Trust me, there’s a believability crisis

Here’s a funny story:

There's a guy on youtube called Mark Dice. And in one video, he walks up to random people on the street and offers to sell them a solid gold coin (worth around $1500) for a mere 30 bucks. He explains what it is, what it's worth, and even points out a handy gold exchange nearby where they can instantly flip it for a fat profit.

How many people do you think took him up on his proposition?

Would you believe me if I said “zero”?

But it kinda makes sense if you think about it. After all, if a stranger came up to you in the street and offered you gold for next to nothing, what would you do?

You'd tell them to get lost, of course.

You're no sucker.

And you certainly wouldn't trust him to be telling the truth. You'd assume it was fake gold, or that he was going to scam you or rob you in some way.

So nobody took poor Mark up on his deal. And, sadly, he had to keep his gold coin.

But that video illustrates an important truth:

Trust is everything when it comes to selling.

You can be offering someone the deal of a lifetime, and it'll do you no good if you don't have their trust.

And unluckily for you, your pet business is on the internet - an extremely low trust environment.

On the ‘net, anyone can claim to be anything.

And the explosion in online business over the past 2 decades has brought a lot of less-than-scrupulous people who love to over-promise and under-deliver… Who use social media bots and fake reviews to manufacture social proof… And so on.

At this point, a lot of people have had disappointing experiences buying online. Which means your email subscribers will be wary of who they trust with their hard-earned paycheck.

And failing to understand their audience’s natural hesitation is why so many pet businesses have disappointing results.

They try to convince people to go straight from the first time clicking on their website, to buying from them, with no inbetween. They try to go 0-100 in 2 seconds flat.

It's like a guy going up to a random girl at a party and immediately asking her to go to bed with him.

No introduction, no flirting. Just "Wanna have sex?"

And not only that, but it’s a sketchy house party in the bad part of town, where she doesn't know anyone and already feels unsafe.

And sure, if the guy does that enough, it might work once in a red moon. But in the meanwhile he's also creeping out hundreds of girls who might have been into him if he'd simply introduced himself, been charming, and built up a rapport with her first.

The nature of the internet means you face an uphill battle in winning people’s trust. However, you do have one powerful weapon available in your arsenal that will make it much easier: Email.

Email is the single best way to build trust and sell online.

Why?

Because you can regularly contact your audience and slowly build up your relationship with them a progressive, natural way. Where you're not coming on too strong, but slowly letting them get to know you better with each email.

Though obviously, you need to make sure you’re sending good emails that people enjoy reading.

Otherwise they will just stop opening them. And then, no relationship for you.

But if you’re doing what we talked about in last week’s article - sending entertaining stories that tap into your reader’s psychology - then that should be no problem.

Especially when you combine that with what I’ll be talking about next week. Something that almost no business does, which can instantly elevate you above all your competition.

While you wait for that article to roll in, why not fill in the form below to get my daily email newsletter?