Are you sabotaging your brand?
Not actively managing your company’s reputation is one of the easiest ways to sabotage the growth of your business. Customers, employees, and stakeholders will go to great lengths to support you long-term if they trust you.
However, trust must be earned. It’s up to you to be intentional about shaping your brand reputation or, in other words, the way the world perceives your company. Today, we’ll give you the tools you need to build your brand reputation (and avoid brand reputation killers). Plus, we’ll walk through how to accurately measure brand reputation for your business. Let’s get started!
What is Brand Reputation?
Your brand reputation includes everything that impacts how the general public perceives your brand, such as your:
- online presence
- ratings and reviews
- brand consistency
- employer branding
- customer service
- corporate responsibility
- customer loyalty
- company mission statement
- brand identity
- and much more!
Your business’s reputation goes beyond branding basics and encompasses all parts of your marketing strategy. It’s very important to have good brand reputation for many reasons. Here are a few statistics why:
- People are willing to pay 22% more for a product or a service from a business with a good brand reputation.
- 81% of consumers said they only buy from a brand once they can “trust the brand to do what’s right.”
- Over 93% of customers look at a business’s brand reputation before making a purchase.
Threats to your Brand Reputation
There are three main things that can tank your reputation:
- Damaging claims. Whether in the form of bad ratings or reviews, misinformation, or even rumors, what people say can hurt your reputation. Especially if their comments attract a lot of attention or there are several people with negative things to say. In fact, one negative review can cause a 22% loss in business. Four negative reviews can be responsible for an approximate 70% loss of business. Not only that, but it takes about 40 positive reviews to offset the impact of one negative review.
- Competitor noise. Your competitors may not try to hurt your reputation maliciously. But, in the normal course of trying to stay top of mind among their (and your) potential customers, they can overshadow your reputation. If they can be just a little more visible or seem that much more professional or cost-effective or [insert another adjective here], your company may start to look less desirable to customers.
- Changing preferences. What customers want, need, and expect changes over time. If you’re not keeping up with those changes—especially if your competitors are—it won’t go unnoticed. As a result, you could lose potential and current customers to your competitors.
Bottom line: For your company to thrive, you need to actively build and protect your good reputation. The first step is realizing that reputation doesn’t start with you saying your company is great but taking no action to back it up. It starts with the values that form the foundation of your company and how well you stick to them. You actually need to care about how people perceive you, understanding that it directly impacts your ability to do business long-term.
How to measure brand reputation
How can you know if your efforts are paying off? Here are a few of the many ways to measure brand reputation.
- Customer satisfaction: Periodic or post-purchase surveys can not only reveal how customers feel about your company but also what you’d need to do to improve your reputation.
- Online reviews and ratings: Since starting to improve your brand reputation, have you gotten more and/or better ratings and reviews from customers?
- Google page rankings: Ranking high up on page one of Google for relevant search terms can indicate that the search engine sees you and your site as credible and trustworthy. This can, in turn, positively impact how the people who find you via Google perceive your brand.
- Local search rankings: If you cater to customers in your local area, showing up near the top of relevant search results plays a critical role in making sure people know you exist. Using a keyword tracking tool, see how many local keywords you’re ranking on page one for. And see what positions you’re ranking in, which impacts how much of the monthly traffic for each keyword your website will pull in. (Pro tip: be sure you’re targeting the right keywords for your brand with the Free Keyword Tool from our friends at WordStream.)
- Number of repeat website visitors: A pattern of repeat visits to your blog, for example, can indicate that people are getting value from the information you share.
- Sentiment analysis: How do people feel about your company? You can gauge this by what they say and how they say it when communicating with you, seeking customer support, talking about you on social media, and so on.
- Social mentions: How much are you being talked about on social media? Of course, not all attention is good attention. So, this metric is best combined with sentiment analysis, allowing you to see if positive comments outweigh any negative ones.
- Shares (and bookmarks): People sharing or saving your content often indicates that they’re interested in what you have to say or have respect for your opinions and expertise.
- Conversion metrics: While repeat customers aren’t always satisfied customers, repeat business is often a good sign. You can confirm this with other metrics like those above. Also, look for positive trends like rising average order values or customer lifetime value.
Additionally, a broader way to gauge the current state of your brand rep is to analyze competitors’ reputations. How do you compare on sentiment, mentions, rankings, ratings, and so on? If you’re doing about the same, if not better than your most respected competitor, you’re headed in the right direction. If you’re doing about the same or only slightly better than a less respected competitor, you’ve got work to do.
It would be worth gathering feedback from customers to identify what aspects of the customer experience you should prioritize. Keep tabs on the metrics above and do a thorough analysis at least bi-annually and preferably quarterly to see if and how much you’ve improved.
Take brand reputation management seriously
As mentioned, threats to your business’ reputation come with the territory. While not everything is in your control, there are many things you can do to improve and protect your rep and, more importantly, your livelihood.
To recap, here are the nine strategies for managing and improving your business’s brand reputation:
- Consider each step of your customer experience
- Request honest feedback
- Handle negative feedback wisely in both the short and long term
- Engage with ideal and current customers
- Foster brand advocacy
- Hire the right employees
- Treat employees well
- Set and stick to brand guidelines
- Always have a backup plan
But remember: The time to start managing your reputation isn’t after it’s seriously damaged.
Building trust and earning respect now will make your brand that much more resistant to anything that could tarnish it. Get started by listening to what your target market is saying, whether through reviews of your business or competitors’, social listening, or other means. This intel-gathering period will help you decide the best place to start with reputation management.
