Austin Gray: What's going on? It's Austin Gray. Welcome back to the OWNR OPS podcast! Thank you so much for supporting this podcast; we appreciate you guys listening. In this episode, we are going to talk about how to increase customer trust on your website for your local service-based business websites.

If you guys have been to any of the tech websites or e-commerce websites, you've probably seen them using different types of what we call social proof strategies to increase customer loyalty and customer trust.

This is going to be a quick episode. I'm going to rock through a couple of different examples. I just did a tweet about this this morning, so if you haven't already, and if you're on Twitter or X or whatever the heck Elon is calling it right now, go give me a follow at The OWNR OPS. I share tips about building local service businesses, very similar to what I'm sharing on this podcast.

We want to talk about two things: How do you increase customer trust on your service business website? There are two strategies that you can use here. One is customer testimonials, like reviews—any sort of personalized testimonial from a specific customer you've had. You've likely seen this if you visited other tech websites, marketing websites, agency websites, and e-commerce. Like, you've probably seen customers of that business in a video sharing a testimonial about their experience with the product, or you've seen a written testimonial written by that customer. The company then displays it on the website.

If you're not doing this, you need to right now. You need to make sure that all of your Google reviews get transcribed, or you copy the text from that and then display it onto your website. I recommend doing a dedicated testimonial page for customer testimonials, even separate from what Google is doing. You want to take the review that your customers give you and then post that onto your website.

Another good way to do it is to get video testimonials from your customers. You can get videos from your customers talking about the level of service that you've delivered and embed those videos on your website. This boosts future customer trust tremendously. So, if you're not doing this already, go do that. Go get all the Google reviews that you have already, copy and paste that onto your website, or get your website agency to do that.

Then, get a video testimonial from a customer. I recommend doing that if you have a customer that you just wowed with your service or you really over-delivered. Don't hesitate to ask them for a video testimonial; that will boost conversions on your website tremendously.

Now, the second thing that I don't see a lot of local service businesses doing yet—and this is what I was tweeting about this morning—is that if you go to a website like DocuSign, okay? For example, we're going to go to the website right now. So go to docusign.com. If you scroll down very quickly, you see some other brand logos.

Now, why do they do this? We see United, Santander, Unilever, Primerica, Ducati, Flowserve.

So immediately, I see two logos that I'm familiar with: United Airlines and Ducati. So what does this do? If a customer comes to your website and they see these logos, what does that do in your customers' minds? I see another brand that I already have trust embedded into my mind from like United Airlines. I know about that—most people in the United States of America know about United Airlines.

So when I come onto this website, I associate DocuSign with United. And if United has done a good job building their brand—which they have—if Ducati has done a good job building their brand, they have—then I immediately associate DocuSign with these brands.

Now let's go to Jasper. Jasper is a content tool, or it's an AI content creation tool. So, scroll down on their homepage and you see "trusted by 100,000 teams globally at innovative companies." I immediately see Sports Illustrated, Keller Williams, HubSpot— all brands that I've heard about, all brands that most people have heard about.

So right now, Jasper's website visitors are associating Jasper with Sports Illustrated, Keller Williams, and HubSpot. Not only are they associating it with them, but what Jasper does a really good job of is they say, "trusted by 100,000 teams globally at innovative companies." So you're building trust, or Jasper is building trust, in their website visitors' minds by simply showing that they work with companies of this size. That immediately builds trust in the website visitor's mind.

Now let's go to HubSpot. This is a marketing tool for small businesses. HubSpot does a fantastic job of this. You visit HubSpot's website, go to hubspot.com, and before you even scroll, you see "194,000 plus customers in over 120 countries grow their business with HubSpot." Then, right below that, you see Reddit's logo, Eventbrite's logo, DoorDash's logo— all brands that people have heard of before.

So the website visitors for HubSpot are immediately associating HubSpot with these types of brands. What does that do? In short, it psychologically builds trust with your website visitors.

So, you can do the same thing. We're getting to 7 and a half minutes here, and I told you guys I was going to keep it under 10 minutes on these short-form episodes, so I'm going to continue to work to do my best for that.

How can you do this on your local service business website? Well, I thought about this whenever I was creating our website for Bearclaw Land Services. I thought, "What can we use? What other sorts of logos can we use to build trust with our customers?"

At the time, I was getting my BBB certification or annual membership. So if you don't have a Better Business Bureau membership for your local service business, then go get one right now! You have to go through an interview process; you have to show that your company is committed to the same types of core values that the Better Business Bureau was founded upon. But once you go through that interview process, I think I had maybe two or three calls with the local chapter president, and they approved our business to be part of the Better Business Bureau.

Then I paid an annual membership, which is a couple hundred bucks—I think it’s about $250 or so—and then I get access to their brand assets to use for my marketing purposes.

Now, why is this important? Because, one, the Better Business Bureau has done a great job of building trust with customers across the U.S. already. So I want to align my business with what people already trust.

Most people in the local small service business game just go and put that, you know, they give you a plaque, and they put that inside their office. Well, who comes inside your office? Very few people! More people are going to come to your website in this day and age. So you need to put the BBB logo on your website and specifically above the fold.

Now, what do I mean by above the fold? Go to hubspot.com and see the placement of their logos. Like, when you visit their website, that logo scroller is literally right there, front and center, right below their call to action. You don't have to scroll to see that, okay? That’s very important. When customers visit your website, you want to see that BBB logo.

Now, here are two other creative logos that you can embed on your website. Everybody knows Google reviews are very important in the local small service business game. So go get a Google review badge! This states that you have great five-star reviews on Google. For me, we only have five-star reviews in our business right now, so I have a badge that says—what does it say? You can go to bearclawlandservices.com; that’s my local service business—and you can see I have a Google reviews five-star badge. It's simple, right there. But what does that do? It shows customers that we have five-star Google reviews. It immediately builds trust.

Now the third one took a little bit of creativity. So, here, I’m part of something called Colorado Timber Industry Association—it's something that's known within the wood industry here. We do a lot of fire mitigation work, and since I'm a part of that industry association, I felt like it was something worth showing to my customers.

Alright, so what other industry associations are you a part of with your local small service business? What certifications do you have? For me, if I was a tree service specifically and I was getting an ISA arborist certification, I would display that right here every single time. Most people do this wrong. I see this with tree service companies all the time. I’ll look at their website, and I scroll all the way down, and on the bottom of their footer, they have "ISA Certified Arborist." I'm like, "Who the heck views the footer?"

You need to be putting that high on your website to where people do not have to scroll to see that.

So those are three logos that you can put on your website to increase immediate trust with your customers, which is going to lead to more online leads, which is what we're all in the business of doing right now. If you're in a local small service-based business, the opportunity is to own the digital landscape in your local market. If you do this along with some other principles that we're going to talk about in other episodes, I believe you can simply own your local service market.

So go implement those logos right now, and let me know if you have any questions. I really appreciate you guys listening to this. Reach out to me on Twitter if you have any advice or episodes that you would like to hear me talk about at The OWNR OPS.

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So thanks again for listening! We'll see you in the next episode. Don't forget: work hard, do your best, and never settle for less. See you guys in the next episode!