When marketing your business, one of the biggest aspects you need to communicate is trust. If your branding, information or communication style has anything opposing this it can be hard to develop a solid relationship with your target market.

While there are a lot of ways to develop trust with your target market in-person, doing it through marketing can be difficult because you are removing some of the personality behind the communication. In the construction industry, relationships and trust are everything, so being able to establish this from a distance is a needed skill.

Once you have developed your Target Market profile, which we talked about our Construction Marketing 101 blog, you should have an idea of how to better reach your customers and better understand what their concerns or objections may be. Creating elements like case studies and testimonials are a sure-fire way to build trust with your prospects.

CASE STUDIES

I’m sure you have read one of these before. They may seem boring at a glance, but case studies are proven to establish trust between you and your potential customers, even if they don’t end up reading them. Just by having them available gives your company a much higher perceived skill level than others. This is because you are offering legitimate, researched information on how to effectively and successfully overcome a problem or complete a task.

These resources are extremely useful to your potential customers. The key is to pick a topic that would appeal to a large audience. In the case study, highlight what the problem or task is and how you went about accomplishing it effectively and efficiently, all the way to the end result. If you follow this basic format, you should have no problem creating these documents and building trust with your potential clients.

Don’t feel the need to write a drawn out document either, this could even be bullet points. As I am sure you know, many don’t normally like to read drawn out documents, filled with pretty language. Get to the point.

TESTIMONIALS

Similar to case studies, testimonials are a great way to build trust with prospective customers. The best thing about testimonials is that they are written by customers, so they involve limited resources from your side, other than getting them, while still highlighting the value your company has to offer. With testimonials, people begin to see other people like themselves, who had great experiences with your business. In a sense, it helps them get a real look into how they will feel after dealing with you. This is a powerful tool when used on your website, social media or any other of your marketing avenues.

So, how do you get these from your customers? It’s super simple. Ask!

When you have provided good service to someone, they are usually happy to help you tell other people about it. What I find easiest is to actually draft a testimonial that you can try and get their approval on, rather than having them write it themselves. Some people seem to be more receptive to that, rather than coming up with something of their own.

When drafting the testimonial, make sure that you cover some of the background information like what the problem or job was, and how your company provided the write solution that delivered a great end product or service.

CONCLUSION

If you can refine these tools for your business to use when marketing, you will have no problem working to gain the trust of your prospects and in turn, build great relationships even before you meet them.