Brand reputation can make or break a business’s ability to succeed and profit. A positive brand reputation not only helps to spread word of mouth to accrue new customers, but it also maintains a loyal shopper base. While a bad business reputation can affect number of sales, brand trust, and employee retention.
There are certain steps every business should take in order to improve and cement its brand reputation and form the foundations of a successful enterprise. Here are just some useful tips for improving your brand reputation and increasing your customer base.
- Establishing your name in the industry
For any business in any industry, it is important to build your brand as a recognisable name that can be trusted and relied upon. There are a number of ways you can establish your name in your chosen industry. This may be through creating unique and quality products, collaborating or working with other trusted businesses in your industry or focusing heavily on marketing campaigns to reach your audience.
- Timely engagement and responses for your brand reputation
A strong social media and marketing strategy is key to building a good brand reputation. In order to reach your customers, it is important to assess and research the best times to engage with your customers to be noticed by the biggest amount of people. It’s also necessary to be timely when responding to customer queries and concerns. This will not only ensure that sales go through and customers’ shopping experiences face little interruption but also ensures they come back to shop again.
Having good and timely responses can not only show your customers that you are listening but also your workforce too. One of the top factors which plays a part in boosting employee morale is having a good support network and good communication in your business. Therefore, to properly support your employees and also help with word of mouth for your business, it’s crucial that your business provides a good supportive network for employees.
- Improving your social media coverage
Social media is by far the easiest and most effective way to reach a wider audience of customers in the modern age and get noticed online. Providing your customer base with quality and consistent social media coverage helps to boost your authenticity and improve your brand reputation. With so many brands present on social media today, your business can quickly fall behind if it doesn’t keep social media activity a priority.
- Working with trusted suppliers
One of the main pillars in building your brand reputation is to always make sure you’re using quality brands for your products. Therefore, ensuring that you are only working with trusted suppliers in your industry can help to improve your reliability and reputation. Using or working with long-established, well-known brands can help show customers the level of quality that you strive for.
Particularly in the manufacturing and engineering sectors, it’s essential to find trusted suppliers to work with. These sectors prioritise health and safety, so when it comes to selecting products that play a role in this, it’s important to use reputable and trusted suppliers. Especially with commercial equipment like tools, machinery, and hazardous chemical storage, trustworthy suppliers are needed to ensure that the equipment you are purchasing is high-quality and safe to use.
- The value of business reviews for your brand reputation
Word of mouth is always an important factor when it comes to brand reputation, and this is never more true than when it comes to business reviews. There are now multiple avenues for your customers to leave written reviews of experiences with your business online that can never be erased. This means it is important to make sure they are as positive as possible to help increase your reputation. Even if your feedback is negative, be sure to know how to respond to customer reviews in order to show them that their feedback is valued.
Make sure to provide quality service and products to all of your customers to avoid negative reviews being left online. The value of a positive review should also not be underestimated. In an oversaturated market, your brand having a larger volume of positive reviews may be a convincing factor in directing a customer to your site.
- Acting on feedback
Whether it’s a review that a customer has left on Trustpilot or a review from a previous employee on Glassdoor, it’s important to always take on board any feedback that has been given about your business. Managers which act on customer feedback can help figure out how to improve services for the future. On the other hand, closely analysing employee feedback and exit interviews can help human resources to improve on their employee management.
Not all feedback can be consistently positive, and it is important to act upon this feedback and make changes swiftly to maintain and improve your brand’s reputation. Make sure to be aware of feedback from all avenues of your business, this includes comments on social media. Ensure that your customers or employees are aware that their feedback is being taken on board and that your business will be making appropriate changes accordingly. In turn, when receiving positive feedback make sure to be aware of what is working well for your brand to assist in increasing your business’s reputation.