7 Ways for Startups to Establish Credibility

As a startup, your survival and eventual growth depends on establishing trust and credibility with customers. While this may seem like a tricky undertaking, there are a number of ways it can be achieved. In this post we’ll take you through 7 tried and tested ways to build credibility for your business.

7 ways to build credibility for your business

1.   Build relationships with established brands

Brand recognition is a powerful tool. Indeed, customers are far more likely to buy from an established company which they recognize over an unknown one. Building an association and relationship with a well known brand can give you a big leg up in terms of credibility as customers will extend the same trust they have for an established brand unto you.

A good example of this is Uber, which set itself up as sponsors of major tech conferences when it launched. People immediately put it in the same category as high profile tech companies, meaning it gained instant credibility.

2. Consider offering goods and services pro bono

Before people are willing to part with their money, they often want to see proof of a company’s quality and performance. With a brand new company, this proof isn’t exactly abundant, with relatively little feedback or testimonials from existing customers available. In order to get your products and services out there for review and visibility, you might have to initially offer some for free. Your reward for this will be more customers coming into contact with your business. And, if what you’re offering is great quality, you can expect floods of positive reviews and testimonials. This will invariably help build credibility for your business.

3. Use social media

Having an online presence is a must in the digital age for garnering credibility. With a professional look and curation, your website and social media profiles will make your business appear larger and more established than it is. Plus, having a good social media strategy with quality content, photos and footage will impress customers and boost your brand visibility.

4. Be accessible

Linked to a strong social media presence is your accessibility to customers as a brand. Responding to customer enquiries and interacting with users and viewers generally will help generate buzz around your startup, while having customer support options on your website, such as a chat-box feature or easy to find contact details, can help build good relationships with customers.

5. Prioritize customer service

As well as ensuring your goods and services are up to scratch, good customer service is an absolute must for building credibility as a brand. When dealing with complaints and issues, the faster and more efficiently you handle them, the more reliable and attractive you will seem to customers.

6. Launch a company blog

Having a blog with authority information on topics relevant to your business can help generate traffic to your site while also demonstrating knowledge and expertise in your particular sector. Using effective SEO techniques will help your blog content reach your target market, and if the content is of high quality, you might just convince them of your credibility.

7. Be the best at what you do

Finally, a very simple way to convince customers of your credibility is to be the best of the best at what you do. While this might not reap rewards overnight, it will fairly rapidly help you establish yourself as a trustworthy brand offering quality goods and services. After all, even with a huge social media presence and great networking, your business isn’t going to be viewed as credible if you’re constantly getting negative reviews and your products are poor quality.

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