"The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself." - Leo Burnett
Are you an authentic brand?
There’s no denying that, for the most part, people engage with and buy from brands that are truthful, transparent, believable. You don’t have to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising to be believable, either. You could be an international, multi-billion-dollar entity producing boatloads of content, but if the content itself is generic, cookie cutter, impersonal, phoned in, etc., then you aren’t believable and people aren’t going to buy from you.
It’s not about your footprint, resources or reputation. It’s about being human and trustworthy, letting your guard down and being consistent with how you present yourself online and offline.
So, how do you become more believable?
Evaluate yourself.
Allocate time to do the deep thinking, questioning and vision planning for your brand. Gather your key team members. Have a discussion about where you are currently and where you want to be. Get opinions and buy-in from everyone.
Questions to consider asking:
Dig for nugget(s) of truth.
Using the feedback from your planning and discussions, narrow down what core beliefs and truths you can harness for your marketing. What are the major ideals and values that your company stands for? Make sure that whatever you are hanging your hat on is realistic and human. Part of being a believable brand is creating content that people can quickly resonate with and easily get behind, no matter what industry they’re in.
Are you going to be champions of environmental sustainability? Will you fight for design-thinking over all else? Is your brand dedicated to helping teachers? Develop those tenets that you can run with and build all of your efforts around.
Assign roles and take action.
Now it’s time to take your nuggets and breathe some life into those suckers. Let’s execute! Many brands struggle with this part because it’s easy to talk the talk, but walking the walk takes time, money and discipline.
You know where you want to be, you have established who you are and what you stand for, but now it’s all about figuring out who in your organization will be responsible for putting in the work. Who will be producing and editing content, publishing to social, monitoring/responding to social engagement, writing blogs, concepting/writing ads, shooting/editing video, designing graphics, recording podcasts, reaching out to prospects, etc.? Depending on your goals and available resources, you may need to consider hiring an outside agency or freelancer to help produce and distribute content. Assign roles to certain people, set goals for them and schedule regular check-ins to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Whatever you do, whether it’s the bare minimum or the motherload, it’s important to remember that it’s not about quantity and “doing it all.” It’s about quality of content and consistency in schedule, tone, branding, etc. Pick what you want to do and do it well.
Becoming believable isn’t as easy as flipping a switch, but it isn’t rocket science, either. When in doubt, your job is to care enough to produce quality content that allows you to be yourself, over and over again. You’ll be surprised how much people appreciate the honesty.
Do you struggle with being a believable brand? Browse our website for more helpful articles on how you can improve your marketing and advertising efforts. Our staff is also here to answer any questions you have. Shoot us an email at hello@toucanadvertising.co, leave a comment or tweet us at @toucanads!
Toucan is a New Orleans advertising agency.
