If you want to become an authority in your industry, you will need to go beyond understanding your audience or having a solid flow of leads and sales.
Trusted authorities are constantly looking into finding original ways to serve their clients, developing fresh knowledge, innovating products that if not disrupting, at least will give a lot to talk about.
To become a trusted voice in your field you will need to work on engaging clients on a personal level, go deep into data analysis, have a consolidated brand image, and turn to customer-central marketing.
Use Trends to Interact with Customers
A trusted voice is in the loop with market trends to put efforts into creating informative marketing material for clients.
Regardless if you are a small start-up or a consolidated company, you should be aware some customers have an interest in understanding the ins and outs of the field. To this end, you should create channels of communication to encourage conversations spinning around relevant topics.
For example, allowing comments on your blog after publishing a piece with trendy topics encourages readers to leave their thoughts. In the same manner, reposting this piece in different social networks with captions addressing specifically that audience have a considerable impact on the way customer sees your brand and their experience.
Stand for Your Values
Your customers want to know what you stand for to see if your core values align with their beliefs. Nevertheless, your “about us” page is not enough to put you on top of the game. You also need to truly share your culture through different channels.
Interactions don’t build relationships, but values do engage and retain customers. So focus on reaffirming what your product represents on blogs, videos and other visual forms of marketing.
Use Social Media to Become an Authority
You need to be smart in the way you use social media and work on an integrated storytelling strategy. The message given on social networks should complement each other although they may be delivered in a different form. This way it will help to build your presence online.
Right now there are plenty of opportunities to share video content. However, the length of the video on Instagram and Facebook can’t be the same as the one updated on Youtube. Customers on Instagram or Facebook perhaps are not looking for detailed information, but quick insights.
Market research will help you figure out how to build trust with your buyers using less traditional and costly advertising.
Work on Case Studies
The use of case studies is what separates trusted voices from amateurs. Field experts acknowledge in which stage of the funnel customers look into these pieces. They also see how they expect to find the information.
You should work on featuring real-world results in an approachable manner. Case studies provide social proof, explain how the product is used effectively, and humanize the brand.
Get Insights, Measure Results and Optimize
To become an authority you need to be a trusted voice. Trusted voices are not only concerned with ROI and how to get all the insights possible. They also check if whether the opinions they are getting are actually valid from a product design and optimization perspective.
Take improving your video content using fresh insights from customers, for example. You need to consider people watching videos in the USA or UK as they may not share the same perspective. Furthermore, if they are checking videos on Facebook or Instagram, they are more likely to look for specific types of content.
Then, to successfully turn your insights into actionable steps, incorporating data-centric approaches with metrics in different social media and engage with initiatives to maximize social reach will clarify the path to become an example of brand excellence.
Put your Advocates Under Spotlight To Become an Authority
Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool – that’s why referral programs work. People tend to trust products once they see somebody they know engaging with it. Furthermore, qualified leads and recurring clients should have a special spot in the company as they are the ones sometimes bringing more business.
Trusted voices understand why clients keep buying their products and work towards giving positivity to these people. To do so, you should own a database with loyal customers with a clear profile and preferences. With this information, you can create marketing material exclusively addressed to them so they keep recommending the brand to their acquaintances.
As a final outcome from a KPI, you will be increasing the customer lifetime value while cutting down on cost for new customer acquisition. On the other hand, you also work towards scaling your brand presence and possibly attracting new loyal customers to your pool of leads.
