It’s just one word, and it might just be the most important word in the world of marketing.

It’s hard to win it—but very easy to lose it. And if you lose it, it can be impossible to get it back.

This one word? Entrepreneur called it the new marketing currency.

It’s trust.

Trust is crucial when it comes to mortgage, real estate, and insurance marketing.

Why?

Because trust is the most important things to customers who are looking to spend a lot of their hard-earned money. And without it, they’re going to skip over you and head directly to one of your competitors.

The problem usually isn’t earning trust. You’re a professional, you work hard. You want that trust—it’s not a question of motivation.

The problem is that you can easily lose trust simply by having a sub-par web presence.

Even worse, you might lose out on the trust of potential leads before you ever earn it, simply because you’ve made a silly mistake online.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some of the quick mistakes that can inhibit your ability to generate trust to potential leads on your web presence:

Silly Mistake #1: No Visuals

The mistake here is viewing your website like a business card.

You know what I’m talking about. All cold information, a very basic visual design, and that’s it.

No face to go along with the information.

Yeah, your website might even look good. But if you don’t use the right visual cues, you can lose out to other mortgage companies that make themselves available online.

What am I talking about? Here are a few visual cues you’ll need to generate trust:

• A photo. You don’t need it to be on your main page. But it’s important to show your face somewhere on your site. This doesn’t only personalize your services, but gives you the basic look of a professional—especially if you take the time to use a professional photographer for the best possible headshot.
• Happy clients. Demonstrating trust via social proof is one of the most powerful ways to ingratiate yourself with potential leads. By showing the faces of happy clients through testimonials, you put some powerful psychological forces to work—in your favor.
• Videos. A video can be a great way to introduce yourself to potential leads, demonstrating that you are, in fact, a human. But there’s more to it. Your videos can highlight client testimonials, show off your offices, and even demonstrate you in action. One simple video shoot—the work of an afternoon—can continue to pay dividends for years down the road.
• Avoid stock images when possible. Stock images might be a great way to throw up a website quickly, but this isn’t just any ordinary website—this is the web presence of your company. Stock images should only be placeholders for the time it takes to get the real thing. And don’t use stock images that are in any way misleading about you and your services.

In all, this is a mistake of omission. Invest in your website by adding powerful trust-triggers. If you don’t, your competition will.

Silly Mistake #2: Never Following Up for Testimonials

There is no better way to demonstrate that you’re a trustworthy mortgage or insurance agent than through testimonials.

“Social proof” is one of the most powerful concepts in advertising, and for good reason. We human beings are social animals.

When we stumble on something new, we want to know: what do other people think about this?

Social proof is so powerful that many potential leads will trust the word of strangers, simply because there’s word out there to be read. It’s what fuels the need to read Amazon reviews, no matter where the sources might be.

That’s why it’s so important for you to follow up with your clients and ask for testimonials. These testimonials are worth their weight in gold—they confer that much trust.

Once you have a few testimonials, it’s important to add the visual elements—as above. But even if you don’t include photos, you’ll want to include the testimonials at a minimum.

Make sure they’re prominent. Don’t hide them away on a testimonials page somewhere. Put them on your landing page, or front page—somewhere where people can find them easily.

Silly Mistake #3: Telling, Not Showing

Ever hear of a braggart?

Of course you have. We all have. And what’s more, we’ve all known people prone to bragging in our lives.

How do we react to braggarts? We don’t believe them. Mentally, we break apart all of their claims with a roll of the eyes and a “yeah, right…”

The problem with bragging is that it violates an old rule: show, don’t tell.

“Show, don’t tell” means that you should demonstrate your trustworthiness. Don’t just write “the most trustworthy mortgage team around!” If anything, that claim could work against you. It might make someone wonder “why do they need to write that if they’re trustworthy?”

Showing is far more powerful.

How do you show that you’re trustworthy? If you’ve paid attention to the first two sections, you already have a few inklings: visuals and testimonials demonstrate just how effective you are without you having to say a single word.

There are other ways of showing, too, including:

• Building resources. If you have a fantastic mortgage calculator on your site, it will do a lot more to boost your trustworthiness, even though you wouldn’t initially make that connection. Why? Because by adding value to your potential customers, you’re showing what it’s like to interact with you. And if you have great free resources, it only serves to show how great your paid services must be.
• Content marketing. With an effective blog, you can do a lot to demonstrate expertise in your field. Not only can you offer helpful tips and insights, but you can demonstrate your expertise simply by opening on a wide variety of topics within the mortgage and insurance industries.

Mistake #4: Not Taking Action

Want to make sure your website doesn’t trigger those feelings of trust in your potential leads?

Then it’s simple: do nothing.

The silliest mistake of all is not to work on your web presence to boost how trustworthy your service comes across. Many of these updates are simple and easy to incorporate. Even those that take a little more work—such as arranging a photographer to add some professional photographs to your website—can really be done in an afternoon.

For that work, the potential dividends can be vast. Your website will come alive with the sense that there’s someone real on the other end—and that they have something to offer.

Of course, none of this will make sense unless you can turn that trust into potential leads.

That’s where leadPops comes in. By incorporating these elements with an effective sales funnel, you can not only turn traffic into potential leads, but you can capture more of that traffic before they click “back” and head to the search engines again.

Set up a free trial of leadPops to ensure that you never make any silly mistakes on your site. When you provide great services, your potential clients should know. Don’t let a few silly mistakes get in the way of reaching more clients.