Trust frequencies — The Friday Chaser, Issue #313
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Hey, John
This week I was able to announce that my agency won three awards for a recent project.
The awards thing isn’t something I had ever really paid much attention to. I assume they’re all rigged or a popularity contest. And after paying $50 and getting the required 20 votes, I think that’s actually pretty true 😅.
But I don’t think that makes them worthless.
While I don’t expect winning a few awards to suddenly change the course of my agency or allow me to retire early, I don’t think it hurts either. I got a few things out of it immediately:
- Post about it on socials. Most of us feel pretty stuck when it comes to knowing what to post on our socials, but this was a built-in excuse to share something. The posts actually did really well (above average, for sure), with lots of people sending congratulations.
- Adding the badges to my website. Again, I don’t think a few little images in my footer are any kind of game-changer, but even without reading them, they do add a bit of credibility at a glance.
- Notifying the client. This was honestly the best part. I sent an email to my client sharing the certificates, and letting her know that her site won a UX, a UI, and an innovation award. She was thrilled about the news and shared it on her socials as well. A client who’s proud of their site is one that’s much more likely to refer the person who built it.
Those were nice perks, but they’re not actually why I decided to go ahead and enter an awards contest.
Most businesses looking to have a website built don’t really know what they’re looking for. They can’t tell good code from bad, and with so much unfamiliar jargon in the tech space, it’s difficult to know who’s telling the truth, and who’s full of shit.
We spend a lot of time trying to prove the quality of our work, but what most clients really want to know is “Can I trust these people?”
It’s why referrals are always the most common way agencies say they get clients. Getting a recommendation from a friend is a really simple way to answer that question. If their friend trusts you, then you’re probably okay.
But referrals aren’t the only trust signals. People rarely go actively looking for them, they just get a gut feeling as their brain picks up enough evidence.
Those feelings don’t come from nowhere. They’re subtle, and even subconscious.
Even if you haven’t sat down to purposefully “add trust signals” to your website, you’ve probably done it naturally.
Your website itself is a trust signal. Your testimonials, process, pricing, portfolio, socials, and yes, even a silly award, all answer the same question “Can I trust these people to do a good job?”
An award probably won’t convince anyone on its own. Neither will a testimonial or a nice portfolio. But enough of these signals together creates a frequency that people will start to pick up on.
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🧰 Tuesday Toolbox
Tuesday Toolbox: Membership Plugin
Membership sites can get complicated pretty quickly. Between restricting content, managing subscriptions, handling payments, and giving members access to the right stuff, there's a lot that needs to work together.
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What's your go-to WordPress membership plugin, and what makes it a good fit for you?
👉 Check out our Tuesday Toolbox archive for all of TAB's top choices!
👋 Before you go
Last week I shared my new goal of doubling the income from all my care plan clients (catch up here if you missed it). Maybe it was the dollar amounts I assigned to all these conversations, but I got a ton of replies and questions.
So while I’m still in the thick of working all these opportunities, I thought I’d share three of the most common questions I got and my answers in case you were wondering too but didn’t want to ask:
Can you share the email template you sent to clients?
I wish it would have been that simple, but I’ve found that “canned messages” are hard to make sound like anything other than a template. So, all my outreach was pretty organic (see an example). I don’t think there was any “magic” in what I said or how I said it. It was just about finding something specific I could help with, translating that into some kind of benefit for the client, and asking them if they wanted to schedule a call to discuss.
Don’t overthink it!
Since it’s so new (and changing constantly) how can you sell AEO/GEO without any proven results? Isn’t this just hype?
First off, I’m not promising anything. My approach is to show them what AI is saying about them now, then use pretty logical strategies to help sway the responses. For example, if AI doesn’t mention they work in the neighboring town of Redville, then let's add some content about Redville to the website (like some FAQs or a service location page).
And secondly, yes, I’m specifically talking about AEO/GEO instead of SEO with some of these clients because it is something new/novel that they are probably curious about. But the fact is, most of the AI-optimization techniques are just SEO with different clothes.
If I need to call it something different, but we get the same result (more visibility in search), then I don’t have a problem “hiding the vegetables”.
What if I haven’t talked to the client in forever? I don’t feel comfortable coming out-of-the-blue asking for money.
I had to change my thinking around this one too, but I think this is even more of a reason to reach out to them now. It doesn’t have to be high-pressure or overly salesy.
“Hey, Client! I was in your site today doing my weekly updates and noticed….”
“Hey, Client! I’m doing my annual reviews and I had a few ideas that might help…”
“Hey, Client! Have you heard about X? I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think there might be an opportunity for you…”
As much as we like to tell ourselves “they’re happier left alone”, that’s only true until the moment it’s not. If we’re not nurturing that relationship, they’re much more susceptible to going with some other agency who’s got “fresh ideas”. There are plenty of them out there soliciting your clients already.
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