Everyone’s got an opinion: This saying predates the internet, but it’s never been more relevant. Spend five minutes on Instagram and you’ll get opinions touting the importance of naps, why you need to stop napping, and how you’re napping all wrong.
Opinions, of course, don’t equal authority. Substantive expertise both grounded in facts and easy to understand can be hard to find online. This is why offering authoritative views and insights can help ecommerce businesses earn customer loyalty and set themselves apart from other brands.
Here’s how your business can benefit from brand authority and seven strategies to help you build a reputation for industry-leading expertise.
What is brand authority?
Brand authority refers to the degree of trust audiences have in your brand. A business with strong brand authority has a reputation for expertise, which can support brand loyalty and recognition and provide a competitive edgeby increasing the company’s influence in its industry.
Businesses measure brand authority by monitoring websitetraffic, search engine results page (SERP) rankings, and customer review scores. You can also use brand monitoring and social listening tools to track media mentions and social chatter about your brand.
Strong search engine performance, high traffic volumes, and lots of positive mentions of your company indicate that audiences see your company as an authority in your niche. You can benchmark your performance against your competitors and track improvements in your brandreputation.
Brand authority vs. brand awareness vs. domain authority
Brand authority is related to brand awareness and domain authority, but they’re not the same. Here’s an overview of each term:
- Brand authority. A business has strong brand authority if customers, potential customers, competitors, and industry experts view it as a reliable source of accurate and up-to-date information. Businesses with strong brand authority are seen as industry leaders and wield considerable brand influence.
- Brand awareness. Brand awareness measures how familiar target audiences are with your company, but it doesn’t factor in the quality of your brand’s reputation. Increasing brand awareness boosts sales and drives business growth as long as audiences have a positive opinion of your brand.
- Domain authority. Domain authority measures website credibility, which helps predict a site’s performance in search engine results. Domain authority scores take into account the quantity and quality of backlinks, site content and structure, and domain age.
Although domain authority and brand authority are independent metrics, companies with strong brand authority often have high domain authority because they produce quality content and earn frequent citations from relevant sources. Both of these things can also lead to brand awareness.
7 ways to build brand authority
- Define your niche
- Create quality content
- Go multiformat and multichannel
- Seek media coverage
- Publish research
- Form brand partnerships
- Cultivate referrals and reviews
Brand authority matters. It can affect brand awareness and purchasing decisions, and companies perceivedas authoritative have the power to start conversations in their markets and shape them to their advantage. Here are seven strategies to help you effectively build brand authority:
1. Define your niche
Brand authority requires authentic expertise in your niche. As a first step, identify a niche that is relevant to your product or service, aligns with your brand’s value proposition, matters to your target audiences, and capitalizes on your existing knowledge.
Effective niches are broad or narrow depending on a company’s size and available resources. A small business that sells bird food will struggle to become the market’s leading authority on all birds, for example, so it might select a focused niche like whole-food nutrition for domesticated bird species. If you’re having difficulty identifying an appropriately narrow niche, revisit your brand positioning. This may signal that your brand positioning doesn’t adequately reflect what makes your company unique.
2. Create quality content
Creating and distributing high-quality educational or informative content demonstrates your expertise and encourages audiences to view your company as a resource. This strategy is broadly known as content marketing, and it can help you earn brand authority and increase reach.
Content creator and Epic Gardening owner Kevin Espiritu stresses the value of listening to his audience to find out what they’re interested in, as well as having the right team to produce the content. “For the blog, we have a staff horticulturist, and all our writers are garden writers,” Kevin says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “So we’ll pick the right writer for the right topic, and also have what’s called a hort review, where the horticulturist will check it for accuracy.”
Giving your audience content that’s both reliable and entertaining makes it more likely that they’ll use you as a resource and trust you when it comes to making purchases.
3. Go multiformat and multichannel
Different audiences consume different kinds of content. Choose a variety of content formats and channels. For example, you may want to invest in a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy by producing high-quality blog posts, publishing white papers that establish your credibility, and creating short-form videos that demonstrate your commitment to your craft.
Then, promote that content across multiple channels to maximize visibilityand drive more trafficto your site. You could promote posts on social media platforms, in your email marketing newsletter, and on your website.
Search engine marketing strategies like optimizing your content for organic search and running search engine ads can also help audiences discover your brand. A custom framing company might build authority in its niche by targeting informational search intent such as queries about selecting the right framing and matting for a piece of art.
4. Seek media coverage
Positive media coverage can boost brand awareness and authority. Start by promoting events or activities that demonstrate your expertise in your niche and are likely to gain press attention. If you sell bags made from recycled materials, for example, you might sponsor a beach cleanup followed by a live demonstration of how to repurpose the waste materials. Or, if you’re the CEO of a sunscreen company, you could contact local TV stations to do a segment on the importance of sunscreen as summer approaches.
Consider hiring a public relations (PR) firm to identify ways to generate positive press coverage, refine messaging, and build strategies to gain earned media.
5. Publish research
Original research is a powerful tool for building authority. Proprietary data-driven insights position you as an industry leader and can encourage media outlets, other companies, and content creators to cite you as an authority.
Consider conducting surveys or focus groups or partnering with a research firm to commission a study relevant to your niche. If you make pre-workout nutritional supplements for endurance athletes, for example, you might fund a study on how one of your key ingredients affects glucose and lipid metabolism during sustained physical activity.
6. Form brand partnerships
Partnering with other companies that have a high degree of brand authority can extend that authority to you, and encourage audiences to see you as a leader in your field. Here are three strategies to consider:
- Guest posting. Guest posting involves creating content for another company’s blog in exchange for a backlink to your brand’s website. You can approach companies about one-time guest posts or even offer to provide ongoing subject-matter expertise for a brand or content creator popular in your niche.
- Co-funded marketing initiatives. Partnering with a trusted brand can stretch your marketing dollars further and boost your brand reputation. Look for a partner with aligned interests that isn’t a direct competitor, such as a company that meets a different need for the same audience base or one that provides a product or service that complements yours.
- Co-branded products. Co-branding is the process of partnering with another company to create a new product under both brand identities. Look for a co-branding partner that can boost your brandreputation and improve your ability to meet target audience needs.
7. Cultivate referrals and reviews
Favorable reviews, referrals, and word-of-mouth marketing can build trustin your brand. Consider starting a loyalty program that incentivizes reviews and referrals and using customer feedback tools to capture client testimonials. You can also send automated post-purchase review requests, respond to customer reviews on platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews, and share positive reviews across multiple platforms to maximize benefits to your brandreputation.
Brand authority FAQ
How do you measure brand authority?
Businesses measure brand authority by monitoring websitetraffic, search engine results page (SERP) rankings, and customer review scores. You can also use brand monitoring and social listening tools to track media mentions and social chatter about your brand.
What is an example of authority in marketing?
To market itself as an authority in the field, a company that sells baby toys may note the founder’s advanced degree in early childhood development, publish research on how certain types of toys stimulate cognitive development, and host a podcast on what playtime looks like at different development stages.
What are the benefits of brand authority?
Strong brand authority can support long-term businesssuccess. Here’s an overview of the benefits:
- Increased sales
- Stronger brand awareness
- Better search engine performance
- Improved brand loyalty
- More frequent media coverage
- Greater industry influence
