How to Build Trust in Your B2B Digital Marketing

by Andrew Schulkind

If you find that your website is not converting as well as it should be — or as well as you’d like — the issue may be a failure to establish trust with your target audience. Here are a few of the ways you might be hindering your own efforts.

handshake logo on computer keyboard

Asking Too Many Questions

“I understand that anything I say can and will be used against me.”

That’s your prospects’ default expectation. If your site looks at all sketchy, they’re not going to share their email address with you. If they’ve never heard of you before and you ask for their full name, title, company, and email address … they’re gone in less time than it took you to read this sentence.

Asking for information is never a way to establish trust, but making it clear why you are asking for that information can help. Set expectations and make sure that whatever you’re offering is at least as valuable as what you’re asking for.

Pushing Prospects Toward (Pushy) Salespeople

Another explanation. Ask for my phone number, and I’m expecting a call. Which will probably be a call I don’t want to endure.

Make it clear that you aren’t going to sic a salesperson on a prospect without their permission. That’s a move you simply have to let them make, no matter how badly you want to jump-start the sales process.

Are you Playing Coy with Your Pricing?

Why hide your pricing? Unless you’re selling The World’s Most Expensive Watch, or some similarly emotion-driven purchase, it makes little sense to hide your pricing. Even if your service is highly customizable, you should set reasonable expectations. For example,

Pricing starts at $15k and a typical engagement is frequently between $25k and $40k. Always included in our work is … And here’s what can what can drive budgets higher or keep them lower.

Your goal with this strategy is two-fold: establish trust so that you can build a relationship with qualified prospects, of course.

But you also want to qualify site visitors. There’s no point in wasting their time or yours in conversations that are not going to result in sales. Not everyone is a good candidate. Don’t try to pretend otherwise.

--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

Resources for Andrew’s Book, Marketing for Small B2B Businesses

If you’ve found your way to this page from the Resources section of my book, thank you and I hope you found actionable information that made the book worth your time. (I hope it was an enjoyable read, too.) If you haven’t read my book, Marketing for Small B2B Businesses: How Content Creates Marketing Muscle…MORE >
--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

Password Safety and Security Tips and Insights

What’s better: long passwords or 8-character passwords that include at least one number, one capital letter, one lower case letter and one “special” character? I recently chatted with Will Hunt of in.security about a favorite geeky topic of mine: passwords. We answer this very question, as well as a bunch of others. Will is full…MORE >
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