In a world where consumers connect best with people-first brands, and where opinions get polarized QUICK, your ability to instinctively facilitate brand reputation management is your most valuable asset. Your brand’s reputation is built through every customer review, social media comment, and online mention. What are people saying about your brand when you’re not in the room? Can you control the conversation? If so, how?
Brand Reputation Management (BRM) is the active process of monitoring, influencing, and controlling public perception of a company by listening to customer feedback. If you don’t currently have processes in place to manage your brand’s reputation and retain customer satisfaction, you’re behind.
In this blog, we’ll lay out how to set up an online reputation management strategy for managing your brand’s reputation and defensively protecting your image. These strategies are the same ones our experts use in the Brand Accelerator portion of our Grow service here at Big Red Jelly. By following these steps, you’ll be able to move from reactive to proactive brand reputation management strategies. Let’s dive in.
The Foundation: Proactive Strategies for Building a Positive Brand Reputation
1 – Build Your Brand’s Story and Online Reputation
Before you can control what other people are saying about your brand, it’s important that you nail down the story you’re trying to tell. Brand storytelling is a foundational element of Brand Reputation Management. Without a cohesive story, your customers will feel confused about your brand’s reputation, and will react accordingly. Customer feedback will reflect their confusion.
Take a look at where your brand started. Why does it exist? What is its brand purpose (beyond making money)? How can you emotionally connect with your customers?
Developing a clear, authentic brand narrative that connects with your audience is a crucial first step in managing your brand’s reputation. Some brands that do this well are Patagonia and Apple. Patagonia’s story focuses on environmentalism in adventure, which connects deeply with the niche of their audience. Apple’s story focuses on innovation, and providing customers with what they want before they even know they need it. So long as these brands stay consistent, audiences will trust them to continue to provide value they can benefit from, leading to great customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and the brand’s reputation will be upheld.
2 – Cultivate a Culture of Customer Experience
Once you have a cohesive brand story set in place, the next step is to focus on the quality of what your brand provides your customers, building a positive brand reputation. The best brand reputation management starts with a great product and service.
Focus on your online reputation management strategy. As you’re selling your product or service, be sure to listen to your customer feedback. What are they saying about the functionality of your product? What are they saying about the quality of your service? Actively seek and implement customer feedback to increase customer satisfaction and improve what you provide.
When the customer experience is good, and customers feel heard, your brand’s reputation will stay positive. If the customer experience starts to lack, you will see your brand’s reputation dip as a reflection of this. Customer experience management is integral to maintaining your brand’s reputation and building customer loyalty.
3 – Empower Your Employees to Become Brand Advocates
Your biggest advocates for your brand’s reputation are your employees. Customer loyalty is directly tied to employee loyalty. If the people who work for you don’t trust and believe in the brand, their attitude will quickly reflect in their work, and customers will start to see through the facade.
A formal employee experience program can amplify positive brand reputation messaging internally, which humanizes the brand’s reputation and bleeds into external communications and customer satisfaction. Don’t underestimate the power of making small internal adjustments. If your employees feel taken care of, and they love where they work, they will spread the word! The best brand reputation management strategies start internally.
Empowered employees are often the most trusted messengers. Equip them with what they need, and their behaviors will speak measures about your brand and build your brand’s reputation.
The Defense: Reactive Reputation Management Strategies for your Brand
1 – Listen Everywhere: Set Up a Robust Brand Reputation Monitoring System
Even when you’re staying proactive in managing your brand’s reputation, it’s important to constantly listen to what other people are saying about you by checking your brand mentions. Customers are likely to take to social media channels, review sites, and industry forums to talk about their experiences with your brand. Uncontrolled bad feedback can quickly spiral and cause a mess with your brand’s online reputation for your team to clean up.
To regularly check in on your brand’s online reputation, invest in simple tools for listening on social media platforms or professional services to aid in brand reputation management by helping you track brand mentions across the internet, social media platforms, and media. Have someone consistently keeping track of where your brand’s reputation stands in the public eye, and be ready to jump on any issues in brand mentions as quickly as possible.
2 – Respond with Empathy and Professionalism
When facilitating your brand reputation management strategy, when (not if) something goes wrong, and your brand’s reputation is on the line, you’ll need to have a framework set for how your team will react and respond. Before an issue arises, sit down with your team, decide how you will respond to any reputation issues, and create an action plan in case of emergency.
For example, if a customer leaves a negative online review about your brand on review sites, leaving negative feedback and damaging your brand’s reputation, respond quickly. Take the conversation offline to resolve the issue, using excellent customer service practices. Be sure to listen to the customer’s concerns with empathy, and avoid defensive language. Negative reviews can greatly impact your brand’s success.
Additionally, it’s important to respond to positive feedback with just as much care. If a customer leaves a positive review about your brand on review sites, reward the customer with praise! Thank the customer, reinforce their positive experience, and they will continue to think highly of your brand going forward, boosting your brand’s reputation. Satisfied customers stick around.
3 – Encourage and Manage Online Reviews
Generating positive reviews about your brand isn’t just a luxury anymore – it’s a necessity for brand reputation management and building a strong brand reputation. Collect as many positive reviews as you can from satisfied customers. A good practice would be to make online reviews part of your “offboarding” process, whether that be after a purchase or after a completed service. Expect every satisfied customer to leave an online review, and communicate that with them from the beginning. Don’t just hope they happen to leave an online review. They won’t.
Review management platforms online offer the means to streamline this process and easily showcase positive feedback for your brand, boosting your brand’s reputation. Our team can help you decide which platforms will be best for building a strong brand reputation within your industry and niche.
Why a DIY Brand Reputation Management Approach Isn’t Always Enough: Introducing Big Red Jelly’s “Brand Accelerator”
The Challenge of Doing It Alone:
From a high-level, low-budget perspective, it seems easy to manage your brand’s reputation on your own. However, due to a lack of time for proper brand reputation management, you’ll quickly find that your messaging is inconsistent and you’re letting things (like mentions) slip through the cracks. Managing your brand’s reputation and building a strong brand reputation means regularly monitoring multiple platforms and executing cohesive brand management strategies. Most business owners truly do not have the time it takes to give brand reputation management the attention it requires.
The Big Red Jelly Solution:
Big Red Jelly works with business owners to manage brand reputations as part of our Growth Flywheel. Our Brand Accelerator is a professional brand reputation management solution that provides a streamlined, collaborative process for making sure your brand’s reputation stays in pristine shape.
Core services include:
- Brand Campaigns & Refresh: Ensure your brand’s core message is compelling and consistent across marketing channels.
- Review Management: Handle customer reviews (with both positive and negative feedback) and testimonials professionally and consistently.
- Leadership Personal Branding: Extend your brand’s reputation through the personal brand of your key leaders.
As with our other services, our brand reputation management team strives to make managing your brand a collaborative process so that your voice remains a core part of your brand. Our clients enjoy weekly meetings with our strategists to maintain this relationship and stay ahead of conversations about their brand’s reputation.
The Brand Accelerator moves businesses from an ad-hoc, reactive state to a proactive, strategic one, allowing you to focus on core operations while your brand’s reputation is expertly managed. We help you build a truly loyal customer base.
Final Thoughts: Your Reputation is an Ongoing Investment
Brand reputation management is not a one-time fix. It is a continuous, essential business function that can greatly affect your brand’s success.
If your brand’s reputation needs help, take the first step. Whether that’s implementing some of the DIY “how-to” brand reputation management tips or by exploring a professional solution like our Grow service to help you accelerate your brand’s reputation journey.
Interested in learning more about brand reputation management? Our team provides free brand reputation management strategy sessions to get you started. Read more about our services, or meet with our team today:
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