5 ways to establish business credibility

It’s rather naive to create a website for your business, hire designers that will make it look nice and corporate, hire copywriters that will write tales about you and your company using pompous and pretentious language, and then sit back and expect investors and clients to come to your door in numbers.

It’s all just looks and people involved in a serious business are able to see through this. You might think you have a good idea or a product with a huge potential, you might even have a decent initial feedback—that’s just fine and that’s necessary, but it’s far from being enough. You need to prove that your business is serious and credible and that you and your team are knowledgeable, devoted and able to get things done. In order to do so, consider these few tips.

Be honest

The first and most important thing you need to remember is that you have to be honest, both to yourself and to the potential clients and investors. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, making these people believe stories and promises that are not credible is much harder than you might think – after all, big investors have become big because they’ve had exceptional judgment as to who’s trustworthy and who’s not.

Secondly, even if you convince them that you can do something you actually can’t, this is again not in your best interest. Getting a contract or an investment and not living up to the expectations or agreement is exactly the thing to avoid if you want to establish some credibility for your business.

Let your biography speak for itself

A great way to convince potential partners that you’re reliable is actually offering real proof of your previous achievements and projects. It’s okay to boast, but you have to back this arrogance with something solid. Same goes for the members of your team if there are any.

A study reveals that your About page and Team bios page are highly rated when it comes to proving the credibility of your business through your website. In fact, it’s the second most important factor, right after providing thorough contact info. Moreover, try not to just make a simple generic list of your previous accomplishments, but also to sound authentic and original while doing so.

Recommendations and testimonials

It’s perfectly okay to ask your current and former clients and customers to express their opinion on you – a few sincere sentences on how they felt about working with you will be just enough. The more testimonials you have, and the bigger and more successful your clients and partners are, the better.

There’s nothing more helpful than having relevant third-parties recommending your services, especially if they’re big players in your branch.

Having a social media presence is also needed in building the credibility of your business. (Source)

Performance bonds

Taking a bond, in simple terms, means putting your money where your mouth is. It’s not just that you promise you can get the job done, you’re ready to pay the price if you don’t. More specifically, taking a performance bond means that a bonding company issues a guarantee to the obligee, that if your company doesn’t finish the work agreed by the contract, they will take it over and do it instead of you by hiring someone else to get the business done before the scheduled deadline.

The cost of a performance bond is usually around one percent of a total contract value for large contracts and up to 3 percent for smaller ones, and it’s often included in the bid and thus paid by the obligee. Of course, if you fail to fulfill your contract and the bonding company covers you, you will have to reimburse them for their expenses. This makes performance bonds a bit risky, but at the same time, there’s no better proof of your reliability for an investor or a client than being prepared to actually pay if you don’t deliver the results.

Social media

It goes without saying that being present on social media is a must—not having a Facebook page for your business is almost as if you didn’t exist at all. Your appearance on social media can affect how people perceive your company in terms of credibility and competence. You should post regularly, be consistent, authentic and adapt your style and language to your niche and the demographics of your customers. Posting relevant info and most recent news related to your industry might be a signal that you are well-informed and knowledgeable when it comes to your business, so you ought to try to take advantage of this.

At the end of the day, all these tricks won’t mean much if your business is not actually healthy and reliable. The most important factor when building a reputation is doing your job better than the others—word of mouth will take care of the rest. Everything else, all the mentioned tips and pieces of advice can be seen only as a small boost for achieving the goal of establishing the desired level of credibility for your business.

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DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation in writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.