That authenticity in marketing should permeate each aspect of the business. Marketing as an authentic brand invests time into understanding what your business truly represents and makes sure your message aligns with business values.

Why is authenticity in marketing important?

Trying to sustainably grow your business using generic techniques and canned marketing content is not feasible. Today, consumers are searching for businesses that share their most authentic values – faking it, simply won’t work.

Rooted in sincerity, by presenting yourself and/or your business authentically, you will be able to build real connections with others. As a result, you will have a deeper understanding of your target audience, know what they prioritize, and be able to express your value to them.

In a world of advert-oversaturation, 51% of consumers believe less than half of businesses create authentic content. In contrast, 92% of marketers believe most of their content does resonate as authentic with audiences. Can you see the issue?

How to build authenticity in business

For optimum results, revert to the simplest method. Firstly, think about what makes a person authentic. Characteristics usually include honesty, expressiveness, unjudging, and consideration of others. Secondly, ask yourself how your business can incorporate those traits into your marketing strategy.

1️⃣ User-Generated Content

Consumers are almost two and half times more likely to believe content is authentic if it is user generated. Unfortunately, marketers spend large chunks of annual budgets on professional imagery and message encoding because they believe that is what people want to see. It isn’t. Well, at least not all the time.

Here’s the thing. When a brand shouts about how wonderful its product or service is, it is anticipated. When someone with first-hand experience of using that product or service shouts about how good it is, it is authentic because user-generated content (UGC) is near impossible to fake.

2️⃣ Clear values

Being completely transparent about your products/services is one of the ultimate displays of authenticity in marketing. For example, by providing insights into how you operate as a business, you show your audience you have nothing to hide.

Further to this, you can even give audiences a behind-the-scenes look at your business to help boost confidence in the brand. A great way of doing this is on social media – which leads us nicely to the next point.

3️⃣ Social media

Despite becoming increasingly associated with sponsored content, ‘influencer’ culture, and fake news, social networks are a surprisingly good place to build authenticity in marketing.

According to forecasters, the days of relying solely on perfectly crafted content are over. As the world moves towards daily updates for quick reactions, this shift represents the trend of consumers buying from businesses that share their social, moral, and even political views. Social media is an excellent platform for making all of these aspects part of your brand (where appropriate).

At Turtl, we are enthusiastic users of LinkedIn. We work closely with LinkedIn profile specialist David Petherick who has aligned the Turtl team in a common purpose to create a LinkedIn profile more focused and cohesive.

4️⃣ Demonstrate expertise

Knowledge is valuable. However, the last thing you want is to share what you know in a stuffy school-like way. As an outcome of creating content, you can position yourself as an expert in your field. Content can help to attract new business and help you stand out from the crowd.

As an expert in your industry, your opinion matters. From activism to advocacy, getting behind a cause your brand believes in helps like-minded individuals discover your business.

5️⃣ Employee embodiment

When putting together a marketing strategy, you will often focus on people. However, those people are your audience and not the people within your business. The people that work for the business play a large part in promoting the brand. Therefore, having employees that share the same passions and attitudes would be significantly beneficial.

You may be able to train people on the details of your policies but it’s harder to challenge their core beliefs. Hire for attitude, train for skill. Your authenticity efforts will be in vain if employees don’t value the message of the brand. Find individuals that embody what you stand for.

Authenticity inconsistency

It feels obvious at this point to say that the consistency of your brand authenticity matters. From marketing materials to social media posts, establishing and maintaining your true authentic voice needs to remain the same on every channel. The way you speak to your audience tells them just as much as the content you create.

With an authentic message, it is easier to talk about the products and services you offer. A platform like Turtl can help guarantee consistent authenticity, helping you personalize your content to a specific reader. Remember, authenticity helps to build trust.