In the fast-paced landscape of digital marketing the importance of building authority online should be a first step for all businesses. It’s often difficult to differentiate between a good business and an okay business online. Most times you can buy the product or service from multiple sources. And a lot of times their pricing could be exactly the same. So how do you figure out who to buy from?
High Quality Content is Key
When your business is competing with other businesses for clicks and conversions your online marketing content should be of an extremely high quality. This doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be of a high production value, but it must add value to your objective of building authority online.
You don’t need loads of high quality content either. As a consultant in the UK from 2009-2019 I used my blog and two YouTube videos to drive leads in my business. Zero advertising spend. I wrote 2-3 blogs per week and attached the videos to each of them; giving me multiple ‘at bats’. Over the span of 6 years those videos had a combine viewership of less than 500, but I converted most of my leads as a result of those videos. Why, because I stood out from the bigger companies that didn’t have this type of authoritative content online.
Messaging Should Bring About Thought Leadership
Everyone loves a great product or service review from an industry expert. How many ‘old school’ businesses do you know where the owner can point you in the right direction for almost anything? Even if they can’t sell you something they can add value by building trust and thought leadership by recommending the right solution.
Try to create content and messaging around your industry and the products and services that you sell. Sometimes you sell a different brand of product to your competitors so let your customers and users know why you chose THAT product instead of the others. This matters when there is choice. Are you a Chevy or a Ford person? Stuff like that.
Build Trust With Your Customers
Businesses want customers that will come back for years, not just for the special offers. Create an experience that makes it easy for customers to reach out and ask questions. The importance of building authority becomes 2nd nature when this process is streamlined. If items are high ticket items, it may be of value for your customers to not feel pressured in the sale process. Building trust with your customers along the way is crucial for long term success.
Google anything and you’ll see hundreds of thousands of results within milliseconds. Thankfully, Google is nice to us and helps to narrow the search results using several factors like relevance, location and in-market intent. If you’re not seeing online reviews and social channels for your business it’s not going to help you stand out from the crowd.
Building Authority is a Process Not a Action
Every video, every blog, every tweet, every review. Whatever your company publishes to the internet will stay there forever. No matter how much time goes by, your content will still be visible, searchable and indexable.
Blog you write is another web page on your site. If you blogged once a week for a year, you’d have 52 new pages of content around your niche product or service. 52 chances to build authority.
Videos you create is one more piece of highly engaging content that can be easily viewed on any device anywhere. What’s the number two search engine in the world? YouTube. Make videos!
Reviews (good or bad) helps your search rankings like you would never believe. How great does it feel when you see 100s of 5 star reviews? Amazeballs, right? Good. Get one review a week (soooo easy). Do the same with your Google My Business or Facebook. Now you’ve got 100s of reviews a year. They’re there forever.