Ready, Set, Relevance: How to Own Your Industry

Owning your industry means being top of mind and top of search.
Let’s get — and keep — you there.

When you have a runny nose, you reach for a Kleenex. For a papercut, you use a Band-Aid. Chances are, you Googled our site.

Industry ownership is as much a matter of language as it is market share. If your brand is to become synonymous with its industry, it needs to be the word consumers use to describe it.
That sort of preeminence takes a trifecta: credibility, authority, and visibility. And frankly, it takes a lot of work.
Is your brand up to the challenge? Before you say “yes,” be sure you know what lies ahead.

What Does It Mean to Own Your Industry?

Owning your industry is like winning the Triple Crown. Each of those races — the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes — is a unique test of thoroughbred racehorses.
The same is true of industry ownership. Dominant brands must pass not just one, but all three criteria. Each requires a different strategy, but all call for patience and consistency.
Winning brands are bred, not born. We crown industry owners by focusing on three things:

Credibility

Credible brands are trusted to deliver on what they say they will. Consumers believe in not just their products and services, but in their commitment to their mission and values.
These days, convincing people to trust a brand calls for digital PR. Brands that continuously appear in relevant conversations, with positive and insightful messaging, become the brands that consumers trust.
The keyword is “continuously.” Credibility is built mention by mention, insight by insight. Anyone can say the right thing once; credible brands do it time and time again.

Authority

Authoritative brands influence others. They don’t merely contribute to the conversation; they lead it.
Although digital PR plays a role in that, it’s not the secret ingredient. A cohesive content strategy is what your brand needs to become the authority in its space.
Why is your content strategy so important? Because authority is tough to build and easy to lose. Publishing something that makes your readers say “Huh?” casts doubt on the rest of your content ecosystem.
Our content strategies consider not just the placements we secure for you, but everything else your brand has published. Building authority requires that all of your content rows in the same direction.

Visibility

Being visible isn’t just about being seen. Visible brands appear everywhere that they’re relevant.
Again, digital PR makes it possible for your brand to contribute to conversations happening online. But what about where audiences aren’t talking? What about where they’re searching?
If your brand wants to be visible, it needs to own its keywords. Our custom SEO services use all of the tools available — on-page, off-page, and technical tactics — to help your brand rank for relevant terms.

Take Charge With Relevance

We know that industry ownership is a lot to promise. As Midwesterners, we don’t overpromise.
We’ve helped agencies like ours own highly competitive sectors like CMO outsourcing. We’ve gone toe to toe with Google over the online calendar space. Many of our campaigns go on for years.
We take on brands bigger than ours not with quick wins, but with sustainable strategies. We publish content consistently, tailor it for the communities that read it, and optimize it for search.
If your goal is to win a marathon like industry ownership, you need a strategy that goes the distance. Who’s in the lead at Mile 1 doesn’t matter. What counts is who’s still pounding the pavement at Mile 26.6.