Keys to Copywriting: Gain Your Audience’s Trust with Credibility Indicators

From a business perspective the purpose of copy essentially boils down to one thing — getting people to believe the message being communicated.  After all, if a prospect believes that your product will solve his problems or that your service will make his life easier, then there’s really nothing stopping him from buying.  The challenge is that getting people to believe in a company’s offering is usually a struggle against many of the prospect’s existing beliefs that will prevent him from making a purchase.

For example, people often perceive there to be different motives between themselves and a business.  The business is trying to make money, and the prospect is trying to solve a problem they have.  This can make the prospect skeptical because if the company is able to trick the prospect into purchasing, without actually solving their problem, the business can still get what it wants while the prospect gets nothing.  This is why it’s so important for companies to over-deliver on their products and services.  If you can successfully provide a solution to a major pain point for your target customers, then they will gladly pay you for your offerings.  But in order to get them to purchase, first you have to get them to trust you.

So how can you build trust with your audience using the copy on your website and marketing materials?  One of the best ways is to use credibility indicators, like the following:

Details: One of the easiest ways to build credibility and trust with an audience is simply to use a high degree of detail.  The more information you are able to demonstrate that you know about something, even if it’s your own product or service, the more of an expert your audience will perceive you to be and the more believable you become.

One of the most effective ways to use details is to make sure you vividly describe how your product will benefit your prospects.  If you were marketing a new high-speed printer, for example, you could find a common use case for your customers and then walk them through it in detail.

You could remind them about all the times they got to the office early to print the final set of documents for that day’s meeting, and then tell them how your current customers don’t have to come in to work any earlier than usual now, they just click print when they arrive, and will have their stack of documents waiting for them by the time they finish pouring their morning coffee.  The rich details and descriptions in that story make it far more accessible, believable, and enticing to your prospects than simply stating your new printers have an output of 200 pages per minute, which is a perfect segue to the next point

Statistics: Statistics are another way to build credibility, but only if used correctly.  Our post about humanizing statistics goes into greater detail about how to do this, but the primary thing to remember is that monotonously reciting numbers and figures is not convincing.  In order to make those numbers have an impact, they need to be contextualized so that they illustrate a relationship.  On their own statistics are rarely compelling sources of credibility.

If you use words or phrases such as “like” or “as if” when talking about statistics, you are on the right track.  One great example is the analogy used by Scott when they advertised their “Naturals” brand toilet paper that doesn’t have a cardboard tube in the middle to reduce waste.  Their commercial said that every year Americans throw away 17 billion tubes, which is like being able to fill up the Empire State Building with discarded toilet paper rolls — twice.

The “Sinatra Test”:  In their book Made to Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath coin the term the “Sinatra Test” when talking about credibility indicators.  The term gets its name from the famous line in “New York, New York” where Sinatra sings “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”  There are certain credentials that, if you have them, it doesn’t matter what else you have or haven’t done, you still have a high degree of credibility.

For example, let’s say that you have the security contract for Fort Knox.  Even if they were your only client, and you were only in business for one year, it wouldn’t matter because that is such a high-profile and credible source it immediately qualifies you for any other security contract.  So if your business has any major sources of credibility or endorsements in your field make sure they are prominently featured in your copy.

Testable Credentials: Asking prospects to evaluate your company’s claims on their own is called a “testable credential” because your prospects are given the opportunity to verify your claim.  This is a highly effective tactic for building credibility because it makes the audience your partner in the discovery.  If they come to the conclusion you want them to, but through their own examination, they are much more likely to believe in the results — even if your company set up the frame for their comparison to begin with.

Whether it’s through a direct comparison, free trial, or money-back guarantee, allowing your prospects the opportunity to “see for themselves” lets them independently prove that your product delivers the results it promises.  Anti-virus software could say something like “if your computer isn’t running faster after just one scan, we’ll refund your full purchase price.”  If you sold sports cars, when talking about the car’s performance you could say “Don’t take our word for it, come in for a test drive and see for yourself.”

Now that you know some of the most common and effective credibility indicators, share one you can use for your business in the comments!