Whether you are the owner of a small business or a large-scale business, your digital branding efforts are going to be of great importance, and it’s not going to come cheap either. The goal is to get your brand in front of a massive target audience. Everything from paid advertisements and social media marketing to link building and blogger outreach, the way your brand is presented to the market is going to play a major role in the success of your business… This is what you would call your brand’s reputation.
What people think about your brand, their opinion of your products, and whether or not people will recommend your brand all play into the reputation of your brand.
Let’s say you’ve started your very own clothing line… With the materials you use to create your clothes and your unique eye for fashion, you want your brand to be known for its versatility and for being high quality. You even went through the effort of incorporating iron-on clothing labels on all your pieces because you know how certain types of tags can irritate the skin…
But in all your efforts, all it took was one bad review for your entire brand reputation to be ruined… Your reputation for high-quality products has just been destroyed and is now known as cheap. In situations like this, depending on the severity of damage your brand is experiencing, you could hire a PR firm to run damage control and bring your brand back to life…
But, of course, it’s always easier to prevent the problem from happening than it is to find the solution, and that’s how you have to approach your business’ reputation… taking preventive measures.
If you have a business and are selling great products, you want to be known for that and wear it as a badge of honor, but building and maintaining a positive business reputation is a continual uphill battle…
You, of course, have great moments where the business is great, but the thing to remember is to not get too comfortable because you never know what could happen to change things. And that reason alone is why you should always be taking preventive measures to build and maintain a positive business reputation… Here’s how to do it…
Preventive Measures For a Positive Brand Reputation
Never Disregard or Ignore Feedback
Feedback (especially bad feedback) is something that lots of business owners hate and avoid because it acts as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the feedback your business receives could be bad but points out a problem that you never knew about; Then again the feedback could be someone angry just acting maliciously towards your business.
Good feedback is always well-received but you need to be just as embracing to bad feedback as well. In fact, let your customers know that you want their feedback so that you can work towards improving their shopping experience.
If there’s a bad comment or review, you want to especially respond. You want to first and foremost, apologize for any inconvenience, and then work to find a resolution that’s accommodating and pleasing to them. In fact, ignoring customer feedback is the worst thing you can do for your business. But the way you respond to negative comments or reviews will actually help you in your own personal development too.
Stand By Your Word and Keep the Promises You Make
When you make promises to customers and actually keep those promises, it lays the foundation for establishing an outstanding reputation for your brand. Whether you’re doing a customer appreciation giveaway of products or presenting a flash sale for the entire weekend on all products, you have to do what you said you were going to do… not doing so will lay the foundation for a reputation of unfair and unreliable… even worse, “scammy.”
This is especially true when it comes to returns and refunds… You have to make your returns and refund policy very clear. Once you’ve earned the reputation of being a potential scam, it can be extremely hard for your brand to recover from it.
Associate Your Brand With Positive Causes
If you’re looking to grow your customer base, you’ll want to look into cause branding. This is an effort your business will make to partner with a non-profit organization with a good cause. If you decide to do this, you want to make sure the organization your business supports doesn’t conflict with your brand’s values.
For example, you might want to support PETA but if your business is a clothing business and you have fur pieces or animal print pieces, PETA may not be a good organization to support, whether you use real fur or not… The look of animal print could prove to be harmful to your reputation. Do your research and find a cause that doesn’t conflict with your personal values or your professional values as well.
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