How to Build Brand Authenticity

What is brand authenticity?

Brand authenticity is being genuine and real aka authentic. When you’re authentic, you’re honest about your mission and values. You align what you say and how you behave (the brand) with the shared perceptions of others (the reputation). It helps you bridge the authenticity gap between your audience's expectations and the actual experiences with your brand.

When 48% of consumers expect brands to know them and help them discover new products or services that fit their needs, and customers expect to be recognised, treated as an individual, have a seamless experience, see their needs anticipated, and their voice heard, brands need to understand who their people are in order to succeed.

The four components

Brand authenticity has four key components:

1. Continuity (brand being faithful to itself)
2. ‍Credibility (true to its consumers)
3. ‍Integrity (brand that cares about the customers and is responsible for its actions)
4. ‍Symbolism (support consumers in being true to themselves)

These four dimensions capture the key idea that authenticity is far more than a simple ‘objective’ attribute; authenticity has psychological, subjective and symbolic value too – authentic brands are true to us personally, stand for what we stand for, and help us be true to ourselves.

How to create brand authenticity

Authenticity is a growing marketing trend. Let’s look at the main ways to build your brand authenticity and grow your business.

Be real and honest

Many companies can get lost in the day to day routine and forget why they have started their business in the first place. The initial step to building brand authenticity can be coming back to your roots: remembering what your main purpose as a company is, what your values are, and what you stand for.  You should build up (or maybe find again) the basis of your brand goals and intentions and see what matters to your business, to your target market, and to your audience.

Connect through stories

People like stories. Not just marketing texts but real stories about the challenges your brand faces and how you overcome them to grow your business. Your clients would love to read the stories that add value, educate, answer their questions and give useful tips.

Become a trusted expert in your field

Being authentic also means being open to sharing what you have with the world. You don’t have to give away your business secrets, but if your company uses a certain approach that no one else in the industry does, brag about it. If you’ve worked out a useful method, tell people how you got there.

Keep your brand consistency

The digital era gives you all the opportunities to keep consistency in your marketing content by creating digital eBooks and brochures. You can brand such documents by adding your company logo, custom background, and your own colour palette to match your company style perfectly. This way, your digital content will always look professional on any device and will help you stand out from the crowd.

Why brand authenticity is so important

Being authentic is one of the factors that can help your business be successful and can bring many benefits, not only to your customers, but also to your brand.

When you put honesty at the heart of what you do, it becomes much easier to talk about your purpose, uphold your brand mission, create amazing marketing and sales campaigns that will help you raise above the competition. Being simple, honest and true to the values of your brand and your audience.

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Article adapted from How to Build Brand Authenticity (+Why It’s Important)