Marketing or advertising your company without first developing your brand is like making chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips — you’re missing the key ingredient! 🍪

By investing the right amount of time and resources into first building your brand, you create a strong foundation to base all of your marketing and advertising efforts on. ✅

The old adage “people buy from those they like, know, and trust,” is well-known for a reason. Ensuring your company’s brand is both believable and trustworthy is crucial to attracting the right people and converting leads into customers. Companies lacking authentic brands can miss out on huge growth opportunities while being left in the dust by competitors.

Take a look at the five strategies below to create a trusted and believable brand:

Strategy #1: Define an Authentic Brand Voice

A brand’s voice is the personality that’s reflected in all of your communications. From the words used on your website to the overall tone of your social media posts, defining a voice that feels authentic to your brand is key to ensuring your brand is both believable and resonates with your target audiences.

Strategy #2: Create Visual Consistency

Visual consistency, or lack thereof, is one of the most important factors in building a trusted brand. Inconsistency creates distrust; if the way you’re visually presenting your brand within your website is vastly different from how it’s displayed on your social media, your audience won’t know what to expect or which is representative of your true brand. Creating and maintaining visual consistency is crucial to managing your brand.

Strategy #3: Making the Right First Impression

As they say, you never have a second chance to make a first impression. It’s crucial that your brand is immediately apparent and an accurate representation of what your business stands for. Are you a high end, luxury brand that thrives on exclusivity, or a down-to-earth, mom-and-pop business? Whatever the case may be, make sure your brand makes the right first impression with potential customers.

Strategy #4: Stay True to Your Brand Values

Brand values are more than feel good words, they’re the principles your business stands by. In order to build an authentic, believable brand, it’s incredibly important that your company not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. If your products are made in the USA and that’s an important buying factor to your customers, shout it from the rooftops! However, if you outsource production, don’t mislead customers into thinking you’re something you’re not. Trust is difficult to build and even more difficult to fix when it’s been broken.

Strategy #5: Nurture Your Customer Relationships

You’ve started building a loyal customer base, but now what? Don’t leave your biggest fans hanging. Make sure to continually connect and engage with your customers on a regular basis to solidify your brand and encourage them to refer your business to others.

By following the strategies above, you can continue to build your brand’s authority, create loyal customers, and grow your brand awareness.

Read the full article on Authority Magazine.

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