Organizations, regardless of size and industry, are defined by their reputation. If customers and prospects see their products in a good light, then they’re more likely to succeed. But if their brands get tarnished due to a security breach or ties to malicious activity, they’re bound to lose buyers and turn off prospective clients and partners.
But what is brand reputation? Why is maintaining a good one important? And how can organizations go about the process? Find out in the next sections.
What Is Brand Reputation?
Brand reputation simply translates to how people see your company. Is your organization worth trusting or not? Are your products and services worth supporting? These are just a couple of questions that companies with good brand reputations should get “yes” as an answer to.
Brand reputation is a broad term, though. It can extend to both the physical and virtual realms. In this post, we’ll focus more on online brand reputation, that is, how people perceive your organization on the Web.
A company can determine its online brand reputation by taking a closer look at online reviews, third-party associations, and its domain brand reputation.
Why Is a Good Brand Reputation Critical?
You’ve probably often heard about the term “track record.” Organizations with a good track record are the ones that survive and thrive.
Without consumer trust, companies can’t sell their products and services. Experts have even dubbed consumer trust as “the Holy Grail of retail success.” Maintaining a good brand reputation entails being reliable. Brands need to deliver on their promise, particularly in terms of quality. People won’t keep buying from an appliance manufacturer whose products break even before their warranties expire. They won’t keep patronizing a brand whose owner doesn’t provide support and other customer services, too.
The worse an organization’s brand reputation is, the less likely it will hit its target revenue, which ultimately defines business success. And should a company continue sliding down the reputation slide, so to speak, it’s bound to close shop over time.
3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Reputation Untarnished
Organizations can do something to protect their brand reputation, though. We named three ways, in fact, below.
Know What the Masses Think
The first step in determining your brand reputation is getting people to share how they see your company. There are various ways to do that although you can get the most comprehensive results perhaps by launching a survey.
Brand perception surveys can let you in on how people respond to your branding efforts. Ask respondents to share their thoughts by asking questions like:
- How would you describe this product?
- When you think of this brand, what comes to mind?
- How likely are you to recommend this brand to your friends?
There are several others, of course. You can search online for brand perception survey templates to serve as a reference. To make it easier for consumers, use multiple-choice questions so they just tick their answers.
Make Customer Reviews a Constant
Much like in PR where they say there’s no such thing as bad press, the same holds for reviews. At the end of the day, good and bad feedback can help you improve your products and services and, ultimately, your brand.
While good reviews are, of course, better and would make more sense to display on your website, that doesn’t mean you should delete negative feedback. What you can do instead is ensure you respond positively to bad reviews. Establish guidelines for all customer service representatives to follow.
If you get bad feedback about damaged products, for instance, give your customers a chance to have them replaced (granting they didn’t cause it, of course). Never respond negatively to customer feedback as that will only destroy your brand reputation more.
Protect Your Domain Brand Reputation
A significant part of your online brand reputation depends on how safe it is for customers, partners, and other stakeholders to access your website.
Becoming a cyber attack victim is bound to damage your brand reputation, as that tells people that they can’t trust you to keep their personally identifiable information (PII) secure. Seeing other sites sell counterfeits of your products can also be detrimental to your success. And should phishers use look-alikes of your domain in their campaigns, the less tech-savvy may be convinced that you’re not trustworthy.
All these scenarios make domain brand protection a must. Maintaining the integrity of your domain by preventing typosquatters and other cybercriminals from mimicking it should become part of your brand protection strategy. That may not be easy to do manually, of course, but is doable with the help of brand protection solutions.
The ways mentioned above are just three of many. Know at least 10 more ways to protect the reputation of a brand here.
An organization’s brand reputation can make or break it. Any company is just as good as how people perceive its brand. But there are various ways to protect your brand reputation and, therefore, business, as you’ve seen. Start your journey toward better brand protection and ensure your success today.