The Step By Step Guide To Becoming An Industry Authority

In the world of business, there is often an inverse relationship between product research and how acute the need is. Customers often tend to spend time researching on various competitors on parameters like price and features when they are not desperate for a solution. However, those who are looking for an immediate solution to a problem tend to go with a market leader, regardless of their pricing or specs.

To put this in other words, establishing your brand as an authority can be an incredibly profitable marketing strategy. Here is a step by step guide to help you achieve this in your industry.

Specialize in a niche

There are a number of examples of brands that are ‘authorities’ in a broad industry segment. Amazon, for example, is the go-to website for eCommerce transactions. Alphabet (Google) is a leader in the overall digital software and hardware space. But to get here, these brands started off specializing in a very small niche in their own industry. Amazon started off as an online book selling platform while Google focused on building the best search engine.

While you may aspire to build a brand like Amazon or Google, it is important to pick a very small niche within your industry to begin with. There are a few reasons why such a vertical marketing strategy is highly recommended. Firstly, a niche market has fewer competitors. This enables you to stand out from competitors with a relatively smaller marketing budget and within a shorter time.

For instance, if you are a digital marketing agency, you could specialize in vertical niches like ‘Reddit marketing’ or ‘LinkedIn marketing’. Such niches do not have a lot of competition and are thus easier to establish yourself as an authority in.

Build a loyalty product

Loyal customers tend to buy nearly 20% more frequently than customers who are not loyal to a brand. Many marketers tend to focus on customer satisfaction metrics while working on loyalty. This could be a wrong strategy since satisfied customers do not always have to come back. For instance, if you own a plumbing company and the customer is delighted with your service, they ideally do not have a reason to come back to you for a long time.

To build a loyal customer base, you must go beyond providing a product or service that delights customers. You must focus on your product strategy that incentivizes loyalty. You may, for instance, deploy rewards schemes to incentivize loyalty. You may also experiment with an accessory-pricing model where customers tend to come back to you for spare parts and accessories that are necessary for your main product. Printer businesses that sell cartridges are a good example of this model.

The reason why loyalty is important to build authority is because repeat purchases fuel a tendency to ‘fall back’ on a brand. A customer who orders all their office supplies and accessories from Best Buy would also ‘fall back’ on this store when they have to buy their next computer or printer. In short, the frequency of transactions with you is an important contributor to establishing yourself as an authority.

Being a thought leader

A thought leader is essentially someone who is the ‘go to’ when it comes to news and views on a particular topic or industry segment. It is a well-established fact that customers trust the word of a thought leader and are hence more likely to buy the products that they recommend. This is also the reason why celebrity endorsements are extremely popular — customers buy products endorsed by people they trust or adore.

There are a number of different strategies you could experiment with in order to establish your brand as a thought leader. Some marketers invest in building web properties that serve as the staple news platform for the industry. While this can take an incredibly long time to fructify, this is also highly effective.

In addition to this, you may also consider investing in a drip marketing campaign for your clientele. The objective of a drip campaign is to reach the client on a routine basis so that your brand stays ‘top of the mind’ when they are in the market for your product or service.

B2B brands have a number of other channels too to establish thought leadership. Such businesses can invest in webinar marketing, trade shows and conferences to reach their target audience. Such platforms enable these businesses to establish their industry authority and are hence incredibly valuable for the purpose of growing your business.

Who is the authority in your industry? What strategies do you think helped them establish themselves as such? Share your views in the comments.