A brand can only be called an original when it knows what it wants, stands for and implements its core values through their service. Understanding customers, and staying on level with them is essential and now has become easier due to social media and technology. A trusting and lasting relationship with customers can be easily created. Social media has become the perfect medium to endorsing your brand and its authenticity. According to VM Interactive and Healthy Links, a London-based digital marketing based agency, these 5 ways can be helpful for this:
1. Transparency and Honesty
As a brand, your priority should be to stay as far away from dishonesty as possible. Brand authenticity can be forged through the critical factors of transparency and honesty. Customers need your brand, to be honest with them, and transparent about their production processes. Fake news, fake promotions, photoshopped images and mere words won’t cut it anymore.
If you want your brand’s popularity to be stable and an increase in its authenticity, then become authentic. Customers can spot a conning brand for far away, and with heavy competition, your customer’s will turn to more open and transparent businesses.
One right way to invite your customer’s trust is being honest about your production process and all your products, and their uses and effects.
2. Personal and Core values
Your brand reflects you; it is your hard work and dedication in a tangible material form. Another factor that can raise your brand authenticity is showing them your creative process, being open about who you are and where your work started and why it is the way it is today. A personal connection to the brand is always a plus, and it creates personal engagement and trust.
Identify your core values and your brand’s core values. Your audience will be more comfortable if they know the person, thought and values behind the brand. The leadership of a brand and the implementation of its core values is important, which will create a trickle-down effect to the last employee.
3. Be creative
Many brands follow the business only mandate on their social media and in promotions, but you can gain much more through innovative marketing. Creative marketing is a tool that any social media marketing agency understands and uses to their advantage. If your brand is only about business, then your customers will only have a business relationship with your brand, but a brand should be more familiar so that they turn to you every time. Find a balance between business and creativity that gives your audience respite and glimpse into your brand and not just the product.
4. Own your mistakes
Another mistake that brands make is not owning up to and accepting their mistakes. As discussed before, transparency and honesty are essential factors in increasing brand authenticity ad that includes errors too. If you make a mistake, then own up to it, rather than leaving your customers with a flurry of questions that will damage your brand. Media does not forget or let you hide anything; it is always the best choice to accept the repercussions of your mistake and work hard to fix your error.
Instead of ignoring a crisis, do a little PR and crisis management. If you apologise and repair the damage, you will find more positivity coming your way than before. Nobody is free of fault, and we all make them, but as a brand, you have more responsibility, which is probably why you might receive more backlash. Apologising and fixing your mistakes, makes you more human. It tells your customers that you not only care about your business but also about your clientele.
5. Be Accessible
Your brand will only become more significant because of its customers, and they should be a top priority. Being accessible to the customers is one way of showing your gratitude for their support. Humanise your brand and be more convenient. It all boils down to how accessible and relatable your brand is. A simple way of being more human is dropping your corporate jargon. Customers appreciate straight forward and simple language. Formal language only fuels the idea that your brand is a business. Speaking in simple and straightforward terms makes you more accessible and authentic. Gaining the attention of customers is very important, and if you focus on corporate jargon, you will find yourself losing audience rather than increasing it.
Besides that, your brand should also be accessible to your customers when it comes to business. Your customers should feel satisfied with your services and behaviour. A strict ethical code should be followed by your employees. Be simple and be polite!
