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Credibility: I admit it is a term I use quite often. In fact you’ll see it all
my company’s marketing materials. Credibility is often ignored by my businesses,
but if you have it, your business has a tremendous chance of continued growth,
if you don’t have it - buckle up, it might be a bit of a bumpy ride.

You need to establish three things before people will even consider
doing business with you:

Interest
Credibility
Trust

To get into your customer’s heads, think about whom you buy from: do you buy from
anyone you really aren’t interested in? Do you buy from anyone who doesn’t
appear credible or anyone who you don’t trust? Odds are, you don’t. Your
customers think the same way so it’s imperative that you establish all three features
to give your business the best chance for success.

So What is Credibility?
To make sure we’re clear, Dictionary.com defines it as: The quality, capability, or power to elicit belief, or, a capacity for belief.

I see this as prospects and clients having the belief that you will be able to help them solve his/her problem (whatever that is). I’ll cover this point in another article, but understand that prospects call on you to solve their problems, that problem might be: hunger, balancing their books, or improving confidence in their business image.

So what exactly does that mean to you?

Think about it for a second, “the power to elicit belief”. If someone doesn’t
believe you or believe in you, what’s the likelihood they will do business with
you? It’s pretty simple, if people trust you and you can elicit belief
from people (credibility), there’s a solid chance they will do business with you.

How Marketing and Design Influence Your Credibility?
I know you’ve heard, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression“,
but I’ll bet you never have considered that most people make up their
minds about your credibility in a matter of minutes based on a first impression.
Yep, all it takes is a look at your logo, web site or brochure and customers have
already sized up your business and your credibility. Shocking isn’t it?

Take that a step further, once customers make those snap judgments about your
business, they tend to cling on to them like a barnacle on a sailboat, so creating
a credible first impression is not ideal - it’s essential.

Again, your customer’s first impression might be your business card, logo, web site, advertisement or signage, so you’ll want to ensure that ALL of your marketing and design efforts exhibit credibility to your prospects. Since you don’t know which impression will be first, you want to be consistent and professional.

You may not realize it but you choose to establish credibility or lose it based on the quality of your marketing and design projects. If you view your business marketing and design as an asset and work with business savvy designers, you are setting you

Consider this quick example:
Say you’re considering a vacation to Florida and browsing the web to find some local attractions.

You visit 3 theme park web sites:

* One of them is not working
* The next one has a couple of pages but the pictures of the park are small and
fuzzy, and the information about the park is vague, confusing and has spelling
errors.
* The last web site you visit has a consistent, professional look and feel, and
provides helpful information and pictures.

Based on this example, you can assume the last theme park knew that their image and credibility was a huge influence on whether customers bought from them. So at this point (not considering other variables), who are you more likely to visit? Exactly�theme park number 3.

Now the key is to translate this example into your own business situation, put yourself in the shoes of the people you want to do business with, do you have credibility with them? If you don’t, do you think they will still buy from you?

Do you know what’s really scary; your prospects (the people you are targeting)
will never tell you that you don’t have credibility; they just won’t buy from
you. If this is a concern of yours, I’ve got good news. I’ve developed
a special report for small business owners like you called the “Can-Do Credibility
Checklist“.

If you want to see how you stack up against the competition, contact me today
at 480.391.0704, or comments@candgraphics.com, and I will be happy to send this
insider’s bulletin to you. Make sure you indicate that you want your free “Can-Do
Credibility Checklist” .pdf document - and find out how much credibility
your business has, through your prospect’s eyes.

Jeremy runs the only business savvy graphic design firm who helps companies build more confidence and credibility into their business identities. �I help you take your business’ vision and shape it into a company identity that will make you look better, feel better and have more confidence about your business.�

Like the article?

Email Jeremy today at comments@candographics.com for your choice of a free insider’s bulletin: the �Can-Do Credibility Checklist�. You’ll also want to check out the �Can-Do Confidence Builder�. Emailed weekly, the Confidence Builder provides you with essential marketing and design insights that help you get the most out of your marketing/design investments and help you to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Remember to include in your email your name, that you want the “Credibility Checklist” and any additional feedback.

Learn more about Jeremy and how you can gain a competitive advantage with a better brand by visiting http://www.candographics.com

Important Note!
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With A Little Help From Your Friends.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 9:24 am and is filed under Sales/marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.