The reputation of your brand is something that can have a direct impact on the amount of attention that you receive from audiences – meaning that it can make all the difference in deciding whether they choose you or your competitors.
If your business is seen as being consistently concerned with meeting the expectations you set for yourself, you send a certain message to your customers. Specifically, you’re telling them that it’s not okay just to coast and get by. You want to offer the best. That’s something that can carry a lot of weight, especially if you’re able to deliver on that sentiment.
1. Professionalism
While a lot of deeper, more foundational elements can have a profound impact on your business reputation, it’s also important to look at the face-value, first-impression side of things. The professionalism that your business exudes in tone and in its communications is massively important.
This doesn’t mean that you have to adopt a particular tone of voice, or that your brand personality has to be especially sterile and formal, just that you have to be professional. If audiences feel as though you’re not worthy of taking seriously, they might not feel confident enough in you to choose you over competitors. A professional attitude can also help you to provide better customer service, which can help to keep people coming back.
2. Security
Something that both you and your audiences can get on board with is the importance of a robust security system. After all, if your business suffers a major attack or breach here, then you might be set back to a point where you’re unable to offer audiences what they enjoy about your brand.
Furthermore, it might not be just the data of your company that gets out, but also all of the sensitive customer information that you retain. That makes it crucial to find the right security system for you, understand what the most current threats are, and how tools like the cloud or AI can help you to defend yourself. This might mean working with consultants who are experts in the field, finding out what the best cybersecurity for healthcare is and why that might be different from what you use in other industries. It is also important to securely backup all of your work in the cloud so that the chance of a mass data loss is reduced.
3. Commitment to Values
Many people in business use their position to try and take a stance on a topic that is meaningful to them. The environment is one that you see regularly, and it’s an issue that a lot of people can get on board with – audiences might feel more inclined to support a business that’s passionate about environmentalism than one that isn’t.
However, if that’s a central pillar of your brand, something that you regularly use throughout your marketing, abandoning it or showing a certain indifference towards these values might result in you losing the favor of these audiences. Intertwining your values more directly into your operations can help to prevent this from happening.
4. Meeting Standards
You don’t exist in isolation. All of the competitors around you help to form the wider industry that you’re a part of, and the relationship that you have with these other businesses is difficult to ignore. You don’t just exist in contrast to them, doing things differently and trying to innovate on prior releases to win the hearts of audiences. There is also a sort of continuous improvement going on.
The standard of the entire industry is gradually raising the standard of the central product or service that it offers through these innovations, and that’s naturally going to change audience expectations. If your business is repeatedly seen as falling short of the standards that are being set all around you, it might be that you get left behind. Even if you’re marketing yourself as the budget option, that might not be enough to sway the masses towards an inferior service.
5. Communication
If a business goes radio silent for months on end, audiences are understandably going to assume that something is wrong. Some might be concerned by this, but it could be more likely that others simply forget about you and instead give their attention to competitors that are providing more regular updates. There isn’t necessarily a rule about how often you should update your social media pages or keep your audiences in the loop – you have to find a rhythm that works best for you.
However, too many blank spots and long stretches without saying anything could lead to a situation where people become frustrated about your lack of transparency, especially if these blank spots come in response to direct attempts from customers to engage you in discussion.
