Read time: 3 min, 17 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Everyone thinks about how to find customers online.

LinkedIn. Twitter. SEO. Ads etc.

But few actually build their trust to get the sale.

So in today's issue, we’re focused on building trust:
• How you move a prospect from those channels to a trust building tool
• What types of tools you use to build trust
• The type of information that gets your trust

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

So I just had tacos and a corona with my friend, Barrett O’Neill.

He’s a Boston guy who runs an SEO agency so I like to catch up with him whenever I’m back in my hometown.

Naturally we talked about our funnels and how we get people on the internet to become customers.

I hold nothing back so I want to share that conversation with you.

Building trust through digital marketing has 2 steps:
1) Get people to find out about you (Twitter, LinkedIn, Ads, SEO)

2) Get people to trust you (email and…???)

Building trust is critical! Without it you can’t ask for the sale.

So let’s get into how you get people to trust your business (and show you trust options beyond just email).

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Some of you may be confused: Wait Brian, can’t I build trust on socials?

Well technically you can… but it’s REALLY hard. I have ~100 friends who’ve built big audiences online. None have built trust without a trust building tools behind the scenes (newsletters, communities etc).

YouTube is the only exception (long-form video is the best for trust).

Others are too hard. Doable. But hard.

Step 1: People need to know about you

For people to find out about you, you need a platform that sends your ideas to people who’ve never heard of your business.

Social. Paid ads. Search engines. etc.

Platforms run by an algorithm are they’re great at reaching NEW people. But… there’s no guarantee that those new people will see your ideas again.

To build enough trust to get people to buy, you need them to give them valuable things over and over again.

Actually, you need SEVEN interactions before people buy.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Okay this rule of seven is a classic rule you study in your marketing MBA class. But it’s not really seven.

Some transactional B2C low-ticket product could sell on the first interaction. Some high-ticket B2B service may need 15.

I just met with a client yesterday who closed a $500k deal. But it took him 10 years to maintain the relationship.

Money is in the follow ups.

Step 2: People need to trust you

Great! People found out about you. Now, you deepen the relationship.

You need customers to frequently see you sharing valuable things:

1) Frequency: You need a tool that consistently reaches everyone who signed up
Email. Instant message. Text.

Any platform that is NOT algorithm based. You can’t control who sees your message with algos. It’s too random.

You’ll want to send your customers a link to the trust builder…

2) Trust builder: Long-form content
Email newsletter. Video. Podcast.

You build trust when they get to see your business’ values over a longer period of time.

• Do you give to others (or keep ideas behind a paywall)?

• Do you have a personality? Fun? Serious?

• Do you understand their problems?

• Are your solutions thoughtful?

If a customer only has 10 min to engage with your ideas (& want to build trust):

10 min of video > 10 min of audio > 10 min of reading your writing.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Long-form video is THE best format to build trust. People hear your voice, they see you, and get to see how you think.

I’m building out my YouTube channel soon and sharing these tips via video as well! You’ll be the first to know when I share lessons.

So how do you do it?

Okay so acquisition channels (socials, ads etc) reach a ton of people, but aren’t great at building trust.

Relationship engines don’t reach new people, but are great at building trust.

So what do we do?

Get people to learn about you through acquisition channels. Funnel them to trust builders. Sell there.

Here’s how I do it:

I’ll write a post on LinkedIn or Twitter. Then at the bottom of the post, I’ll say: if you want more details, join my email newsletter.

Then you obsess over sending customers more value for free than most businesses give them in their paid options.

And that’s it!

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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P.S. Wow. Last week I received so many requests to help businesses grow through digital marketing that I need to hide my calendar.

This community is incredible.

Are you over $1M in revenue and looking for a Fractional CMO to build out your marketing function (& get paying customers for your business)?

Reply to this newsletter and I’ll let you know once there’s an opening.

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