27/03/2022
THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTHENTICITY IN MARKETING:
CREATING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND.
Creating an authentic brand is one of the most valuable skills a business can develop. An authentic brand is true to who you are and allows people to understand what you stand for. You have a variety of options when it comes to defining your brand. You can choose to reinvent yourself based on the advice of an agency, you can stick with what you know and keep doing more of it, or after some reflection, you can build a powerful authentic brand based on your innate core values. However, when you choose the latter option, it means you are choosing for yourself and the business to become more authentic. This can be difficult and requires you to look inwards as well as outwards. But, when you do, it can have a profound, positive effect on your business.
WHO ARE YOU?
One of the most difficult parts of creating an authentic brand is taking the time to understand your own story. This can be as personal or as professional as you, as a business owner or manager, wish it to be. However, without a clear understanding of who you fundamentally are, and how this expresses itself as your company, you will struggle to create an authentic brand that resonates with your customers.
It’s important to understand how your values manifest as a business, who you want to be, and who you want to emulate because of your values. What this means is the story you choose to tell about your brand should be consistent with who you are as a person and how you want to be known. Not as difficult as it might sound.
WHAT DOES YOUR BRAND STAND FOR?
It is vital to choose a clear definition of your brand based upon what you want to live by. This definition should be reflected in how your business is run and operates. This is because it is the foundation of everything in your business and will reinforce your marketing message.
Consistency within your operation will also help to align your marketing efforts and help develop brand. Choose something that is inspiring and reflects your personal passions. This might be difficult at first but persist. If you are a sports fanatic and pursue your passion by creating a sports apparel brand, your definition of your brand should reflect this energy. However, if you are a photographer and pursue your passion by creating a wedding venue brand, the definition of your brand should reflect the energy that you generate through the unique expression of your perspective.
A brand is not just what you sell but should reflect how you feel about what you do when you do it, when you do it well, and particularly for someone who appreciates what and how you do it!
WHAT ARE YOUR UNIQUE SELLING POINTS?
The next step in creating an authentic brand is to identify your unique selling points. These are the qualities that might make you different from other businesses in your niche. It almost goes without saying. If you are a shoe brand, these could be quality of materials, style, and comfort of course. Naturally your product should be excellent of its type. Regardless of the type of business you own, the factors that set you apart from the obvious are deeply personal to a potential buyer.
When an individual is looking for a product choosing a brand is a highly sophisticated mental process that transcends the usual classifications of price and quality. This is because they are the things that distinguish you from your competitors apart from the product or service. Your brand is a hieroglyph designed to let people who deal with your company understand what they can expect from you.
From the way that you communicate to your market we, as your customers can imagine how it might be to work to deal with you. A brand operates below the rational level of understanding and serves as a conceptual short cut to communication in order to save the time of the potential customer when deciding if he wants to deal with you.
As individuals we are all different, and it is impossible for us to be objective about our choices when buying services or products, and of course it is impossible for us to try every variation of the product before making our choice, and this is the function of branding. Your brand is a device that our brain uses through the use of association and symbols to make choices in the simplest and most rapid way possible without having to laboriously access and analyse (or analyze if you are one of our USA audience) a range of similar products or services to make a choice. It is important to note that the brand always prevails in the process of making such a choice.
TELLING AS WELL AS SHOWING
It’s likely that you are well aware of the importance of storytelling in marketing. Your brand story is one of the most important parts of creating an authentic brand. When you have a good story to tell you will be able to capture the attention of your customers. Showing customers why they should choose your brand over others involves informing them of your own unique journey to doing what you do and how you do it. Not everyone finds it easy to create and tell a story in the traditional way, but we find that everyone has at least one story in them and that story is one that your market wants to hear. Tell that story and you will be well on your way to creating an authentic brand that will propel you to celebrity status in your niche, at least!
To know whether or not you have found a unique way to demonstrate your qualities, highlight your strengths while not ignoring your fallibilities, you will need to look at your customers as you would life-long relationships. If you are candid about your failures and quickly communicate mistakes, we have found that ironically, in our own businesses as well as our clients, we have generated extraordinary loyalty. I can tell you about some amazing anecdotes around this subject and it is one of our most important training modules around turning abject failure into ultimate success!
LOOK BOTH WAYS; INWARDS AND OUTWARDS
To create an authentic brand, you need to ensure that both your external and internal branding efforts align with your business’s story. External branding efforts help to define your brand and communicate your story to customers. Internal branding efforts help to shape the culture of your business and encourage the teams that work there to live by your story too. This means that everything that goes on within your business should support your story and be consistent with who you want to be. This will encourage your employees to buy into your story and root for your success. They will still be a part of your authentic brand story and will subconsciously as well as consciously express and identify with your values. Looking inwards is not always easy for many people and for some reason business-people often find that difficult. In our work with clients, we have developed a methodical and simple way of helping them identify their core values. Core values are at the heart of a powerful brand and identifying them can help produce a brand that is more powerful than a thousand words! In our programme, we devote several modules to this subject as this is often the key to a successful company launch or re launch. While understandable scepticism might be present at the beginning, a high morale, and a more confident and rapid pace results from the effort.
IN CONCLUSION
Your brand is the people, products, and services that you choose to represent your business. Discovering your identity as a brand is a function of honesty. You might be funny, serious, attractive, or trustworthy, it doesn’t matter. But of course, it is stupid to try to be someone that you are not. When I was 10 years old I would see John Wayne at the cinema and come out trying to walk like him! The attempt lasted for no more than an hour and only had the effect of reinforcing what I was not! Our clients are often surprised to find out that the process of building a business according to their core values is a revelation and a life changing process. Successful businesses have a consistent personality that is reflected in all aspects of their business. From the logo to the colours of the website, to the tone of the voice-over on their commercials, it is all consistent with the brand personality, but it must be authentically you. Unspectacular corporate results are often the result of a non-alignment between the owner’s true values and their act in the world. Correct that, and everything else follows. You may find that doing this is easier than you think. There’s nothing woo-woo about it. It requires solid commitment, and a degree of initial faith, but it is the royal road to exceptional wealth creation.
Robert Daubigny
