Copy Tip 41: Nine Ways To Build Trust
Well drats on an Aussie (Ben Graham) not being part of the winning Super Bowl XLIII team, but a very exciting game nonetheless! And I can’t believe how soon Aussie rules will be back up and running for 2009.
Now if you’ve been following my Copy Tips, you’ll know that I often “link” my opening story to the copywriting discussion in the blog post.
And I’m about to do it again!
Today I’m going to link football with TRUST.
I’ve probably watched a few dozen American football games in my life, although of course being an Aussie “foreigner” it’s still a bit of a mystery in terms of strategy and plays. I’m pretty good on the basic fundamentals, but watching the nuances and the plays can be quite mesmerising.
(I must say it looks tempting to play on the defensive line and sack a QB!)
But what amazes me (aside from the money spent on Super Bowl television commercials) quite a bit is the timing of when the Quarterback passes the ball, and a Wide Receiver is already in place to catch the ball and complete a first down or touch down. There’s a lot of trust going on (as it looks to me) between team mates on a successful play — the Wide Receiver races down the field, opponents close at his heels, not looking back at the line of play … he suddenly turns at the very last moment and the ball is already in flight and just a fraction of a second away from entering his hands.
The quarterback, knowing the play, trusting in his training, and his wide receiver, succeeds because he can see, hear and feel what’s going on in the game, can pick the right play to make that best suits the conditions … and set up winning plays to score for his team.
On the web, trust is a whole different ball game (pardon the pun!).
The web is global. And very anonymous.
It’s very difficult to know who’s at the other end of a website.
In “the old days”, you’d transact with people close to where you lived or worked. Your relationship was a lot more “real” than it is now online, where it is mainly “virtual”.
Even when you do get to find out personal information online — it might very well be fake (think ficticious like the lonelygirl15 saga).
Because of the remote, virtual and almost invisible nature of the internet and online transactions, there is a greater need to build trust and relationships … the more your prospects know you, the more they’ll be likely to be persuaded by you and buy your product or service.
So that means it’s essential — especially in online copy — to do what you can to build trust with your prospects.
Equally, this works “offline” too — in direct mail, you can use the same kind of tactics to achieve a similar outcome.
Nine Ways To Build Trust Online and Offline
What I’ll be sharing over the next nine Copy Tips are trust-building tactics and approaches you can include in your copy. These will cover:
- Trust via video
- Trust via graphics
- Trust via testimonials
- Trust via case studies
- Trust via meaningful statistics
- Trust via authority figures and celebrities
- Trust via “admissions”
- Trust via guarantees
- Trust via design
Each of these approaches will offer you additional ways to make your copy seem more trustworthy … building your relationships and your business. And as you’ve read above, you now know why that’s so important.
In the meantime, if you can find me a defensive tackle uniform and a QB looking the other way … crunch!!
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