Your brand reputation reflects the degree of trust in your company and affects your business growth. If that reputation comes across as weak or ineffective, then it resonates back to you as a company boss or manager. It gets personal.
Conversely, a robust brand reputation management strategy will help you stay ahead of your rivals and can have a positive impact right down the line, from your hard-working employees to your clients.
At ADVES, we know a thing or two about brand reputation creation and maintenance. In fact, we’ve just been recognised by global analytics and market research company Clutch.co, based in Washington DC, for excellence in our Branding activities (70%) and PR services (60%) in Clutch’s ratings of agencies in Russia. It’s all at https://clutch.co/ru/agencies/branding
Now, we’re not one to blow our own trumpet but to achieve such an accolade within just three years of existence, we believe is something quite special.
It’s a fact that many customers look up reviews online and elsewhere before purchase, examine the company’s CSR activities, and at a more grassroots level, ask their family and friends for recommendations.
Great brand reputation management helps you tick all the right boxes while increasing your market share. But what processes are involved in achieving that? In fact, what is brand reputation management?
A showcase tool
Really, it’s a showcase tool. In simple terms, brand reputation shows how a brand is seen by the world. Get it right, and it will reap rewards. The amount of trust your target audience places in you will go up in leaps and bounds. As importantly, well managed by an agency such as ADVES, it will stay there.
Brand reputation management is all about making an effort, really — the constant monitoring of what people say about your company and keeping the balance right. Sure, there will be critics, but a robust brand reputation strategy will kick them into touch. When it comes to evaluating the reputation of your brand, possible clients take various things into account, such as friendliness of staff service, trustworthiness — you actually do what you say you’ll do, quality of product or service — it does what it says on the can, and brand awareness — are loads of people saying nice things about it.
Brand awareness is a subject to which a whole new blog can easily be devoted, so we won’t digress here. Keep reading the ADVES blog.
Working on your brand reputation, ADVES can help clients build valuable customer loyalty, reach new audiences, and subsequently drive growth. Your golden stage? The Internet, of course, which gives businesses the means to build and manage their online reputation.
There’s no one time, fix-all solution. Building your brand reputation needs constant attention over a period of time. It’s likely you won’t see instant results, but it is possible. But the emphasis is on the long-term management of your brand reputation, which will bring substantial benefits to your business.
Getting the managing bit right
Managing brand reputation may be daunting at first experience of the process, but ADVES are here to assist companies in getting their brand reputation management on the right track by various means, but always customised to suit the client’s needs. Now, clients don’t have to follow every guideline we come up with and can choose the ones that fit their main requirements and, of course, their budget.
Brand reputation management always begins with brand monitoring. In order to react to online mentions correctly and effectively, our agency team has to know all of what is being said about your company, your product, or your services on the Internet.
Of course, you can monitor mentions you’re interested in yourself by typing your company’s name into any search engine and systematically examining the results. It’s cheap to do it this way, but it can be a waste of time if you don’t know what you’re doing without the assistance of the experts.
You see, manually searching for online mentions is very time-consuming. You also risk missing some crucial comments. These might then get out of hand online, spread like wildfire and do damage to your brand reputation in the long term.
ADVES uses modern and advanced monitoring tools which allow us to measure the results of your marketing campaign or the sentiment surrounding your brand.
Why brand reputation management is so important
For effective brand reputation management, you have to attune to what the public is saying about your brand. The sooner you have the complete picture, the better you’re placed to deal with issues.
News travels fast, particularly bad news. The online mentions have to be caught immediately, and the right reaction given to them.
Here are some potted tips for effective brand reputation management:
· Media monitoring in real-time
· Regular watch on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok
· YouTube monitoring
· Keeping track of the different forms of notifications, including in-app notifications, alerts from business communication platforms like Slack alerts and of course emails
· Sentiment analysis
· Calculations on social media reach
· Influential public figures talking about your brand
Agencies always on the ball like ADVES will inform you about online mentions featuring your specific keywords. Our carefully analysed report will help you assess how bad the situation is. We can take an overview of brand sentiment out there, getting an accurate indication of what people feel about your brand. If there’s sudden activity in online mentions, coupled with prevailing negative sentiment, it’s a sign of brewing troubles.
The extent of your presence on social media is a likely indicator of how many people may have seen your posting. It lets you know how effective your brand awareness campaigns have been, and it will also help you gauge the damage caused by negative reviews or comments.
It’s encouraging when top public figures talk about your brand, at which point ADVES can engage with brand advocates who will promote your product or service — which is one of the best ways to enhance your public face.
Review sites can be your best friends
People these days certainly trust online reviews written by fellow consumers rather than your regular adverts. Why? Well, it’s simply because punters are looking for real, honest, and unaffected reviews and opinions made by others in the human race, based on their experience with the brand.
It’s a fact that just over 90 per cent of consumers aged 18–34 trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s why reviews appearing on the Internet are a must for your brand reputation. They’re a brilliant way to build a more significant social reach whilst also establishing faith and trust in your brand — a process which converts potential punters into paying customers.
So, watch and learn. There’s a huge benefit to be had from online reviews via feedback about your product. Always pay attention to what people are saying about you. To act dumb on the subject would be disastrous!
