Today, so many people are touting the benefits of authentic marketing. When we start our businesses, we put so much of ourselves into creating the business of our dreams and when you market authentically, you are essentially saying this is who I am and what I stand for – take it or leave it. This concept is absolutely fabulous because, honestly, would you really want to do business with someone that wasn’t accepting of you and what you bring personally to your business?

If you are ready to start marketing your business authentically, then here are three keys to bringing authenticity into your business:

Key #1 – Knowing Yourself

The first step to being authentic is to know yourself completely. What qualities and values are important to you? Which parts of yourself are you willing (and unwilling) to share with your business? Remember the most important thing to know is that it can be really, really hard to keep up a persona, however, it is a cakewalk to just be yourself. So many times I see entrepreneurs that shy away from being themselves because they are afraid that other people won’t like them or do business with them based solely on something about them. Honestly, would you really want to work with someone that didn’t like you or expected you to act a certain way that was not in align with your true personality?

What are your core values? What is important to you? Let that shine in everything you do and make sure it is very, very clear in your marketing message. Don’t try to be what you are not just for the sake of a sale as you will come to begrudge both the client and yourself for asking you to be someone you are not.

Key #2 – Knowing Your Ideal Client

The second key to authentic marketing is to know who you truly want to attract – which clients are most ideal for you. I am not talking about their profession (although that is important too). I am talking about their personality, their characteristics and their beliefs. Do you want to work with someone that gives you “free reign” or someone that is with you every step of the way? Would you want to work with someone that is very professional and staunch or are you more the happy go lucky type of attractor? Some people find it easiest to work with someone that is very similar to them, but they work better with someone that is their complete opposite.

Key #3 – Aligning This with Your Business

To truly market with authenticity, once you know yourself and your ideal client, it is important that you are very clear in your marketing message to allow these things to come through. Many entrepreneurs worry that if they are very specific in their marketing message, they will scare clients away and, although this may be very true, what they will also do is attract the exact clients they want to work with. Being very honest with what you stand for and exactly who you work with is actually a great way to build your business. Entrepreneurs that are very clear in their marketing messages actually obtain much better marketing results because their clients feel as if they were “talking directly to them.”

When you begin to market with authenticity, it is amazing how quickly you will see your business grow and prosper. No longer are you trying to market to the masses and be what you believe you should be but rather you will be marketing to who you really want to work with as yourself. The even bigger advantage is, once they become your client, it is so much easier to maintain them as a client because the expectations, your personality, what you stand for, and how you work are all “on the table” and the surprises and disappointments that cause us to sever a working relationship are fewer and farther between.

Many business owners are leery about delegating their marketing as they feel that they will lose their authenticity and that people will be able to recognize that it isn’t actually them doing the marketing. Marketing, and especially authentic marketing, is very personal and we would all like to believe that no one can promote our business better than we can.

Letting go can be very hard and if you follow these five simple steps you will be amazed at how much extra time you can have for your business (and believe me, you will need it because when you ramp up your marketing the leads will quickly follow).

Step #1 – Be cautious with the parts of your marketing where your voice and authenticity are predominant

Those parts of our marketing that are a direct reflection of who we are and what we want to bring to our business are perhaps the hardest things to delegate. A perfect example of this is anything that has to do with writing for business; newsletters, blog posts, social media posts, website copy, etc.

Each and every one of us has a voice that is unique to us and us alone. We all have a way of getting our message across differently and uniquely. This is exactly why any good ghost writer would ask you for samples of your writing so that they can imitate your writing style and voice, making it next to impossible to tell the difference between something you wrote and they wrote.

Similarly if you were to look at anyone’s social media pages, the posts and tweets and the types of things they like to share are unique and different. Luckily, for the time strapped business owner, these things can be learned and replicated.

When you decide to delegate any writing projects to a subcontractor, be sure to read through everything before it is made public. Discuss with them any changes you would make or if you aren’t comfortable with the way that something is said, tell them exactly why and how you would have said the same thing in your own words. As your subcontractor learns your writing style, you will find that you need to make fewer and fewer changes.

Also, if you are not completely comfortable having someone else writing content for your newsletters and blog posts this may be a task that you want to keep for yourself. However, that said, a competent subcontractor can easily take the content in your newsletter and blog posts to create tweets and Facebook posts.

Step #2 – Marketing plan maintenance is critical to your success

Every savvy business owner understands that a marketing plan is important in the business planning phase of your business, but many of us forget the importance of maintaining and updating that plan. As we begin our business, we take the time to do market research, review our competitors, study our ideal client, and research innovative ways to stand out in our industry. For many that’s the last time we ever think about these things.

When was the last time that you looked at what your competition was doing? Have you taken the time to review your website and other marketing materials to ensure they continue to “put your best foot forward”? Do you know what the leading edge thing that your industry is talking about is?

If you want to stay ahead in this fast paced world of business, you need to stay on top of what is current in both your industry and your ideal client’s industry/world. This is one of those tasks that many of us neglect until often it is too late and we have “missed the boat” so to speak. This is perhaps the easiest task to delegate and/or automate so why aren’t we?

Step #3 – Bring in the professionals for a polished look

So many marketing platforms these days are geared to allowing business owners to handle it themselves. Many software developers understand that businesses are money conscious these days and looking for “do it yourself” type models. Thanks to templates and tutorials, given the time and patience, business owners can quite easily handle all of their own business marketing needs.

WordPress is a perfect example of this very point and given the time you can quite easily learn all you need to know to setup your own website and maintain it as well. However, if you want to make your business stand out, moving away from the “cookie cutter” templates to a customized website is going to mean bringing in a professional (or spending some serious time learning website coding).

When determining whether you should subcontract any project out or learn the skills to do it on your own, ask yourself these three questions:

• Do I have the time to figure this out?
• Does customization matter to me or am I okay with running the risk that one of my competitor’s may use the same template?
• How much would doing this myself really cost me in the end? (Remember that if you weren’t doing this task you could be doing money making tasks for your business)

Step #4 – Customer service is the key to success

Customer service is so much more than keeping our current client’s happy. Setting up a system so that previous clients and new potential clients are not forgotten is so important. This is perhaps the easiest and best marketing task to delegate.

Your subcontractor can assist with exit surveys, maintaining databases, keeping contact continuous with all levels of your clients, providing resources and information for potential clients and follow up, follow up, follow up.

Many of us believe that our clients want to speak with us, but honestly they just don’t want to be forgotten. Whether your previous clients, your current clients or your future clients make sure that a representative from your business maintains the contact and I guarantee your client’s will appreciate the gesture.

Step #5 – Automate whenever possible

As much as subcontracting is fantastic and will free up your time to focus on revenue generating tasks, even more fantastic is automation. When you automate your systems they can run seamlessly in the background with very little maintenance.

Use your subcontractor as a tool for getting your systems documented and your processes automated wherever possible. Quite often a subcontractor, such as a Virtual Assistant, will have endless ideas for you on things that can be automated you never even thought about automating.

With a little patience, a little education and a willingness to let go and embrace the benefits of subcontracting your marketing, your efforts will be returned tenfold. Remember that the more your market the more your business will grow so get ready because letting go is the first step.