If you’ve spent even a few minutes in a marketing meeting, you will have no doubt heard the term "authentic". Marketing teams across the world are steering their missions and strategies towards the notion, and working to ensure that their stakeholders and audiences perceive them to be real and genuine. 

But while ‘brand authenticity’ is one of the industry current buzzphrases, it isn’t a complex or groundbreaking idea. At its root, it’s simply a conscious decision by a company to be more honest with their customers and audiences in their communication. And in such a connected world, in which online communication is now such a standard and informal aspect of daily life for everyone, businesses that aren’t striving to be authentic risk being left out of the conversation altogether. 

Why is brand authenticity important?

Consumer behaviour has evolved, and marketing techniques that were once successful are now seen as manipulative or dishonest. We’ve all seen adverts depicting the most perfectly appetising burgers from major fast food chains, only to be wildly disappointed when we see flaccid reality when you buy one. It’s a long-standing joke.

Because of the increased savviness of the modern world, businesses (thankfully) have dropped the old tricks in favour of embracing new ways of communicating and promoting their products. You only have to look at Instagram in 2020 to see evidence of food brands and restaurants taking a much more authentic, real-life - and crucially, relatable - approach to their content marketing. 

The need to use more authenticity is obvious. The more digital our lives become, the more we expect our digital world to reflect our offline reality, and the more we desire a greater abundance of genuine content and less ads. As consumers, we now want the brands we connect with online to provide us with a great experience outside of their products. If we choose to follow a brand on social media, we’re in a very real way inviting them to be a regular fixture in our lives, and we want that experience to satisfy us. We’re happy to engage, as long as it makes us feel good.

But how do you become ‘authentic’? What can you do to be more authentic? Let’s have a look

Ensure that your marketing and brand message are aligned

Authenticity will come much easier when you have a clearly defined mission, culture and purpose. Setting these key branding principles and embedding them within your marketing strategy pays dividends when it comes to being authentic online. 

The key to alignment starts with understanding your core brand values. Once you understand your brand values you can develop them into key marketing messages. This alignment between your marketing and branding will then naturally weave itself into your narrative and become more distinctive as you develop it.

Be as honest and open as you can 

Being honest feels like a given when we’re talking about being authentic. As a brand, you need to live up to the standards you promote.  You can’t expect you customers to trust you if your outwardly promote a benevolent ethos, yet sell products including real fur, or made by child labour. And if you hide those parts of your business or supply chain, and your customers find out, your reputation - and any future authenticity - will be tarnished forever.  

Honesty is also about showing the real you; warts n all. Show your struggles, your milestones, promote your new employees, and embrace your vulnerability.  Your company are people, the same as your customers are people. We all share the same humanity, so show yours off. It doesn’t get more authentic than that!

Be an active part of your own community

It is much easier to have rich conversations with people when they have a familiar voice. Whether a friend, a long-standing local shopkeeper, or a trusted tech brand whose products you’ve enjoyed before, you’re more likely to buy from somebody you trust and feel connected to. 

Find out as much about your community and audience culture as you can, and find natural, sympathetic ways to position your business and products within their lives. The key is to maintain a genuine dialogue. You need to ensure that you are talking with your audience, not at them. You need to listen to what they have to say and make your decisions accordingly, rather than attempt to crowbar your assumptions and preconceptions into their lives. 

And the best part? Regardless of the platforms you use,  this is really just the most natural thing in the world. It’s simply a matter of one-to-one conversation, empathy, and genuine, human connection. You already do it every day. As such, investing time into building your community can be the most organic and powerful ways of developing your authentic brand. An authentic way of being authentic, if you will! 

We work with brands to create high-impact influencer marketing campaigns across all social platforms. We help you to get under the skin of your audiences, understand who and where they are, and collaborate with respected influencers to get your message to them. If you’d like to chat about working together, get in touch.