How We Create Authenticity In Small Business Brands

A lot of people toss around the term authentic brand, but there’s not enough discussion around what constitutes authenticity—and, more important, how to build an authentic brand.

Authentic is defined as being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character. On the one hand, we tend to equate authenticity with honesty. But do you have to be completely honest to be authentic?  After all, we are multifaceted beings with various aspects and facets. A truly honest personal brand, for example, would have to include the cranky pre-coffee version of you right alongside the polished-and-fabulous you. Do you really have to show off your not-so-good side to be honest or authentic?

The short answer? No. Doing so would actually confuse your customers. Building authenticity in a brand is not the result of creating a warts-and-all portrait; instead, it comes from focusing on what you do best, and then inhabiting and communicating that in every aspect of what you do. Without that consistency, you create a dissonance that potential customers can sense—and that will likely make them walk away. Authenticity in branding means that you don’t just talk the talk, but you also walk the walk.

Here’s an example. Recently I spoke to a marketer who said, “Our solutions work for any business, so we work with everyone.” This was an immediate red flag. He is in marketing, and first and foremost, a marketer must understand who their client is targeting. Marketers cannot do their job effectively if they don’t have a specific target market. And if the marketing company itself doesn’t have a target market, how can it possibly succeed in helping its clients reach their customer base?

So many marketers fail to market themselves in a targeted way. Many branders fail to develop their own brand. Untold social media companies have little following or engagement on the very platforms they engage with.

These people are missing their biggest opportunity.

When building a brand, consistency is key—for visuals, for message, and for values. We know that if you change up your message or visuals from one day to the next, you won’t get business. It’s not that people won’t like you, it’s that they won’t even notice you enough to like you. Consistency builds a relationship with potential customers and turns them into clients.

But when you are a small service business, walking the walk creates that consistency in buyers minds much faster ad much stronger. It’s very low-hanging fruit: The best way to be your brand is to do for yourself the very thing you sell to others.

If you’re a social media agency, for example, you know how to use social media to market a business, and you know how valuable social media can be to a business (after all, that is what you are selling). It makes no sense for your social media presence to be lacking because you are a business with access to an amazing social media business—yours!

Small businesses: take advantage of their greatest asset—your own ability to do what you do best for yourselves. Not only is this a valuable way to build your business and grow your bottom line, but also it’s a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate how much you believe in the service you provide—you believe in it so much, you use it for yourself. And you become a perfect case study of how well it works!

My friends at Socialfly do this incredibly well. Courtney and Stephanie, two powerhouse co-founder entreprenistas, run this fly NYC-based social media agency that focuses on the beauty and fashion industries. Socialfly stands out because of how much the company engages in and uses the latest social media has to offer. For example, for the past few months Socialfly has done weekly Facebook Live shows on Wednesdays at 10 a.m., sharing the latest social media trends and tips they’ve learned throughout the week. It’s entertaining, it’s valuable, and, most important, it’s a powerful demonstration that this company understands the value of social media—and uses it to promote their own business.

This has been a foundational principle for Worstofall Design as well. During our first few years in business, when we were strictly a design company, we struggled to get clients. We had to rely on potential clients to determine that our work was better than anything we were up against. We didn’t have a target market, and sometimes we went after clients that weren’t a good match.

Over the years we learned the importance of differentiation, of knowing our value proposition, and we started to understand what a brand was. Then, as we started to put effort into building our brand, getting bolder and bolder with each step, we started to see the results! Some people didn’t get our brand, but other people loved it. Those were our customers.

And we love that we can confidently say that everything we help our clients do in branding is based on a philosophy derived from doing it for ourselves first—and getting results. Not only are we telling you how important it is to have a strong, differentiated brand that stands out from the competition, but we can also tell you how valuable it has been for us. In fact, we spend a significant portion of our time each month on brand-building activities because we continue to see results from it.

So, would you rather hire the social media company with tons of posts but no likes or comments, or the one with a weekly Facebook Live show with engaged viewers who like and comment all the time?

Show off what you do in your own business. This is such an exciting prospect because it gives you a training ground to get better and better at what you do—while helping your business grow!

And this doesn’t just apply to marketing-related companies. If you are a coach, share how you’ve grown thanks to your own coach. If you’re a copywriter who helps people create engaging website copy, you’d better make damn sure your homepage is incredibly engaging (believe it or not, I have seen the opposite more than once!). Personal trainers should be fit and healthy. Professional organizers can offer no better reference than examples of their own meticulous spaces. Videographers: show off your skills with captivating videos about your process.

Many small business owners tell me they will focus on their own business when they get more clients. But that way of thinking must be flipped on its head: You won’t get the clients until you put the work into your own business. Focus on what you do best by honing and defining your market, and then inhabit and communicate how you service that market in every aspect of your message and branding—whether you’re a polished copywriter, a holistic acupuncturist, or a branding company that preached differentiation.

One of the best things you can do to get business is to make sure your business is in order in the area you know best. This build’s your brand’s credibility like almost nothing else can. This is how to create an authentic brand.