How to Lend Greater Legitimacy to Your Startup Business
If your business hasn’t been around for long, persuading people that your company can be trusted and that it offers products or services that deliver the expected outcomes can be tough. In order to get your first customers, you need your new business to be perceived as legitimate and trustworthy.
So how can you make that happen? We’re going to explore some of the options and techniques open to you in order to lend greater legitimacy to your startup business. When you manage to get this right, you’ll immediately make your company more appealing to customers, so read on now to find out more about this.
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Ensure the Website Delivers the Right First Impressions
First of all, you need to make sure that the first impressions delivered by your website are the right ones. If your website looks outdated and poorly designed, that won’t inspire confidence in many people. Most people want to see a slick and modern website when they’re encountering a business for the first time. And if you fail to impress them and show them something poorly put together, those first impressions might be hard to shift. Don’t turn away people at the very first hurdle.
Be Prompt with Business Communications
When your business is communicating with customers or people who are thinking of becoming customers, it’s usually a good idea to keep the methods of communication as prompt as they can be. If you get this wrong and fail to respond quickly to questions and problems as they arise, your entire operation will run the risk of looking amateurish and simply not up to scratch, and that’s obviously something you’ll want to avoid. So stay on top of communication and plan for it carefully.
Establish Your Presence on Social Media
Establishing a presence on social media is important. When a potential customer finds out about your business for the first time, they’ll immediately look you up on social media. And if they don’t find your profiles there, they’ll immediately think something is not quite right. That’s not to mention the fact that social media is a portal through which many people will first discover your business, so it would be crazy not to make the most of it.
Build Partnerships with Other Businesses
Building solid partnerships between your business and the other businesses out there that offer complementary products or services to a similar target audience is something that might turn out to be a good idea for you. Building these partnerships proves to people that you’re a legitimate company because they can see that bigger and more established companies are endorsing you. These kinds of partnering opportunities are hugely valuable.
Get a Business Address ASAP
If your business is currently operating out of your back bedroom, you can make your operations seem more accomplished and bigger by using a business address. This is the address where your business is registered and where mail can be sent to, but you don’t actually have to pay for space as such because you won’t actually be operating your business from there. The address attached to your business is always going to be important, so make it a good one. And eventually, you can grow your business and really move to an address you can be proud of.
Set Up Your Google My Business Profile
In terms of online resources that help attract customers to your business and show the world that your business is a legitimate one, few are better than Google My Business. Most people search for new products, services, and businesses via the Google search engine, we all know that. So having a Google My Business profile set up will mean that people will be more likely to find your business when they’re looking for you or the things you offer. They’re very easy to set up, so there’s no reason not to get this done at the soonest opportunity.
Legitimate Business: Encourage Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are really important because they offer social proof to interested customers. When people can see that other people have successfully and happily used your services in the past, they’ll feel much more confident and comfortable doing so themselves, and that’s exactly what you want. Encourage reviews that you can use as testimonials on your website, as well as on sites like Yelp and Trust Pilot, as these are both very important sites for businesses and customers alike. The more social proof you have in place, the more legitimate your business will be in the eyes of new customers.
Fake it Until You Make It
Sometimes, you just have to fake it until you make it, making customers believe that you have the experience that you’re, in reality, still gaining and working towards. But if you’re able to produce the results of them and keep them happy, there’s nothing wrong with faking it until you make it. Whether that means hanging a fake diploma on the office wall or simply communicating with the confidence of someone who’s been doing this for much longer than they really have is up to you.
Display Your Team
You should create a page that displays your team members on your website, including short bios for each person alongside a photo of them. Again, this shows prospective customers that your business is legitimate and that your team is filled with real people who have real skills and experience that they can rely on and trust if they choose to use your services. It’s something that every business’s website benefits from if they’re looking to add extra legitimacy.
As you can see, there are many steps that can be taken to ensure your startup business is perceived as legitimate and trustworthy, even when you’re just starting out. But, of course, there’s no substitute for putting in the hard work and proving to your customers that you know what you’re doing and that your products or services are of a high standard.
