One of the most popular business prospects right now is Software as a Service (SaaS). When it comes to developing a SaaS startup with credibility from the beginning, it might be difficult to secure your spot in the extremely competitive startup environment.
If a new SaaS startup can’t achieve even a fraction of the credibility that an established company has, it might quickly fall into that unfortunate majority. To stay ahead of the competition, startups must work quickly to establish credibility. To help you out, we at SaaSworthy have put together a list of the top 10 ways to build credibility as a new SaaS startup in 2022.
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What is a SaaS startup?
Software as a service (SaaS) startups are businesses that utilize software to deliver a service to their customers. It hosts applications and makes them available to customers via the internet or a web-based app. This implies that the software is hosted on the server of a SaaS startup and is accessed remotely by the user. These companies design, develop, host, and update their own products.
Top 10 ways to build credibility as a new SaaS startup
Given below in detail are the top 10 ways to build credibility as a new SaaS startup in 2022. Go through them thoroughly in order to gain a better understanding of the same.
1. Take full advantage of testimonials
Using your customers’ testimonials to increase your startup’s credibility is one of the simplest methods to do it. Testimonials are reviews from huge corporations, specialists, or important figures in your industry. Testimonials provide rapid credibility increases since the expert’s followers will notice their review of your product and will most likely want to try it for themselves. Gather testimonies from internet reviews, social media, and polls.
Testimonials have a greater impact on an online business’s perceived trustworthiness than trust seals or even the entire reputation of the business. Share as many positive testimonials as you can. Perhaps you could dedicate an entire page on your company website to client testimonials.
Consider using video testimonials instead of written testimonials. They could even work better since viewers can see the emotion in the influencer’s face and voice and trust you more as a result. The more relevant a testimonial is to the aims and needs of the potential user, the more credibility it will induce.
2. Establish a presence on social media
You must be present where your prospective customers are, which is generally on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Potential clients frequently utilize social media to assess the legitimacy of a new SaaS startup or organization. Those that follow you on social media, whether actively or passively, support your brand by assisting you in convincing even more people to trust you.
Make a habit of posting on a regular basis and respond to comments and inquiries from your audience. Additionally, enhance your social media pages by writing a fascinating bio, including your corporate logo and cover photo, updating your office hours on Facebook and LinkedIn, and sharing contact information.
If you want to gain the trust of your audience, make it simple for them to contact and communicate with your organization. It is extremely crucial to be active on popular social media platforms. Here, you can assist customers who contact you and engage them with news and information relevant to your business.
3. Share your achievements and press mentions
Notify your customers if your SaaS startup has been honored at an award ceremony or earned positive publicity for a recent event. Share them with stakeholders, promote them on your LinkedIn profile, and showcase your media mentions and awards on your website. These help to build credibility. If the media has painted you in a positive manner, your product is probably trustworthy.
Display your accomplishments so that everyone can see them. Do not be hesitant to show your clients, vendors, and staff that you are happy with your accomplishments and the progress your company has made. Highlight any honors or accomplishments you have won on your website.
An excellent strategy to build your media presence is to use free web services to uncover press possibilities for your agency. They can offer suggestions to journalists on how to get included in press articles. Regardless of how you want to publicize your accomplishments, make sure they speak to your trustworthiness.
4. Obtain feedback from customers on your product
According to a BrightLocal survey, 57% of customers will only buy from a business with four stars or higher in ratings. And 90% of them will check 5-to-10 product reviews online before putting their faith in a business. Positive feedback from previous and current consumers is crucial in building credibility.
According to a study, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Therefore, reach out to customers directly with requests for thorough feedback on the elements they enjoyed and give an incentive in exchange for their time. Seek reviews from satisfied customers and create a dedicated testimonials page on your website to show prospective clients how many delighted customers your startup has.
If a review is relevant and clearly highlights the benefits of utilizing your product, it is guaranteed to generate trust among the readers. It may be much more successful if it is put on a third-party site rather than your own.
5. Make use of guest blogging
When it comes to establishing credibility, exposure on the internet is your gateway to success. As establishing a massive following of your own takes time, you can leverage the audiences of others by guest blogging on their websites. Guest blogging is one of the most effective methods to build credibility in your startup and introduce others to your brand and voice.
Guest blogging might help increase your startup’s reputation. There are several sites that welcome well-written guest contributions. Begin by publishing at least one high-DA guest article every week and gradually increase the frequency. To boost visitors to your SaaS site, include a CTA in your author profile.
The traffic produced by these websites might result in exposure and leads. Use your professional knowledge to guest post on other blogs and websites once you’ve established an intriguing, well-written blog. Provide your readers with industry information, product recommendations, and other stuff that is useful or answers their queries.
6. Provide free trials for your paid products
Many clients may understandably be hesitant to place their trust in something that is still in its early stages. Furthermore, 92% of customers only believe suggestions from credible sources. Offer them a free trial, so they can explore all of your features to welcome them into your fold and demonstrate how excellent you are.
This way, when you start charging, they will be more prepared and confident to buy it. Salesforce provides consumers with an easy 30-day free trial without requiring credit card information or the installation of any software.
Consider giving out discounts or free products to people who leave positive reviews. You can also attract customers further by offering premium versions of your product that unlock exceptional features when they pay a premium. Using this, Dropbox boosted its subscriber base from 100,000 to 400,000 by giving out 16GB of storage space for free as part of its referral program.
7. Make use of your partners’ reputations
You have most likely already established a network of trustworthy individuals who are associated with your startup and believe in your value offer. You could already have a prestigious management team and investors in place. So make use of this for the benefit of your startup.
Look for methods to highlight the knowledge and connections of people currently associated with your business. You might request that your board members make a few important phone calls or referrals on your account. Urge your inner circle of partners to share information about your startup on social media and to promote it on LinkedIn.
Furthermore, offer full profiles of your board members as well as testimonials from significant partners on your website and in corporate communications. Do not limit yourself to the founding team. Overstating the scope of collaboration or claiming an endorsement that does not exist are the quickest ways to lose credibility.
8. Create high-quality backlinks
Creating high-quality external links is an original SEO technique that still matters a lot when it comes to your online credibility. Obtaining high-quality backlinks demonstrates to buyers that reputable sources believe in you. Hence, make an effort to include backlinks to your content from credible and appropriate websites.
Although it has no direct influence on search rankings, it will increase the credibility of your material. Of course, the ideal approach to obtain high-quality links is to create high-quality content that provides genuine value to readers. Obtaining backlinks from significant link aggregators such as.gov,.edu, and.org sites helps increase the authority of your website.
A well-designed landing page should have a CTA that tries to convert visitors right away. This is one of the most frequent and successful methods for increasing the number of visits to your website. However, adding low-quality, spammy links to your content may harm your site’s SEO and cause it to be demoted in search engines.
9. Utilize trust seals
Business reliability is one of the most common customer concerns, and this is especially prevalent with new SaaS startups that keep sensitive data in the cloud. According to studies, 76% of customers will not buy anything from a website if they do not recognize the security symbol or trust seal. These are frequently the decisive factors that prevent a potential customer from trusting you with their money.
When you have seals from companies like McAfee or MasterCard, customers feel comfortable sharing their personal information with you since they know that their data is encrypted and all payments are secure.
Having a trust seal on your website or landing page helps boost customer trust, but where it is located is also crucial. Hence, make your trust seals visible in prominent areas such as your lead capture form, site header/footer, and payment gateway page so that clients are reassured each time.
10. Provide only the best version of your products
If you want to increase your startup’s credibility over the years, you must create and provide the best products and services available. Make certain that your product or service is of the highest quality. Address any consumer complaints or issues with your product as soon as possible. In this manner, you can ensure that you’re delivering the best product or service available.
The same should be said for your customer service. You may, indeed, have an A+ product, but if you do not provide courteous, dependable, and competent customer service, your startup’s credibility will swiftly deteriorate. The more information you provide about the product or service, the more likely people are to trust you with their money.
To assist in developing and retaining credibility, you should deliver the best of the best to clients in everything from products to customer service. Being honest in your business is what will decide its success.
Final thoughts
We hope that we were able to throw some light on the various ways to build credibility as a new SaaS startup with the help of this article. There is no doubt that following the ways mentioned above will help your new SaaS startup gain credibility. Take just as much effort maintaining your credibility as you do building it.
If you want to read more informative and interesting articles like this one, visit the SaaSworthy Blog.
