≡ Building Trust, Reputation and Rapport – A “How To” Perspective
When our clients make an inquiry for SEO services the first thing we want to know is who we are dealing with. We send them a set of questions, some completely unrelated to the service we provide at the first glance.
The questions are not always the same. If we get some of our answers by reviewing the site of the customer, the list is quite short. But this doesn’t happen often.
Many marketers make a huge mistake when they conceive their online presence and their online marketing strategy: they don’t provide enough information about themselves, they leave out exactly those elements that might help their visitors know them better and trust them more.
Without these elements all the SE rankings in the world do no real good. The traffic will increase, the ego of the one ranking on the first page in all the major search engines will get even higher, but the sales will stagnate. And the predictable will happen: the client will ask the SEO “why is my site not selling?”
Consider the following scenario: a new website, with an exclusive, excellent design, all standards compliant, with good page copy and enough quality content to rival with the best businesses in the field. Yet nothing really happens. Why?
Because, unless you were born under a lucky star, success doesn’t happen overnight. And if you build it, they will not come. You have to make people come and buy from you by enforcing your ideas and your brand into the WWW.
You might find “enforce” a strong way to put it, but this is what you need to do.
People like to buy from companies they know and they trust. So you have to make your brand known and you have to win the trust of your audience.
You will not do that by self praising your products and services. You will not win the trust of the people by cheating your way into their hearts. You will do it by providing quality.
When you launch your website you can use one press release distribution agency to signal your online presence (one PR service is enough. More would mean spamming). And you will focus your press release on the benefits for the people and less on how great your website is, what a great design it has and so on.
Is your website a press release worth? Yes, it matters to you, it’s your own creation after all and you have all the reasons in the world to be proud of your good work, but what does this website bring new in your industry and why should people visit it? To put it simple: why should anyone drive all the way to your store?
If you cannot find a good answer for this question, don’t be surprised that your website will not sell.
If you have that answer start getting the buzz. Hire a professional press release writer and ask for an SEO press release. Because SEO will help your press release rank well in the search results and it will help people find your news faster.
Hiring a writer is just the first step. After the press release is ready you’ll need to distribute it. Luckily online this will cost less than offline, and the reach will be broader too. The online PR newswires reach not only online news sites and search engines, but journalists, freelance writers and social networks too.
One of the best services of the kind is provided by www.prweb.com which reaches Google News, NBC News, Yahoo! News, MSN News and more.
If you aim for Associated Press the service you should employ is www.PRNewswire.com. They’ll even send your news to businessweek.com, US national and regional newspapers, TV stations and more.
Both PRWeb and PRNewswire are quite pricey, but worth every cent if you have what to sell. Because both are reputable services your press release will weight more in the balance of the ones who receive it. Only few journalists trust free newswires.
A cheaper service is provided by www.PRLeap.com. This is the ideal newswire for small businesses with lower budgets. The advantage is that PRLeap reaches Technorati too.
The main reason to write a press release is to make your product and brand known. The sales happens on your site and for that to happen you need to give to the visitors a reason to buy from you.
Create a comfortable atmosphere. Make people feel welcome on your site. Make them feel at ease. Add your picture or those of your team to give that sense of “personal business”, that special force that drives the Web 2.0.
Understand that modern business happens at a personal level now. Make your business personal and people will trust you more.
Avoid the “guru” approach. It is biased. People do not trust self-proclaimed gurus any more. Find other ways to impress them: be always ready to answer their questions, help them out when they are in need, don’t wait for them to ask for your help: offer it in advance. Be polite and focus all your efforts on delivering excellent service.
Make people talk about you. Roses have thorns, but the thorns don’t diminish their beauty. It could happen that someone will criticize you. Accept critique and try to solve the problem that led to a negative review.
Assume responsibility for what you do online. Stay informed with the latest news in your industry and try creating new products that keep up with the trends.
Each time you have a new product, do the press release dance again, but always remember to answer the question “why would anyone drive all the way to buy from you?”
Get involved in the online communities that are related to your business. They are your potential customers and business partners. Be active in the discussions and make a quality contribution to the groups you join.
Every witty comment you make in a blog, every quality advice you give in a forum, will win the hearts and admiration of the readers. They will click on your name (where you didn’t forget to link to your website) and go to see what else you have to offer. If they like what they see, they will come back for more and once they trust you, they will even buy from you and recommend you to other people too.
Reward them for being such faithful clients. Give away something free: a white paper, an ebook, software… anything you think they might enjoy, need or be interested in.
For all these steps there are enough “how to” tutorials to keep you busy for months. But all these are based on the same principle: understand your client’s needs and motivations, then learn what makes your client buy.
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September 13th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Building Trust, Reputation and Rapport – A “How To” Perspective…
Having the best website of the web and ranking on the highest SE positions mean nothing without trust….
September 13th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Building Trust, Reputation and Rapport – A “How To” Perspective…
High rankings in the search engines and fancy website design mean nothing if you are unable to convince your website visitors of the reliability of your services. Make people trust you….
September 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Building Trust, Reputation and Rapport – A “How To” Perspective…
SEO and online marketing efforts mean nothing if the people that come to your site don’t find enough reasons to trust you. People buy from people and companies they like and trust….
September 14th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Well said! This well-written post will help a lot of small businesses who are SEO-crazy reach their clients.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
A great article - I am going to bookmark this and then let some of my clients read it. I always reinforce that a good website is only half the battle - there is lots of work to be done on and offline to support the site before it will start to make sales.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Glad I found this post, and just a word of caution about the PR firm selection. I am the web designer/internet marketer for a not for profit company in Ontario that revolves around preserving nature. I don’t want to say there name outright because of what happened and the bad press that was associated to the mistake. A PR firm was hired when the company I work for joined into a venture with another large corporation for fund-raising efforts. As a result this PR firm offered a simple Press Release distribution that included a free fax out option. It was chosen, and when the Press Release was sent out there was a hiccup in the Fax software and it was sent out 10 times to each receiver. One of the focuses of the fund-raising efforts was preserving trees. Guess who received the complaints? Be mindful that bad press isn’t always good press, and be careful who you choose to be your PR firm. The above 2 recommendations are stellar companies that would never make the same mistake the little company did. The worst part was that they didn’t even refund the fee they charged.
May 31st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I think the look of the site is key here, if it looks the part then in my experiance it will convert a lot better, almost a third better in the case of my sites. So i suppose it boils down to trust like searchenginepress.com said.
Great post all the same!
July 7th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I agree that trust is very important - just as it is important to understand why a really good looking site with solid SEO doesn’t sell. But beyond the control of marketers is another challenge - in that these clients tend to only listen in bits and pieces. Things that a Marketing Agency might mention to a client today - comes up in a conversation 6 months later - when the CEO is now excited about the topic because their ’son’ (in college) affirmed that social networks do matter. But I guess this comes with the territory. I do agree that copywriting & press releases can be valuable tools in the process though.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Very good read, I really like how you mentioned give away something free like whitepaper or ebook, etc. in your website. I personally think saying contact us today for free quote is also good too :). But overall I think your spot on, that you really need to be noticed, no matter how great your site is designed it’s just not enough.
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
You know what I found funny, is how spot on your article is from an SEO standpoint. You literally saw the path of where SEO is headed, branding and trust from a user standpoint. Press releases help tremendously, it’s not about the backlink but being heard in the proper sources that Google keeps their eyes on. Spot on my friend, well done.