Building Market Credibility for your Products Based Business – 3 Simple Tips!

One of the reasons why customers prefer products from a specific business and not from another is credibility. Think of credibility as the most important ingredient for business success, especially in a saturated market. Your customers have tons of options to pick from when it comes to businesses selling the products they want to buy. So the question is this – what is it that you can do to make sure your target customers buy from you and not your competitors?

The answer lies in building business credibility.

There are a number of businesses that believe trust between the customer and a particular business is built naturally over time. This happens when customers come to trust the quality of the products offered by the respective business. While this thinking isn’t off the mark, what they need to consider is the world of business has become tremendously competitive. In the U.S alone, 543,000 small businesses get up and running every month; it’s not difficult to imagine the amount of competition your business will be facing! And this is just small businesses; you will also need to compete against the bigger players in the niche.

This calls for some proactive action on your part to enhance business credibility. Just waiting and hoping your customers will see your business in a favorable light over time, is not enough. You will need to go out there and build trust amongst your target customers about your products based business, one brick at a time.

Here are 3 tips that will help you make that possible; think of them as the 3 bricks of a rock solid reputation.

1. Get your Business a Website

You’ve already got this tip covered, if you are running an online business. But what if you do not have an online presence? The answer lies in creating a virtual home for your business that is dedicated towards improving brand credibility.

There is a reason why you need a website to create a solid reputation for your business. 81% of consumers research online for products before they head out to buy them. One of the ways they can come across information about your products is if your business has a website. More importantly, if they get a sense of business credibility along with this information, there will be more inclined to buy from you.

A website can be made into a massive resource for building customer trust. Whether it’s the way information is presented on your site, or the massive amounts of product data that is available on individual product pages, or the high quality product images that are displayed on your site, there are different ways you can use your website to generate business credibility.

2. Personal Branding

Customers will only choose your products if they feel invested in your business. One of the ways you can make this possible is by creating your own personal brand in concert with your business brand. What you are essentially trying to do is building your personal reputation in the niche and hopping some of it will rub off on your business.

One way of building your personal brand is through guest blogging. By posting, high quality content on authority sites, you can build a reputation as an expert in your niche. Also, you can provide a link to your site through the author bio that follows these content pieces. You could even try to provide a link to the website through your content. This helps you align your reputation with that of your products based business. That’s like killing two birds with one stone.

3. Credibility through Association

There are two routes that you could take. The first is to connect with domain influencers. For e.g. if you are selling a software product, you could implement a strategy that involves interaction with the thought leaders in the software niche. These are the people whose words count. Connect with them on Twitter and Facebook. Try to form a personal interaction with them; if you are successful at it, your target customers will see you and your product in a new light. The fact that niche influencers are interacting with you, improves your reputation and that of any product you are associated with.

The second route is to sponsor and participate in events. There are always niche specific events, conferences and meet-ups that are held regularly. Why not become an integral part of these events. One way of doing this is by sponsoring such events or holding one of your own. Call leading lights of the industry to this event; this alone will do wonders for your credibility. If sponsoring big ticket events is not your thing, why not try and participate in one of them as a guest speaker. Of course, this can only happen if you can convince organizers that you‘ve got something important to say or the fact that you’ve built enough credibility for them to ask you to become a keynote speaker.

Remember, whatever route you take, you are trying to draw a direct association between you and your products based business. This gives your business the credibility boost it needs and deserves.

 Keep Trying

Don’t limit your attempts at building business credibility with these tips. The idea is to come up with new and innovative ways to ensure people begin to trust your business.

Why new and innovative?

That’s because every business (your competitors) will try and go the tried and tested route and exploit the commonly used tactics to boost the levels of trust target customers have in their products. You might not be able to differentiate your business from its competitors if you are doing the same thing. By being inventive with your tactics to improve credibility, you will come across as looking and sounding very different from your competitors. This is a huge advantage.

Another thing you must note is that the process of enhancing the reputation of your business is continuous.  You need to keep at it, if you want the process to deliver the returns you are looking for.