Large businesses and small businesses all over the world spend thousands of dollars on their digital branding efforts. For an up and coming clothing line, getting your name and brand out there to your targeted audience is a must. Paid advertisements, blogger outreach, and social media marketing are great ways to build brand awareness… But the one thing that money can’t buy is your brand’s reputation.
Okay, so sure, you can hire PR professionals to run damage control if you need it but ultimately, you want to make the necessary efforts to prevent damage to your brand’s reputation from happening in the first place.
Imagine, you’re starting a clothing line… You want your brand to be recognized as a high-quality line that represents all body sizes and shapes. In your efforts to live up to your desired reputation, you custom design all your garments, order high-quality woven labels, and use only quality materials for every single garment. Yet, one particular review is destroying your brand’s image and reputation.
How is this possible? Has every effort been made to potentially prevent that review from happening? A lot of times, no. Taking preventive measures is all too often the leading cause of the demise of brand reputations. Even well-established brands can’t buy a great reputation… ultimately, they’re priceless.
The process of building and maintaining your brand’s reputation is a lengthy and continual process, and your biggest investments are your time and attention. Whether you’re a big name brand or a small start-up, building and maintaining a positive brand reputation is crucial to the success of your business, and the preventive measures you take are a major contributing factor.
Apply these preventive measures to achieve success with your brand’s reputation.
Building and Maintaining a Positive Brand Reputation
Ensure Business and Social Circles Reflect Your Brand in a Positive Light
You’ve probably heard of “Birds of a feather flock together,” or “ You are the company you keep”… Well, those statements hold especially true in the world of business, whether online or offline. And they directly impact your brand’s reputation and credibility.
Whoever or whatever you associate your business with, whether it’s a social media influencer or simply sharing the tweet of another brand, you’re basically saying that you “approve this message,” or content, rather. And that applies to whether you’re affiliating locally or choose to affiliate your brand all over the world!
So just make sure that whatever relationships you build with people outside your brand that they have the same values as your brand. Screening your business and social circles before associating your brand with them is a great way to prevent the possibility of obtaining a bad reputation.
Respond to Feedback (Good or Bad) and Improve
You’re not going to please everyone, and that’s okay, but the important aspect is that you respond, and respond promptly. Loyal customers simply want to be heard. As a business, you’re not going to get it right all the time, and it’s your responsibility to right the wrong when it happens.
According to Dynamic Business, ignoring customer feedback is the worst thing you can do for your business. Your customers aren’t just going to be complaining for no reason. Their complaint could be something that once improved, the issue would be completely eliminated and never happen again.
By taking customer feedback and improving upon it shows them that you’re not only listening but that you value their opinion too. This will strengthen your brand’s products and services at its core and it will also transform negative feedback into positive feedback. Even with negative feedback, a negative response is never the right way to handle it… always remain professional.
Keep the Promises You Make
When you make promises and keep them, it definitely sets the tone for an outstanding brand reputation. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, making the mistake of not keeping one promise can do substantial damage to your brand.
Put yourself in the shoes of the customer… If you make a “money-back guarantee” promise to a customer and they end up not wanting the product and want their money back, you have to give it back to them because that’s what you promised; not doing so could result in major damage control.
When making promises, just remember that it’s easier for customers to forget the promises you keep but the promises you break will always remain at the forefront of their minds. Keeping this aspect in mind will prevent you from making promises you can’t deliver on.
Provide the Ultimate Customer Experience
With every business move you make, you want to always keep the customer’s experience in mind. The thing about the customer experience is that it doesn’t just start when they visit your store or website… it starts when they initially become aware of your business’ existence.
Customers these days conduct their own searches when looking for specific products or services and when they stumble across your business, you want to ensure that the information they find on your business is positive.
You can do this by providing helpful and informative content on your site, posting positive reviews about your products or services, and promptly responding to any and all feedback. Your customers are your number one priority and providing them with the ultimate customer experience from the very beginning is going to be your ticket to building and maintaining a positive brand reputation.
