Everything You Need To Know About Brand Authority
Brand authority is an overarching term to describe the goal of establishing a level of reputation and trust between a brand's audience. Every business strives for brand authority, whether knowingly or passively. Not only can a business or product's brand authority influence consumer choices, but can also change the arena within its respective industry. Working as local web designers has allowed us to build brand authority in the web design niche, for example. It might sound far fetched and that it's often assumed that only international or really big national companies might be able to command undisputable brand authority, but in actuality, even small local businesses can command a level of brand authority.
This article will help you understand how a business can garner brand authority. Although keep in mind that this article isn't meant to be the defining source you'll ever need about brand authority. Rather, this article will merely give you a clearer picture of the major aspects of building brand authority.
Know Your Audience And Market
If you've taken any business management and/or marketing workshop, class, or even pursued a degree in either, then you've probably heard this a million times. But there's no escaping from the concept of audience targeting because it is one of the de facto pillars in the world of successful entrepreneurship. Business and its brand must establish itself as a different player in its industry and among its audience. If it's like any other competitor in its industry, the audience will essentially treat it as ‘another option’ – an option that might not even make it as one of the audience's preferred choices. You don't want that. In terms of brand authority, a business must strive to be ‘the best option' – that starts by identifying its specific market and audience that it’s meant to cater to. And tailoring the business offerings around being the best option to meet their needs.
Branding Authority Means Connecting With Your Audience
So this is going to be the longest part of the article because brand authority is ultimately concerned with establishing an amiable and trust-driven relationship with the audience. You can literally write a whole book describing the thousands of ways and mediums for a business to connect with its audience. This section will be divided into sections; the traditional sense of business marketing and the other is the digital aspect of marketing.
Traditional Methods – The word ‘traditional' in this sense depends entirely on your business's market, audience, and even location. The main gist of this section is to highlight the principles and practices in traditional entrepreneurship and traditional marketing in connecting with the audience that can help build brand authority. Apart from identifying your business's niche and target audience, being a relevant and strong product and service provider cannot be ignored.
For small local businesses, establish a consistent presence within your business's local area. One of the many ways you can do this is by sponsoring local events such as sports events and community festivals. Essentially, the more your local audience becomes aware of your business's image, the stronger the authority your business commands within the local area. Capture a wider audience even further by providing freebies.
Going Digital – This has its own devoted section since the world of digital marketing is just vast. Also, the playing ground is mostly even, which means even small businesses with a strong online presence have the potential to build a strong brand image. Now, building a strong brand authority online requires practice and thorough knowledge of online strategies. You can start by building a website and creating social media pages for your business. A well designed and functional website can create more informed and loyal customers and whilst a strong social media presence produces similar effects, a social media presence can certainly help your business reach more people.
For digital marketing in general, you should be familiar with terms such as SEO (Search engine optimization) and also content creation. A website with a strong SEO ranking can ultimately be the designated choice of its industry within its respective target keywords. Content creation applies both to websites and social media pages. Your audience doesn't want more unnecessary content in their lives.
Branding With A Purpose
A lot of the points here in this article do sound vague – with a reason. You see, brand authority is a goal that is a result of a synergy of various business and marketing strategies. Some can directly lead to brand authority, whilst some indirectly. It's much like graduating from college. To graduate, a student must pass their classes. Depending on the level of material and technical difficulty of the classes, a student must ideally evolve and upgrade their skills in education such as writing and critical thinking to achieve high marks in their classes – or at least until the designated passing grade. In essence, brand authority is indeed a vague but desired aspiration for any business that requires the successful execution of the various processes and strategies that lead to garnering brand authority. This journey to brand authority can vary for each business but the guiding principles are the same to get started.
