanding.
I found very interesting this blog post! I’m a marketing person and these ways are perfect to build a brand.
This is great advice… I think trust and good reviews are key as far as consumers are concerned!
Yeah this is all pretty valid. Your customers regardless of the business need to be able to trust you.
I think I agree with you, about social proof.. I always tend to look for the most positive reviews on the product before buying it l.
Straightforward and spot-on all around. And true in so many areas where you’re interacting with others, not just running a business. Especially “overdeliver” and “focus on customer service” – critical, and both sometimes in short supply…these two alone can really make you stand out.
Yes, empowering your employees is essential to growing your business.
I love all of these tips. Although I don’t sell an actual product these tips also apply to my business
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seriously branding is not that easy but you have explained it in a very different manner
Thanks Elizabeth for stopping by.
Your article provides me with useful information. Your information will help me in the next research.