How to Build a Strong Brand Reputation
At this moment, you can easily name four brands of any type. Be it cars, phones, food or drink. That’s the power and brand reputation every business owner dreams of. But, how can you get to that point? Well, it does not come overnight and the best time to start was yesterday. Building and growing your brand takes time, effort and dedication, but the fruits of such labour provide the sweetest nectar. Nectar, in this scenario, is profit, coupled with a large customer base and a growing business. Without further ado, let us get started.
1. Integrate and acknowledge feedback
When your customers take time and effort to tell you what they like or dislike, you have to prioritise feedback. Companies that actively listen to their user base and engage with them, drive user satisfaction way up. Social media is fully transparent, and customers can easily differentiate between proactive and passive companies. Company records are one Google search away for any potential user.
Never forget that the goal is too profitable to satiate your customer’s needs, and their feedback is your guideline to find out what they are. Take yourself as an example. Do you like being ignored and your opinion and voice swept under the cover? Well, neither do your customers, and that’s how you will realise the importance of customer feedback.
2. Stellar customer experience
To better understand this, try to think of any restaurants you recently visited. Now, to which of them do you wish to return? And which one do you want to recommend to your friend and relatives? That’s the power of a good customer experience. A satisfied and happy customer spreads positive word of mouth and builds your brand quality for you. To achieve such a feat, make sure all you do is tailor-made for your users. Going out of your way to cater to individual needs, produces results you can be proud of. And once a customer is happy, they will surely share that on their social media. Remember that the same applies to faulty or lousy service, and a single bad review, which is preventable, will cause more harm than good. Investing in the best customer experience possible secures you a steady brand growth.
3. SEO and Brand Awareness
Your present and future users need a way to find you, and today that’s Google. You can put in all the effort and do the best work possible, but if it’s left unnoticed, it will all be in vain. All is fair in love and war, and when you aim for the number one spot in your customer’s feed, that’s when SEO comes into play. Countless other companies are doing the work and competing for the mental spot in your customer’s head with their brand.
In that competition, you want to stay ahead of the curve and secure your rightful place as the number one choice, and that’s where SEO comes into play. Outsourcing or employing an efficient SEO agency makes all the difference. Think of SEO as playing the Google algorithm game. SEO will help shine and divert the spotlight towards all the great work you’ve done so far. Once that’s done, and your brand gets recognised, you can focus on growing and maintaining all that great work for years to come.
4. Social media presence
Your brand needs to be where your users are. Gone are the radio, TV and newspaper advertising, and today, you have to exist online. Online marketing strategy consists of your online presence on platforms where you get the most ROI. Different platforms exist for different approaches to the type of media you will use for your brand recognition. On Pinterest and Instagram, you are better of with visual and quality pictures.
Researching image composition, colour psychology, and lighting gives you a cutting edge there. On Facebook and the blogosphere, you are better of with written posts and/or blogs that inform the user. Researching your future potential ideal platform gives you a better idea of what type of multimedia is suitable for them. Once you have that info, you can pick and choose what platform is best suited for your brand presentation. Adapting to your environment will make for more streamlined communication between you and your users on that platform.
5. Consistency and delivery
We mentioned previously that an established brand is not a feat you will achieve overnight. Consistency in creating content, online research, proactive actions and raising brand awareness produce the best result. Brand awareness is not a one-time thing or a shirt term goal that you can start and forget about after a while. Brand awareness becomes part of your ongoing business and marketing strategy, a corporate philosophy that you can integrate throughout your entire endeavour. Each day, each post and each response become a new opportunity to grow and gain more ground.
The second part of the deal is to deliver on your promises. All brands promise to reach for the stars and be the very best like no one else was, but few live up to the hype. Creating expectations is a responsible goal, one that you have to follow up and live up to. A disgruntled user or, even worse, an entire user base is a recipe for disaster. It makes no sense to drop the ball on delivery, so after you light up the flame of hype in your users, be sure to deliver a stellar product and/or service that they expect. Should you manage to follow up and stay consistent, you will reap the rewards of your labour.
6. Brand association
Association is how a human mind learns and forms connections. If you want to grab something to eat, your mind associates hunger with satisfying it with a certain brand. That’s the mindset you want users to have. To create that, you need to take an interest and participate in local events. You know your base and surroundings, so taking a proactive approach and engaging with your community is the way to go. Sponsor a local event, host community actions and make a difference drives engagement from your local users.
Forming a strong base of operations lays the foundations for your future actions. By doing so, people will associate and link your brand with positive and impactful actions. This results in them being loyal and recommending your brand to others. The more proactive actions you take the more positive brand associations your users make. Such actions lead to a cascade that goes in favour of increasing brand awareness and building a reputation you can be proud of. Not to mention that you will be making a difference in your local community, which is a feat that you cannot put a price on.
Establishing a brand is equally important as making a quality good/service. Brand awareness can be the boost you needed to launch your company into the stratosphere of recognition it deserves. Making any effort towards such a noble goal is better than ignoring or doing nothing. With every step you make in brand awareness, you get one step closer to being the authority and recognisable in your industry. Once you achieve such a feat, you can sit back, admire and reap the fruits of your labour.