The Trust Deficit
Because many tourists have never been to your town, let alone having spent time in your business, there is a trust deficit. This will affect your business.
I’ll share a shortened version of a story my friend, David Wright tells during workshops he does several times a year. Tourists are driving along the Interstate and decide to stop for lunch. They want something fast so they can get back on the road.
At the end of the ramp, there are two restaurants: Frank’s Place and McDonalds. Frank’s Place has the best hamburgers in the entire state. Their hamburgers use only the finest cuts of Angus beef. The tomatoes are not only vine ripe, but only the centers are used. The iceberg is cold and crisp… still wet from being washed. This is a truly a great, hand crafter burger.
Across the street is McDonalds. Our tourists decide they will have lunch at McDonalds. Why? With McDonalds comes predictability. They know the name and can be sure they will get a meal at a decent price and will be back on the road in just a few minutes.
It doesn’t matter that Frank’s place is as cheap, much better, and just as fast. Frank’s doesn’t have a credibility statement in the mind’s of our travelers. They don’t know this Frank fellow and there is no trust that Frank can deliver on the needs of our tourists.
Without a credibility statement your business will get fewer visitors because they are from out of town and there is no trust. The building itself can be a credibility statement but most tourist attractions don’t have Cinderella’s Castle. We are left needing a credibility statement.
We will change the definition of the credibility statement somewhat to suit our own needs. The Credibility Statement is a two of three sentence declaration of our qualifications to deliver an awesome vacation experience.
A great credibility statement is all about how your business delivers a consistent, superior product. It is not the story of how the business was founded.
The most common place for a Credibility Statement is “About Us”. While it’s not often delivered under that headline anywhere except the website. You will discover about us text in most of your marketing materials.
We re-designed a website recently that had an About Us page that talked about how the restaurant owners were driving around town one evening. One place was too expensive, another had poor quality food, and on and on it went. Finally, after traveling another five hundred words, they looked at each other and said “Gosh, darn-it! Why don’t we open our own restaurant?” And thus, a really crappy About Us page was born.
The rewritten page talked about local, hand selected and aged beef. The local farmer who grew the vegetables was named and we talked about quality and freshness, authentic British recipes and food cooked to order to your specifications. Its fresh, simple and made just the way you want it.
The About Us page is not about us at all. Its a Credibility Statement about how we deliver a superior product to our lucky guest. This same text may show up in a number of places during your marketing campaigns. Read the article about Spaced Repetition if you think re-using text is a bad thing.
This is cold: nobody cares about where you went to school. Maybe you do have the prettiest baby on Earth, but nobody cares! You need to tell prospective tourists how much they will enjoy their time with you. You need to show them how your attraction is uniquely qualified to deliver the ultimate vacation experience. And you need to do it in under thirty seconds.
Video Transcript
Originally this video was part of a
Udemy marketing course but I've decided
to make it available to you for free
right here on YouTube. Do you know what a
Credibility Statement is? It's a really
important part of your overall marketing
strategy and we're going to cover it
next. This is Section 1, Lecture 5.
First of all perhaps a definition is in
over: What is a credibility statement? A
credibility statement isn't all about
you or or even where you went to school.
A good credibility statement is all
about how you are going to help your
customer. You see a customer needs to
know that you can deliver the product or
service that that person needs. So you
need to be able to show this customer:
We've been in business for so many years
and we can and will help you with your
problem. A credibility statement is in
reality all about your ability to solve
a problem. It's the customers problem. And
the credibility statement isn't about
where you went to school or or how many
people, other people, you've helped. It's
about how you are qualified to help this
customer. So a good credibility statement
is important to you and I want to tell
you why, we can't really over emphasize
this. You see, that is a buyer's behavior.
If somebody goes to your website and
they click on the About Us page, that
means they're interested in purchasing
your product. And they want to know that
you can deliver the product that you
promised them. So a credibility statement
is part of the buying process. It's a
part of the sales funnel. Now these two
concepts; the About Us page and the Sales
Funnel, we're going to come back to in
later sessions. But for right now I want
to concentrate on the Credibility
Statement. So a credibility statement is
important to the customer because they
want to do due diligence before they
make that purchase. And the credibility
statement is exactly what they're
looking for. By the way, this credibility
statement extends beyond just your
website, it's pretty much important for
anybody looking to do business with you.
I'll even go so far as to say your
Facebook page: a credibility statement on
The About
Us portion of your Facebook page is
important. And that's because if you'll look
at the statistics from your Facebook
page, the number of people who actually
click from Facebook and over to your
website, the About Us page is a very
close second to your main Wall. Even
though it only gets a tenth of the
number of visitors. That's because the
people who are doing research about you
are doing it because they are interested
in doing business with you and that's
why the credibility statement is so very
important. Of course not all credibility
statements are written text. Sometimes
the credibility statement is in fact a
statement in terms of a building. For
example years ago, banks used to be these
great edifices' made out of granite,
with marble pillars across the front.
Today we know most banks are glass
towers. Maybe their 50 stories tall and
the right in the center of downtown. In
both cases the bank is making a
credibility statement. "Here's a 500
million dollar skyscraper; we are a big
company and we know how to spend your
money"
statement. Guys we're going to touch on
this again; we're not going to let it go.
I'll talk to you again in the next
lesson bye-bye.
Try Our Newsletter