Brand authenticity can refer to your personal or business brand. With brand authenticity, your consumers believe that you are genuine in the values you represent and your products and services. Authenticity is necessary for the building of a brand strategy that’s cohesive.
You have to be authentic in the era of social media because audiences can find out everything about your brand from the media, online searches, and social media.
You have to walk the walk in today’s age, and that means that you aren’t just promoting authenticity—you’re living it.
With that in mind, the following are tips that can help you improve your sense of authenticity in 2023 and make it an ingrained part of your brand.
Use Video Marketing
There are so many ways that you can get creative and experience video marketing right now, all of which can increase the sense of authenticity of your brand and the connection people feel with it. For example, you can create fun animated videos to showcase how something works, or you can use short-form videos on platforms like YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels.
Giving a behind-the-scenes look at your brand can help people connect with it in a more human way.
In 2023 overall, even outside of authenticity, it could be the year of video-first marketing. Google is prioritizing video content, and users spent billions of hours consuming it in 2022.
Connect With Stories
People enjoy hearing stories, and we don’t mean stories that are entirely centered around self-promotion and marketing. Those are fine too, but there are other ways to share stories and build connections to foster more brand authenticity.
Your clients want to hear real stories.
Maybe you start with an authentic brand story.
A lot of marketing experts feel that brand storytelling is the future as far as marketing goes.
No matter how competitive or crowded your field may be, no one can take away your unique voice, so use that as you tell stories. That’s going to be a differentiator that no one else can fully replicate.
When you tell stories, it’s a way to bring an element of humanity to the connections you have with customers.
Be An Expert
When you’re an expert, you become someone that your consumers can trust. You know your field better than perhaps nearly anyone else, so showcase that front and center to improve authenticity.
For example, blog and regularly create content without the intention of selling anything. Create content meant to inform and answer questions your consumers have.
When you’re authentic, you’re sharing what you know with the world. You aren’t, of course, giving away your business secrets, but you’re telling people things that are going to bring value to their life. That’s what fosters trust.
Along with creating blogs and articles, you can position yourself as an authentic, trusted, and reliable expert by creating content like digital eBooks.
Stay Consistent
If you don’t feel like you yet have a consistent brand, it’s critical that you work towards that for 2023. You need to figure out what a cohesive brand looks like for you and how you can make it happen.
Once you figure out what your brand is about, then you can ensure you’re staying consistent in all of your sales and marketing channels.
Your audience will recognize you instantly as something they trust.
As you’re cultivating consistency, remember it in your marketing materials, newsletters, websites, and on social media.
To make sure you stay consistent no matter what you’re doing, create a style guide.
Make It Easy for Customers to Contact You
Never make it hard for a customer, prospect, or anyone to get in touch with you. You can add your email address everywhere and make sure you’re responding quickly. Start to rely on AI and chatbots to fulfill some of the contacts, and also make social media a place where you’re regularly going to answer questions, concerns, and feedback that people have about your brand.
Don’t shy away from dealing with negative feedback, either.
How you deal with negative reviews or comments will show that you are authentic and you have nothing to hide.
Live Your Values
Finally, we are in a place in business where people want to work with brands that reflect their values. Set your values and live them. They aren’t just something you write down and forget about. An authentic brand is one with well-defined values that exemplify every day.