What Does It Mean to Be an Authentic Business?

The word “authenticity” has been tossed about a lot over the past few years. It’s become such a mainstream concept that you might believe that it’s a trend. It’s as if businesses have never been authentic before now and that it probably won’t last.

The truth is that many businesses are authentic. They started that way fifty years ago and they still are. The difference may be that authenticity is something that is now readily apparent. With social media being an integral part of our lives, consumers can now hold businesses to a higher level. And if they aren’t aware of your “authenticity,” then they don’t pay attention to you.

So what does it mean to be an authentic business?

An authentic person is someone who is genuine. The same is true for an authentic business. If a business says that they stand for good customer service, for example, then their actions have to support that claim.

They have to demonstrate that their values are more than just talk. So an authentic person or an authentic business is one that you can trust to follow through on what they claim, what they profess to value and believe, and what they promise.

How is being authentic different now than it was five, ten or twenty years ago? At its core, it isn’t. Being an authentic business is still about staying true to who you are and what you do. It’s still about creating a business that supports your values, mission, and vision. However, now more than ever it’s also about communicating that message and creating a community around it.

Remember that consumers are smart and they’re fast. If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, they’ll be on you in a flash and talking about your lack of authenticity on social media. It can impact your credibility, trust, and likeability – all of which are buying triggers and motivate your followers to become prospects and eventually your customers.

Rather than talk about what happens if you aren’t authentic, let’s look at it from a more positive perspective and explore the many benefits of being authentic.

Why Authenticity Matters. The Many Benefits of Authenticity

Take a minute to think about why you started your business. What goals did you have? What problems did you want to solve for the world and why? Remember those connections that you made with prospects and customers where you really felt like you provided value?

Those are pure moments of authenticity. That’s when your business reflected your values and your mission. You were enjoying the experience of a truly authentic moment. So beyond the feel-good emotions that you enjoyed in the moment, what are the benefits of authenticity?

Building a Community

When you experience feel-good moments, your customers and prospects do too. Now imagine creating that experience again and again for others. What you gain is a community of loyal followers, and customers, who share your values. This community brings many benefits as well.

• They talk about your business with others, and your community grows from word of mouth.

• They buy products or services and your sales grow.

• They bring with them opportunities to expand your business, to solve new problems, to forge new partnerships and seize new business models.

• They build your credibility in your niche.

• They make doing business a more rewarding and fulfilling endeavor.

Building Your Brand

Authenticity also builds and strengthens your brand. People notice authentic actions. They talk about you. You can also leverage your authenticity to increase awareness for your brand. For example, let’s say that you strongly believe in fighting Alzheimer’s and to support that belief, your organization sponsors or hosts a fundraising event for the Alzheimer’s foundation.

That’s not only an opportunity to support a cause you believe in, it’s also an opportunity to market your business and build your brand. You can issue press releases, share photos from the event on social media, and get your audience involved in the cause.

It’s a win/win opportunity. But charities aren’t the only way that you can embrace authenticity to build your brand. We’ll spend a good deal of time talking about the “how” to embrace authenticity in a bit.

It Makes You Better Than the Competition

Who would you rather buy from…a company that has a strong brand but inconsistent values and action, or a company that stands behind their word and shares values that they are proud to support through words and actions? Chances are you’re going to choose the company that seems to be more consistent and honest, right? Authenticity helps your prospects see how what you offer benefits them, more than your competition.

Now you might be thinking, what about the prospects that have different values than me? Won’t I lose them as potential customers? Yes. You might. However, the customers that you gain outnumber them and the repeat purchases that result from connecting with a community that reflects your same values and policies will outweigh them.

And here’s the thing about authenticity…you don’t have to be controversial. Your values can be as fundamental as “be kind.” That’s not going to drive people away, at least not the type of people you want to do business with.

It Gives You Influence

Lush cosmetics are an example of a company that fully embraces the concepts of authenticity, and they built their company on that foundation. The company is what they believe and value. You can visit their website and check out how they approach authenticity. Here’s a short snippet of what’s on their “What We Believe” page:

We Believe

...in making effective products from fresh organic* fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics. We believe in buying ingredients only from companies that do not conduct or commission tests on animals and in testing our products on humans. We invent our own products and fragrances. We make them fresh* by hand using little or no preservative or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients and tell you when they were made. We believe in happy people making happy soap, putting our faces on our products and making our mums proud. We believe in long candlelit baths, sharing showers, massage, filling the world with perfume and the right to make mistakes, lose everything and start again.

We believe our products are good value, that we should make a profit and that the customer is always right. *We also believe words like “fresh” and “organic” have an honest meaning beyond marketing.

Source: http://www.lushusa.com/

Lush has a voice and they use it. They connect with their customers and prospects and leverage that voice to become influential. For example, they now have a campaign to ban plastic beads from skin care and oral care products. They also have a charity page that helps website visitors become a part of the solution and get involved in charities that are meaningful to them.

Long story short, authenticity gives your business substance. It positions you as a reliable and honest company and one that your prospects and customers can trust. You become a quality brand that your audience can rely on, get behind, and support.

Before you can honestly embrace authenticity, you have to know what you stand for. You have to go back to the beginning or perhaps do a bit of soul searching. It’s time to identify your company’s values so that you can integrate them into your business and every action that you take.

Who Are You? Identifying Your Values and Voice, Strengths and Weaknesses

When someone asks you who you are, you probably repeat a list of nouns. For example, you might say, “I’m a business owner, a parent, an athlete, and a writer.” While those definitions undoubtedly oversimplify who you are and what you stand for, they give the asker an idea about what’s important to you.

When they ask the same question about your business, it can be trickier to answer. So we come up with taglines and elevator pitches. The mission statement may be the closest thing to answering the “Who are you?” question for your business.

A mission statement is a statement that describes the business you’re in, why you’re in it, and what’s important to you. Here’s a mission statement for the book retailer Barnes & Noble:

Our mission is to operate the best specialty retail business in America, regardless of the product we sell. Because the product we sell is books, our aspirations must be consistent with the promise and the ideals of the volumes which line our shelves. To say that our mission exists independent of the product we sell is to demean the importance and the distinction of being booksellers. As booksellers we are determined to be the very best in our business, regardless of the size, pedigree or inclinations of

our competitors. We will continue to bring our industry nuances of style and approaches to bookselling which are consistent with our evolving aspirations. Above all, we expect to be a credit to the communities we serve, a valuable resource to our customers, and a place where our dedicated booksellers can grow and prosper. Toward this end we will not only listen to our customers and booksellers but embrace the idea that the Company is at their service.

Source: http://www.missionstatements.com/fortune_500_mission_statements.html

If you read that mission statement closely, you’ll see that it talks about what’s important to Barnes & Noble and what their business values are. The Lush Cosmetics “We Believe” statement we took a look at earlier is also a mission statement.

To effectively communicate your authentic brand and business mission, you have to first define it. Even more importantly, the brand that you define and the values and beliefs that you embrace as a company need to be true to you.

It’s very difficult to sustain a false brand and continue to portray authenticity. It’s much easier to simply embrace what you believe in. Take a look at the following questions and use your answers to help you begin to identify your authentic brand message and mission.

• Why are you in business? Why did you start your business?

• Who are your customers? What value do you offer your customers and how do you make their lives better?

• What image of your business do you want to convey? How do you want your audience and customers to perceive you?

• What are your products or services? How are they different than other products and services in the market?

• What’s your customer service philosophy?

• What makes your company unique or extraordinary?

• What kind of relationships will you maintain with suppliers, prospects, and customers?

• What underlying philosophies or values guide your policies and procedures? What values guide your business practices, marketing message, and communications?

• What’s most important to you and your business?

• What do you value and what do you want to bring to your audience?

As you can see, some of these questions may take a little time and thought to answer. That’s okay. Take your time. You want your responses to be genuine and something that you can sustain over the life of your business.

If you’re stuck, consider going back to your business plan to help get the wheels spinning. What was your original vision and mission? Has it changed? What’s remained the same and how can you build on it?

We’ve talked a lot about what authenticity means to you and to your prospects and customers. We’ve discussed a few different approaches to the concept of authenticity – whether it’s embracing organic and natural products or supporting booksellers and readers.

We’ve also shared a lengthy list of questions as you begin to define your values, mission, and authentic brand. Let’s now shift the focus and talk about what to do with your message. How do you consistently communicate and embrace authenticity?

How to Connect with Your Audience and Share What Matters

Earlier when we discussed the benefits of embracing authenticity, we talked about creating a community, word-of-mouth marketing, and loyal and repeat customers. Before any of this can happen, you have to connect with those potential prospects and customers. So how do you connect with them in a way that demonstrates your company as an authentic one?

It Begins with Understanding

How well do you understand your prospects’ needs and goals? Do you have an ideal customer? Have you done thorough research on your audience and do you have customer personas? These personas often include both demographics and psychographics.

Demographics is the representative data about your audience. For example, they’re 25-35, female and from the Midwest, in a middle to upper level income bracket. Those are demographics. The psychographics embrace their values, habits, lifestyles, culture and more.

A comprehensive understanding of your audience is important. Then and only then can you begin to see how your values align with your audience’s values. Once you understand this, you can begin to plan and craft marketing tactics, content, and even products and services that support your aligned values.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

When marketing online it’s easy to get caught up with words. After all, every marketing message that you create is words. Whether you’re sharing a blog post, a video, or even a meme, there are words involved. You cannot forget about your actions. Many businesses have struggled online when their actions don’t support their mission or philosophy.

Imagine, for example, the company that “supports human rights,” and is then found to have suppliers that utilize sweatshop labor. Their actions don’t support their words and in the fast-paced world of social media and amateur investigative journalists, there’s no way to avoid being 100 percent accountable.

Conversely, when your actions do in fact back up your words, your audience connects with you, shares your information and message with others and joins your community. Your actions can speak for you through your policies and procedures, your mission and values, and by getting involved in the world. How do you get involved? That’s easy and fun!

Help Your Audience

Step in and solve problems for your audience. Go above and beyond what they expect. Even something as simple as offering free advice and guidance to help a prospect solve a problem helps you connect with them and supports your authentic brand and values.

Helping your audience can be anything. You can retweet a message that a customer or prospect shared. You can share and/or contribute to a Kickstarter campaign that someone is hosting. You can support causes that they, and you, believe in. And you can provide freebies that enhance their life and provide value.

Support What You Believe In

Everyone has a charity or a cause that is near and dear to them. You might be involved in promoting awareness for a social problem, changing legislation, or raising money for a health condition. What’s important to you and how can your business support it?

Giving money is one way. You can also increase awareness for causes that are important to you by sharing information about events. You can host or sponsor events that are important to you as well. Going back to the Alzheimer’s example, maybe you have a loved one who has Alzheimer’s.

You might create a team for a local Alzheimer’s 5K event and raise money for the cause. You can share photos from the race, invite people to sponsor your team, and invite them to attend events in their own community. When you publicly support what you believe in, you are letting your actions speak for your values and beliefs.

Share Stories or Insight

Another way to let your actions speak for you is to share stories about your brand and your experiences. One simple example of this is to utilize case studies or to leverage social media to discuss problems that customers have had and how you solved them. Yes, you’re using words, but you’re sharing stories about actions that you and your company have taken.

Finally, it should go without saying that your company policies and procedures should reflect your values and brand. If you represent yourself as being a genuinely friendly brand and business and your customer service isn’t friendly, then you’re creating a contradiction.

This can be a little tricky when you’re dealing with outside providers, contractors, and suppliers. However, it is important that you choose to work with people and companies that reflect what you’re about. Take a look at your current activities, polices, and processes, including your website navigation process – it’s all connected. How do they support, or detract, from your brand message and mission? Are you sending a consistent and authentic message?

One interesting component of brand authenticity is the concept of availability. It’s difficult to represent yourself as a business run by real people if no one can ever get a hold of you. Insufficient contact information and presence online can lead to suspicion.

At the very least, it can plant a seed in the minds of your prospects and customers that you’re not genuine. You’re just a business, not a real person or team of people whom they can connect with. So let’s take a look at different ways that you can “be there” for your audience.

Tips and Ideas to “Be There” for Your Audience

This is actually one of the simpler steps to being authentic. It’s about making sure that your customers, prospects, and completely random strangers can reach out to your business at any time, from anywhere. They need to be able to get a hold of someone, or hear back from someone, in a timely manner.

Where Is Your Contact Information?

Your company contact information should be on every web page, on your social media accounts and in your email signature. It’s important that anyone who wants to reach out to you can do so without having to dig deep to find the information. Also, you may want to consider providing a few different methods of communication. Some people prefer to pick up the phone instead of sending an email and vice versa.

Additionally, when your contact information is consistently displayed on your various online channels, the search engines will pick it up. So you get the side benefit of potential local SEO.

What’s Your Response Time?

Response time matters to your audience. We’ve become accustomed to instant gratification and if we don’t hear back from a business right away, we start to take it personally. Silly? Perhaps. But it’s the way it is. To ensure your audience that you are in fact a real person that cares about your customers, it’s important to have a quick response time.

So what do you do?

One thing you can do is embrace technology and leverage autoresponders. You can create a system that instantly responds to any email and lets the sender know that you’ve received their email and will get back to them in… What’s a respectable amount of time? Generally it’s no longer than 12-24 business hours. This goes for social media comments, blog comments, and voicemail if you still use it.

Add Value

You can “be there” for your audience by being involved in your community. That means responding to blog posts, commenting on social media posts and replying with thoughtful and valuable information. It also means publishing relevant and valuable content, whether it’s a blog post, email message, or an article in your local newspaper.

Providing contact information, consistently adding value, and having a prompt response time are all important to ensure your audience that you care. It helps them see you as a team of real people, or an individual person, who not only believe in what they do but also follow through on those beliefs. Consistency also plays a role in being there for your audience, so let’s explore that concept next.

Be Consistent

Consistency can be difficult, both in business and in your personal life. Some days you’re maybe going to be in a better mood, you’ll have different opinions about things and your mindset can shift. While some subtle shifts are okay, it’s important to deliver a consistent message.

If you don’t, you can confuse your followers, and this confusion can lead them to look elsewhere. You don’t want that! If you find that your message tends to waiver, consider printing your message and values and posting them on your wall over your computer. You can look at them before you plan, create, or publish any content or marketing messages.

Integrate Your Voice and Personality in Your Content

Your content is a direct reflection of who you are and what you’re about. The more it reflects your personality or your company personality, the stronger the brand. There are a few ways that you can make sure your personality comes through in your content.

• Conversational – Write your content and marketing messages like you’re having a conversation with your prospect. This is one of the reasons why it’s helpful to have a customer persona or a few customer personas so you can visualize the customer and write like you’re talking to them. When you’re having a “conversation” it’s easier to embrace your personality.

• Tell Stories – Share a bit about your experiences as they relate to your audience and your content. If you’re a business coach, for example, you might talk about a similar business problem you faced and how you solved it. Storytelling lets your reader get to know you just a little bit.

• Images – Add images, graphics, and visuals that support your content and reflect your personality and brand personality. They make the content more interesting for the reader and they add personality too.

A Word on Your Policies and Procedures

Your policies and procedures may seem fundamental to you. They just are and they don’t really reflect who you are or what you’re about, right? Wrong. Your policies and procedures are a direct reflection of your values. And let’s be clear here and say that policies and procedures encompasses everything, from your returns policy to your website navigation.

Any action that a customer or prospect may take with your company on any level is part of your policies and procedures. For example, what happens when someone clicks on a broken link? What do they see and experience? Does it reflect your business in a positive light? Does it embrace your authentic brand?

Aligning your policies and procedures with your authentic brand can be overwhelming. Here are a few quick tips:

• Make a list of everything your prospect does when they visit your website. Begin aligning those steps with your brand. Take one step at a time. For example, personalize your 404 error pages.

• Be transparent. Make all of your policies easy to find, easy to understand and be completely transparent about all of your business practices. For example, if your latest launch includes material from last year’s launch, tell them so or update it and promote the updates. Make sure that your audience knows what they’re getting and what to expect.

• Be accountable. When you make a mistake, own it. Be accountable for your actions, and that includes successes and mistakes. The more honest you are about the flaws and foibles of your organization, the more understanding your audience will be. It’s when you hide the mistakes that people get suspicious.

Pulling It All Together

You now have a long list of definitions, benefits, and action steps that you can take. The first step is to determine who you are and what you’re about. What do you want your audience to think and feel about you?

Once you have that in your mind and you know that you can consistently communicate that mission and values, it’s time to begin integrating it into your business. Look at every aspect of your business, inside and out, and ask yourself if it reflects your authentic brand. If not, make changes so that it does.

Consider creating a long-term plan to communicate a consistent and authentic brand. Each week, maybe address one or two components of your business and align them with your brand. In no time you’ll be at a place where you’re walking the walk and talking the talk – you’re accurately representing your values and building a business around your authentic brand.