Best Practices: How to Establish Trust on Landing Pages

Written/Updated on July 22, 2020
By Bill Schick

How trustworthy is your brand, and how likely are you to follow through on the promises you make?

Your reputation is everything, but if your prospect does not trust you, you won’t close the deal.

Trust matters, particularly on landing pages. No trust = No conversion.

Your landing pages have to work hard to get your visitors to take a single action; if they don’t feel you are authentic, you won’t connect with them at all.

Trust is Critical for B2B Landing Pages

Since the B2B sales cycle may be prolonged, it’s essential that you establish trust swiftly and that every piece of content you create continues to enhance your prospects’ perception of your brand. The elements that help authenticate your site and establish trust can be subtle, but reviewing each of the points below can ensure you aren’t undermining your own efforts by skipping important trust indicators—or incorporating elements that undermine your relationship.

via Tenor

Ways to Establish Trust On Landing Pages

From keeping your messaging consistent to avoiding sales gimmicks that cheapen your brand, here are some of the easiest ways to establish trust on landing pages and launch a lasting connection with your prospects.

Overall Messaging Consistency

When your prospect arrives at your site via a banner ad or a social media click, they should see branding that matches the post that triggered their interest in the first place. Stick with the same fonts, the same color palette and the same messaging; when your landing pages match your marketing messages, your visitors will know they have arrived in the correct place.

You can easily increase your consistency by creating a simple branding guide that lists your chosen colors (by name and code), your brand fonts and high resolution copies of your logo to be used in a variety of settings. When you have these details clearly stated, everyone on your team will know which “blue” is yours and what font they should be using.

Consistency is particularly important when you’re working with B2B marketing, as your customers will be more savvy and more likely to notice (and be put off by) inconsistencies. Keeping your materials consistent also eliminates guesswork and streamlines the content creation process, since your team won’t have to come up with fresh new approaches for everything they make.

Use Clearly Defined Terms and Conditions

While these won’t live on your landing page, your site should have a page that defines terms and conditions of use, how you use identity information and more. These details are required for many industries or advertising methods anyway, so having them in an accessible and easy to find location can also help enhance trust. Make sure your terms and conditions are clearly defined and that your prospects don’t have to be legal experts to read them. Hiding your T&C or packing this important space with legalese and fine print can undermine the trust you’ve established and could make your prospect uneasy—or even drive them away.

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Include your Own Contact Details

When a brand makes it difficult to get in touch, a prospect could assume they’re hiding something. Your physical address and a real phone number should be included on your pages. Most visitors won’t ever use them, but seeing these details in print boosts your authenticity and reassures prospects they’re dealing with an active and responsive business.

Incorporate Social Proof

Details about your rave reviews from real people, posts from your social channels and details about your LinkedIn, Twitter and other accounts can help flesh out your brand and ensure your prospects see a thriving, active company. When you incorporate social proof in your site, your prospects can easily check you out elsewhere and feel comfortable about who they are dealing with. Social proof also acts as a type of identification and can verify you are who you say you are.

Example of using social proof on a landing page

Certifications and Signage

Logos and icons from various security and processing providers can also showcase your authenticity and let visitors know they are safe when they arrive at your site. While these are most often used by sites processing instant payments, including SaaS brands and platforms, they can go a long way towards establishing trust with your visitors and should be included on your pages.

Establish trust on landing pages by having these elements, but keep the focus on your content by keeping these important images below the fold.

According to SiteLock, the use of “https” pages over the less secure “http” makes a page more trustworthy. The security brand also recommends incorporating trust seal indicators and other certifications to showcase the efforts you’ve made to keep your site secure. Your user may never click on these or pay much attention to them, but they’ll notice if these important trust indicators are missing.

Avoid Sales Gimmicks

If you’ve ever been turned off by the persistent sales antics of a used car dealership or you cringe at those awful sales pages for affiliate products, then you already know the damage that gimmicky language and setups can do. It’s tough to trust a brand that offers “LIMITED TIME ONLY” promos every day, or that uses a fake countdown timer to convince a visiting prospect to “BUY NOW”. According to Inc. magazine, the vast majority (a whopping 96%) of people are turned off by these efforts and will avoid sites that use them.

Website statistic about sales languageWebsite statistic about sales language

B2B buyers are far too savvy to fall for these tactics; not only are they not effective as sales tools, but they can also damage the trust you’ve worked hard to build with your other landing page elements. If your page has a lot of hype, hyperbole or screaming sales messages, it’s time to dial it down if you want to enhance trust.

Don’t Overpromise

Definitely showcase the benefits of your product or service and of working with your brand, but don’t overindulge in self promotion or exaggerate your results. Some visitors will shy away from overly confident claims—and even those that follow through may end up feeling duped if the actual experience doesn’t reflect your initial claims. Make accurate claims and you’ll create a more authentic and trustworthy connection.

via GIPHY

Incorporate Testimonials

No matter how much you talk about your own integrity and the quality of your product or service, a testimonial from an objective third party has more of an impact on your prospective buyer. When you incorporate written or video testimonials, you give your happy clients a chance to share their thoughts and opinions. Testimonials can help sway buying decisions and can establish trust, particularly if the reader recognizes the name or brand of the person leaving the testimonial.

If you’ve ever purchased a book because an author you like left a review or blurb on the cover, then you already know the power of the testimonial. For your visitors, your testimonials are like personal recommendations, even if they don’t actually know the writer or speaker. Testimonials allow your work to shine, without coming across as exaggerating or bragging about your results.

Testimonials on a landing page

Ban Intrusive Popups

They’re annoying and get in the way of your message, particularly on your landing pages. Since the purpose of a B2B landing page is to get your visitor to take one single action (clicking your CTA button), then a pop-up or -over could damage your results.

Popups also seem contrived and gimmicky and aren’t likely to inspire confidence in your brand, your product or your judgment. You should always have contact details available on your site, but limit your use of popups on your landing and static pages—or better yet, eliminate them entirely.

Remove Paywalls

When you’re offering something for free, don’t make your prospects jump through hoops or “pay” with contact details to get it. When you offer valuable content without barriers or pay walls, you’re trusting in your prospects to return if they found your work useful. This can encourage them to trust you as well.

If you absolutely must ask for details, limit what you ask for; a work email and permission to send further, relevant content is enough to request.

You can always get more detail as your relationship and connection grows, but asking for too much, too fast is a trust killer.

Get Help with Your Landing Pages

Establishing trust right away ensures that your prospects can focus on your content, not on whether they can rely on you or not. Evaluate your existing landing pages with the above details in mind and eliminate any of the content that could be preventing you from establishing trust right from the start. You’ll see an uptick in both the quality and quantity of your prospects and leads when you abandon questionable elements and commit to authenticity.

Not sure how well your pages are connecting with your B2B prospects, or how effective they are at establishing trust? We can help. Get in touch today to discover how to establish genuine connections and to give your visitors an immediate sense of ease and trust. We can help you boost conversions by ensuring your visitors feel cared for and secure when they visit your site—and allowing them to focus on your actual landing page content.

Marketing Agency

MESH is a digital marketing agency that has pioneered Account-Based Marketing via our proprietary Outcome Driven Marketing (ODM) methodology. We keep our focus on tightly integrating (or MESHing) lead generation, inbound, and outbound methodologies. We help you understand the hidden levers that impact your customers’ buying decision process, develop the right marketing strategy for your unique business case, and effectively execute and measure all aspects of your Account-Based Marketing program.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in guest posts are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of our website or company.

About MESH Interactive Agency

Founded by an experienced life sciences industry veteran, MESH is a digital marketing agency purpose-built to help you accelerate growth at every stage, from innovation to exit. We help life sciences, healthcare and technology companies build their brands, develop and execute marketing strategies, fill their funnels, and develop ground-brealing interactive technology and experiences.

With offices in Cambridge, Boston and Manchester, we’re probably right down the street, or a video call away.

Meet the Author

Bill Schick is a Fractional CMO, Agency Founder, and Life Science industry veteran with direct full-cycle experience from discovery and innovation to IPO and exit.

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