How To Build Customer Loyalty (Know Like Trust Factor) In 2024 | Jatinder Palaha - Digital Business Strategist, Consultant, Coach (2024)

Discover how to Build rapport with the know like trust principle. As a business owner, carving out a distinctive niche for your business might seem like an epic task. Yet, the essence of a thriving business boils down to a principle as old as commerce itself – building relationships based on knowledge, affection, and trust. This fundamental concept, known as the Know Like Trust Factor, isn’t just a trendy buzzword; it’s the cornerstone of fostering enduring customer relationships and solidifying a resilient brand.

In the landscape, customers seek more than just transactions; they are in pursuit of brands that resonate with their values, echo their beliefs, and address their needs with a human touch. As a business owner, understanding and implementing the Know, Like, Trust Factor could well be your key to not only attracting customers but also cultivating a community of loyal advocates for your brand.

In this post, you’ll not only uncover why embedding the Know, Like, Trust Factor in your business is vital, but also grasp actionable tactics to weave this principle into your marketing strategy. By the end of the post, you’ll have the knowledge to transform your first-time buyers into lifelong customers.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about ‘Know, Like and Trust.’ I don’t get it. Exactly HOW am I supposed to get people on the internet to know me, like me and trust me?”

I understand the frustration of this coach/consultant trying to grow online. It’s so easy for marketing teachers to tell you to build Know, Like and Trust into your marketing. But how often do they tell you exactly HOW to do it?

What is know like trust factor?

The “Know, Like, Trust Factor” is a marketing concept that describes the process consumers typically go through before they decide to make a purchase, especially from a business or individual for the first time. It emphasises the importance of building a relationship with potential customers as a foundation for successful sales and long-term customer loyalty. Here’s a breakdown of the three stages:

1. Know: This is the initial phase where potential customers become aware of a business or brand. Before anything else, people need to be familiar with who you are and what you offer. This stage typically involves brand exposure through advertising, content marketing, social media presence, and other marketing efforts.
2. Like: Once people know about a business or brand, they then need to develop a positive sentiment towards it. This is achieved when potential customers resonate with the brand’s values, aesthetics, content, or the way it interacts with its community. Essentially, customers need to have a favorable opinion of the brand, which will make them more inclined to buy.
3. Trust: This is the most crucial stage. Even if customers know and like a brand, they won’t purchase unless they trust it. Trust can be built through consistent, high-quality service, positive reviews and testimonials, transparent business practices, and responsive customer service. It’s about convincing the potential customer that the product or service will deliver as promised and that the business is reliable.

The “Know, Like, Trust Factor” highlights the idea that people prefer to do business with those they feel a connection to or have confidence in. For businesses, it underscores the importance of not just pushing for a sale, but cultivating a meaningful, trusting relationship with their audience.

Why You Need to Leverage Know, Like, Trust

The Know, Like, Trust Factor details how customers become loyal fans of a brand. It happens organically over a long period when a business offers consistent quality. You can harness its power to speed up this process by learning about it and mastering some basic tactics. It will then take months instead of years to see sales from new prospects.

Leveraging the Know, Like, Trust Factor doesn’t just earn you sales. It builds a customer relationship that leads to loyalty, brand advocacy, and long-term earnings. Your customers will not simply buy from you because of your excellent products but because of the deep emotional connection you’ve built. Know, Like, Trust is the secret to long-term retention.

Using the Know, Like, Trust Factor, you’ll create your brand image in customers’ minds as a helpful friend focused on solving their problems. They’ll tell others about you, thus multiplying your marketing efforts.

Finally, if you master the Know, Like, Trust Factor, you can outpace your competition. By focusing on building relationships rather than just short-term sales, you can create a loyal fan base with a fraction of the resources of a major brand.

Know – Blow up Your Brand Name

The kind of “knowing” we’re discussing here goes well beyond recognizing your business’s logo. When a customer knows your brand, it means they know who you are, what you stand for, what drives you, and what makes you unique. These tactics grow your brand’s awareness and communicate deeper to build likability and trust.

Here are some things you can do to grow this awareness of what you’re all about:

• Be active on social media. Maintain a strong social media presence and spend time posting content and interacting with your audience.
• Optimize for search engines. Select high-search keywords to use naturally in your content. Maintain a content-rich website that’s easy to navigate.
• Consider paid advertising. Paid advertising gets your message in front of people quickly. It’s one way to create a burst of traffic and attention.

• Build a reputation for expertise. Create content in your niche to show your knowledge. Keep current on the latest industry news and trends in your market and share this information with your audience.
• Create information products such as eBooks and video courses. Distribute these for free and encourage your audience to share.
• Build relationships with influencers that share your core values. Reach out to well-known names in your niche and propose collaborative projects, such as guest appearances on each other’s blogs or video channels.

How to Become Known

Build your personal or business brand and infuse it in everything that you do.

To do this, determine who your ideal customer is. Create an avatar of that person so that you know exactly who you are speaking to.

Next, build your brand to suit that ideal client. You are the ideal information provider or service provider for this ideal customer.

Finally, stay consistent to your customer avatar and your brand. Your goal is to become known as THE expert or THE go-to person/guide for your exact audience.

This will make you known on a professional level, but you can do better.

Instead of people just knowing about you or knowingofyou, how about if they KNOW YOU?

To achieve this, you’ll want to share some personal stuff. Real stuff. Maybe even painful stuff. Mistakes. Dumb moves. Naïve stunts gone bad.

And share the good stuff. ‘Your beautiful, noisy, messy kids have watched Little Mermaid 143 times and you’ve evacuated the house to write your readers this email’ kind of thing.

Strong relationships are deep relationships. Years ago I shared a few personal details with customers about how I was working late into the night, getting up late and my general routine.

To my surprise, for weeks afterwards people were commenting back to me about these things because they could relate. That’s when I learned the power of sharing my life with my readers. When I do, I’m not just a wooden puppet, I’m a ‘real person,’ to paraphrase Pinocchio.

From there you are able to go deeper, speaking about your fears, your stumbles and your comebacks. The more you share, the more people know you, and the more they can like you.

Like – How to Make Your Customers LOVE You

Communicating your core values and purpose is vital for getting your customers to like you. This is what resonates and makes us fall in love with a brand.

Shared values might be something like concern for the environment, technological innovation, ethical practices, or a commitment to progressive causes. Whatever it is, you need to demonstrate how you live these values.

• Identify and define your core values. Core values are business ethics that you share with your target audience. State these clearly on your website and communicate them through your products and content.
• Share your passions and interests, even if they’re not closely related to your niche. This creates an emotional connection with your audience and humanizes your business.
• Show your face. Your social media profiles should be a headshot that shows you smiling. Put your face on your website and create content like videos that make a personal connection.

➢ Tell your story. Stories create a bond between you and your audience. They show your human side and reinforce your core values. Create compelling stories like your origin story, stories of challenges you faced, and stories that take your audience behind the scenes.Speak your audience’s language. When talking online, study your audience’s words and phrases and adopt them as your own. Learn about their sense of humor so you can use it too. Don’t promote while building relationships with your audience. If your audience members feel like you’re “selling” to them, this will turn them off. Focus on interacting authentically and save the sales for later. Be generous. Everyone loves a generous person. Offer free content that helps people with their problems. Give away freebies, discounts, and free memberships whenever possible. Go beyond expectations. Do more than people expect of you. This creates a “wow” feeling that will make people love you.

How to Be Liked

Mind you, not everyone will like you. That’s okay because you only want your avatar to like you. Think of anyone – ANYONE – in history, real or mythical, and there is someone who doesn’t like them. Once you stop trying to get everyone to like you, it is much easier to relax, be yourself and better relate to your ideal customer.

Make a list of every place your avatar commonly hangs out online and make it a point to be there, whether that’s on social media, guest blogging, guest podcasting, advertising to your audience on Facebook and so forth.

Go where your audience is and make yourself known in a nice, helpful, non-obnoxious manner by posting content your ideal client enjoys reading or watching.

Make your content relevant, genuine and personal.

Infuse your own personality into it and speak directly to your avatar of one.

If you can, do live events where people can interact with you directly and ask you questions.

Use an engaging picture of yourself.

Tell your own story in a captivating way.

Be nice. Be real. Be authentic.

Be you – or if necessary, be a better version of you.

Trust – Create Your Brand’s Loyal Fan Base

If you offer an excellent customer experience, your customers will trust you. What’s important here is to provide a seamlessly positive experience every time someone interacts with your brand.

• Offer consistent quality. Letting the quality of your content or offerings slip can seriously hurt the trust you’re building. Your audience won’t see you as an unfailing source of information and help. Know your customer’ expectations, and don’t disappoint.
• Remove the risk. Offer generous guarantees, so there’s no risk in buying from you. Find out what risks your customers perceive and remove each one.
• Demonstrate your value. Don’t expect your products and services to speak for you. Focus on solving problems your customers face when you engage with them to show you’re worth working with.
• Use customer testimonials. Customer testimonials offer a valuable form of social proof. They show potential customers the results you’ve gotten for real people. Reach out to customers and ask if they’ll write you a testimonial to display on your website.
• Be yourself. These days, everyone is selling online. People can tell when someone is being fake with them. Be yourself and be transparent.

How to Become Trusted

Repeat steps 1 and 2 consistently.

Promote only products that you believe in.

Promote only ideas and people you believe in.

If you make a mistake, say so.

Use real testimonials from real people.

Share stories of how you’ve helped others to achieve results.

Be transparent and genuine – not fake.

Give people the whole truth, even when it’s not in your best interest to do so.

If you are similar to your avatar, by all means point this out. People like and trust people who remind them of themselves.

Think of the people you trust and emulate them.

If you get a complaint about your product or service, take 30 minutes to walk around the block to completely calm down and THEN write your answer. Do not get into an argument – even if you win, you will lose.

Make your customers feel safe. Offer a no-questions money-back guarantee.

Be accessible. Place your contact details on every page of your website in the sidebar or footer.

Give away some of your best stuff.

Don’t disappoint. Don’t lie. Don’t stretch the truth.

Be consistently good. Or great.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

Maybe it is. Or maybe it just boils down to…

• being yourself
• being seen, helpful and accessible
• targeting your ideal prospects
• and doing your best to make them happy.

And remember tosign up below to see what the experts are sharing in regards to this topic.You will get some great insights in the Digital Rapport® Master series interviews.

The Key to Know, Like, Trust Is Knowing Your Audience

Knowing your audience is essential for effectively leveraging the Know, Like, Trust Factor. You must understand your audience to build the strong relationship and emotional connection necessary for them to buy from you long-term.

You need to know:

• Demographic data such as age, gender, location, education level, and occupation. Your messaging must resonate with these characteristics.
• Psychographic data including interests, hobbies, values, beliefs, and lifestyle. It helps you identify with them at a deeper level.
• Needs and pain points. Recognize problems, challenges, and issues your audience faces so you can offer relief and solutions.
• Goals and aspirations. Motivate your audience toward their goals, and you can drastically increase Know, Like, Trust.
• Communication channels and platforms your audience uses to engage with brands online.
• Communication style so that you can match it.
• Competitor brands they like and patronize. You need to understand the competitive landscape to differentiate yourself and find unmet needs you can fulfill for your audience.

Spend some time researching to learn about your audience. Use social listening, surveys, and other methods to compile data and look for patterns. Once you know your audience well, you’ll learn how to build rapport and create a personalized experience leading to long-term loyalty.

The Only 3 Reasons People Won’t Buy from You

What if your prospects aren’t buying from you? Assuming they’re seeing your offer, the reason they’re not buying is one of the following:

1: They don’t want what you’re offering. You will never sell these people.

Go find the people who WANT your product or find a product your people want.

2: They literally don’t have the money or credit to buy what you’re offering. They want it, and if they had the money, they would buy it.

You can still sell to some of these people by offering payments.

3: They don’t like you, which means they don’t TRUST you, which means they don’t BELIEVE you.

If you’re getting the right product in front of the right people for the right price, then THIS is the reason they’re not buying.

That’s why you’ve got to build ‘know, like and trust’ into all of your marketing.

Conclusion

In today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, where consumers are inundated with choices, the “Know, Like, Trust Factor” emerges as a foundational pillar for businesses aiming to stand out and foster long-term customer loyalty. It’s not merely about making a sale; it’s about cultivating a genuine relationship. By ensuring potential customers recognize, resonate with, and, most importantly, trust a brand, businesses can navigate the intricate dance of converting a casual observer into a loyal advocate. As the digital landscape continues to grow, fostering these authentic connections becomes paramount. After all, in the realm of business, trust isn’t just a factor – it’s the currency.