If you are like me, you are a small business owner. You may also be like me in the fact that you have to wear many hats and juggle many elements of your business. You never seem to have enough hands, or enough time and eventually something seems to always fall by the wayside. Quite often for small businesses, when we first start out, we do what we can with what we have to get started Usually that is a quick picture with your phone of yourself, maybe you took pictures of your products or the front of your business, you created your logo and picked your business’ colors and that’s as far as you got. After you opened the doors, business just never seemed to take off, sure, there are customers here and there but those are mostly people you know of and a few customers you don’t know. You are left asking, what’s wrong? Is what I’m offering not good enough?
That is a hard place, and I’ve been there. It plays in your mind that it’s you, that you aren’t good enough. But, there is more to this than I realized. For many small businesses, the brand as it currently is lacks one major thing and that is trust. Place yourself in your customer's shoes. If you were to come across two businesses right beside each other, offering the same thing but one has a homemade-looking sign with paint that doesn’t match and the other business has a professional-looking sign with a paint scheme that is inviting and triggers your emotional factors… which will you visit? Our customers are looking for great products from professional-looking businesses… that builds trust.
“They say you shouldn’t just a book by its cover, but if the book cover looks like a child designed it, I’d bet you probably will move right past it.”
The quickest way to build trust is to begin to look at your brand in parts like a store. What’s your storefront look like, what’s in your windows? These two things build trust and interest. Let me translate this to an example….a professionally created logo that speaks of what you do and the imagery used to show what you offer. If any of this look “off” or not professional, you potentially could lose your shot with the potential customer.
Maybe your business isn’t specifically a storefront or website, but it’s you. Maybe you are a Realtor, Wealth Manager, or other professional, you are your business and if people aren’t contacting you and you are putting yourself out there, you have to ask “are they trusting you”? Typically you have about 3 seconds to make an impression on someone before they move on. If the pictures you are using of yourself convey a different message than what needs to be, then it causes the customer a disconnect. An example would be a dentist. We want our dentist to be friendly and caring; we want to feel a level of comfort with him and so an image that shows them in a smiling and friendly way is ideal. If that same dentist used an image that made them look like a trial lawyer, would to even contact them? Probably not. So having great, professional headshots that can build immediate trust is a must-have.
“You can have the greatest cup of coffee ever, but if no one knows where to find you, they will never get to experience it. ”
“If you ever want to level up your business, you have to add people to your team that can take you there. You are skilled in your trade, add people who are skilled in their trade. ”