Everyone owning a brand is after building real and lasting authority. It is a human tendency to follow instructions or recommendations made by anyone in power. The instinct of following experts is not mainly determined by their ability, knowledge or characteristics, but by the perception formed. People simply rely on experts or people of influence to guide them through an industry or field. That is why most of us go to a barber for a haircut or a pharmacy without prescriptions.
It is that trust factor that the marketers and SEO professionals are working on to build their authority. Ensuring trust is essential for acquiring and keeping customers, as you want them to count on you. Having brand authority enables that confidence in the customers for your business. Trust in most cases leads to an eventual conversion from the customers as it is considered as a prerequisite to any buying decisions. Hence, implementing proper brand building strategies can ensure growth for your company.
Becoming an authoritative brand is not easy, however, comes with ample amounts of benefits. It also plays a vital role in deciding whether a customer will buy from you or not. Even the search engines like Google, appreciate and prioritize the content with authority. It can not be done overnight. Building brand authority requires patience and consistency for a period of time. It is all about acing those strategies to earn the title of an influencer in your industry. In this article, we mention some well-formed building strategies to help your brand become an authority.
What is brand authority?
Authority is a principle of influence for growing your business. Authority can be built by the knowledge, experience and the leadership that your brand has gained over the period of time. It is the trust that your brand has built amongst your customers and the level at which they see your brand as a subject matter-expert. The value of your brand can be influenced by a variety of factors including the content you create, your active presence, and engagement with your customers.
Brand authority is about prioritizing the requirements of your customers, i.e. the brand addresses and resolves the pain-points of the customers through its actions. For any organization, brand authority is their perceived authority and expertise in their niche. Your brand authority is not what you say it is, it’s the status given to you by others in the industry indicating they trust and respect your organization. Therefore, the perception of your prospects and customers about your brand is crucial. The more they trust your brand, the more likely they are to take an action influenced by it. Hence, authority can highly increase conversions for your brand.
A strong brand authority is highly desirable by marketers, as building on it will eventually lead to increase in revenue. You can work on this by implementing various strategies to grow your brand and to gain the trust of your customers.
How to establish brand authority?
The strategies discussed below adhere to everyone’s desire of positioning themselves as an expert authority in their respective fields. With a strong brand presence, the likelihood of a prospect interacting and using your content increases. Keep in mind to prioritize your loyal customers first. It is essential to take action before they seek to go to your competitors. Also, attract the attention of other influencers in your niche to leverage on their authority for promoting your brand.
Before you begin to know more of such building authority strategies, it is essential to follow this 3 step process to establish a strong base.
1. Examine current brand level
Before you begin to launch the strategies, examine what your current brand recognition is. For example, check what people are talking about your brand online. This will help you identify relevant opportunity areas.
Making assumptions about how you might be perceived by your audience is not a great way to start with any planning or strategy building activity. Before implementing your marketing strategies, collect and examine the data of how you are being perceived by your audience. Some points to consider while doing the research are:
- Your branded searches (in terms of numbers)
- Search terms paired with your brand
- Ways through which leads or customers find your brand (through content or some other way)
- Your mentions in media
- Current authorities in your niche
- Ranks for your search terms
After knowing the answers to these questions, leverage on where you are included, and aim to be on where you are not performing well. Check for the ones who are doing well. Know what they are doing to have reached here.
2. Identify your audiences’ questions
Once you know your current brand level, post that, research the typical questions that the audience has about your brand and seek answers for the same.
To know the kind of questions that people are asking, you can use various SEO tools. This will help you in figuring out what different challenges people are facing based on the keywords you enter. Another way is to ask your sales team about the common questions that people are asking about your brand. Check out all the segments of your audience, as they may have been facing different problems.
With the comprehensive list of questions your audience has, move ahead to effectively finding the answers to those questions.
3. Use authoritative content for answering questions
The answers to these questions will help you figure out the content that you want to put out there for your audience. After framing the answers to those questions, go out and give answers in an authoritative way to the customers to help lay a foundation of trust.
Make your article seem more authoritative. You can do this by being original with the content. Try to include researched points to build authenticity. You want all your information to be backed up with explanations and facts. Have quotes and tips from other leaders in your niche and/or include testimonials, reviews or ask influencers to share your content to increase your reach. It is to associate yourself with other experts to make people trust your brand.
What are the strategies for building brand authority?
Continuous marketing efforts help tell an authoritative story. In the online world, leveraging digital marketing is the smart way to increase your brand authority. Let’s venture onto the tips to build brand authority through content marketing.
- Leverage on on-site content
Write authoritative, informative and data driven content on your company’s blog posts. You can do this by:
- Include newsworthy reports and studies
- Ask your in-house experts to present their views
- Highlight reviews and case-studies of other experts
- Share inside secrets of what makes your brand great
Considering the amount of competition out there, you want to prove your relevance to your target audience. Make your business a credible source for your customers through the content you provide them on it. Each piece of content should be written by keeping in mind your customers. By regularly providing them with good content, you can keep them active and engaged with your content.
- Start guest blogging on authoritative sites
Contribute as a guest blogger on other authoritative sites. Check for the sites in your industry that provide news, trends and other informative content related to the niche. Share your expertise on those sites by contributing a post as a guest blogger on such sites. This strategy helps drive traffic to your website, build trust amongst potential customers and have brand recognition.
- Build great social media profiles
Social media gives you an immense opportunity to connect with your potential customers as well as with other experts and influencers in your niche. Repurpose the content on your blog or create more engaging content for your social media to gain a spot in the shorter attention spans of the target audience. With social media you can conveniently share quality content i.e. good knowledge with a broader set of audience. By helping solve their problems, you can easily build trust and become an expert.
- Highlight Customer testimonials
As we all know, ‘word of mouth’ is a very powerful technique. However persuasive your brand’s content is, people tend to rely more on the words for other experienced users. Remember that every testimonial or review that you show counts. Do not just showcase the positive ones. Present some customer criticism and tell the steps you took to overcome or to fix that. Show this social proof on your website and social media accounts to build brand authority.
- Host online conferences, events or podcasts
To appeal to a variety of audiences, you should consider presenting content in different forms. To position your brand as a leader, host online events or conferences as it reflects exclusivity. It can also help connect other influencers from your industry and increase your brand’s reputation. Podcasts allow you to reach a whole new audience who prefer content in audio format. Host a podcast by inviting experts and presenting topics relevant to your audience.
- Build a backlinks portfolio
With high quality content you can start earning backlinks. Backlinks is one of the most efficient SEO practices. Just like a citation, it is about getting a link from some other website to your website. It is one of the most efficient ways to build brand authority as it tells Google that the other sites trust you and that you are more authoritative. Having a good backlink portfolio complements all your other authority building strategies well.
Begin by selecting one or more strategies that you think fits your brand perfectly. It helps you keep accountable as you know the most authority-building content by having a strategy. The idea is to provide value to your readers by helping them solve problems they are facing to gain their trust and to present yourself as an expert. Ensure you have high-quality content across your channels.
It requires an immense amount of patience to reap the desired benefits. However, with consistent efforts and time you will be able to build brand authority and start gaining more traction. As once you have strong brand authority through content marketing, you can measure the positive ROI in the form of increased revenues for your brand.
