Brand Reputation 101: A Guide to Managing Public Perception

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of a brand reputation strategy, including why it’s important, how to build one and how to protect it in the face of a PR crisis.

The term “brand reputation” refers to the collective perception and sentiment of the public as it relates to your personal or professional brand. The public includes consumers, employees and stakeholders, as all of these people (and more) can decide if you have a positive brand reputation or a poor brand reputation.

Your brand identity encompasses the many different associations, experiences and opinions that people have about your brand. These elements are influenced by your or your company’s actions, communications, products and services, including:

• Crisis response
• Customer service
• Marketing strategies
• Product quality
• Review management
• Social responsibility

With a strong brand reputation, you’ll improve consumer trust and customer loyalty, and you’ll likely enjoy growth and business success.

With a negative brand reputation, though, you could lose your credibility, ruin relationships with partners and customers, and watch your business suffer from lower sales.

We can help you create a positive online reputation, even if you’re starting from zero or rebounding from reputational damage. Call us at 941-259-4554 for more information.

The Importance of Having a Positive Brand Image

Developing a strong brand identity and a favorable brand reputation is important for your personal or business success. Here’s why:

Build Trust and Credibility

When you have a positive brand reputation that demonstrates stability and profitability, customers, partners and stakeholders are more likely to trust you and your decisions. This is necessary for maintaining long-term relationships with business partners and for developing customer loyalty from your target audience.

Gain Repeat Business

When customers view your brand positively, they’re more likely to return over and over. They’ll also spread the word and tell their friends and family about your products or services. Customer loyalty means consistent sales for your business and a higher customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is an important metric for estimating how much a customer will contribute to your business over time.

Attract New Customers

Your positive brand reputation is likely to generate word-of-mouth marketing and positive reviews online. These types of social proof are powerful ways to draw new customers to your company. And hopefully, those new customers will turn into repeat customers in the near future.

Get a Competitive Advantage

When it comes to standing out from your competitors, your business success often depends on having a strong brand reputation. From showing how your brand values connect with your audience to sharing stories from loyal customers, there are a lot of ways to harness a positive reputation in order to compete in your market.

Charge More for Your Products or Services

When you have a good brand reputation, you can charge more for your products or services because consumers will perceive them as having more value than the competition. According to Trustpilot’s report The Value of a Trustworthy Brand Reputation, customers will pay more for the same item from a company they’re unfamiliar with versus one that’s had a recent scandal or a negative reputation.

Improve Employee Morale

Employees love to work for companies with strong brand values because it allows them to take pride in their work and enjoy being part of the team. Glassdoor even found that 86% of job candidates read company reviews before applying, which means having a good brand reputation could help you with recruiting excellent talent, too.

Rebound Faster From a PR Crisis

A strong brand reputation makes it easier for companies to bounce back from PR crises. One reason is that damage control is likely part of your brand reputation strategy. Another reason is that the public is quicker to forgive a company with a demonstrated history of having a good brand reputation.

Our clients come to us when they need to build or repair their online reputation and take control of their digital presence. Call us at 941-259-4554 to learn more.

How To Build a Good Brand Reputation

You know that having a strong brand reputation is necessary to gain trust, improve customer loyalty and compete in your market. But what does it take to enhance brand reputation?

There are a number of steps you can take to improve your brand’s reputation. Let’s go over some of the main ones.

Create High-Quality Content

Well-crafted online content, including articles, blogs, social media posts, and videos, showcase your brand’s authority, expertise and values. Every time you create a piece of content, you have a chance to communicate your brand mission, perspective and priorities — and you can encourage satisfied customers to take whatever next step you want them to take, like leaving an online review or sharing their experience on social media.

Stay Consistent Across Your Channels

When it comes to your digital platforms — no matter how many or how few you’ve decided to use — stay consistent in your messaging. The customer experience you deliver and the values you express should be in harmony across all of the digital channels you use for your brand.

Additionally, if you’re going to utilize an online platform, use it regularly instead of letting it go stagnant. Having an online profile that’s not being used can be worse than not having a presence on that platform at all.

Provide Stellar Customer Service

When you provide great customer service, your interactions forge memorable relationships with consumers. Going above and beyond to address needs, solve problems, and personalize the customer experience should be part of your brand reputation strategy. Chances are you’ll notice that this leads to more reviews, word-of-mouth marketing, loyal customers and increased sales.

Encourage Positive Feedback

Whenever you get an online review, testimonial or social media post from a customer, this increases social proof, which is a signal to others that they should trust your brand. By asking satisfied customers for reviews or encouraging social followers to share what their lives are like with your products or services, you can attract new customers and engage with current ones.

Partner With Brand Ambassadors and Influencers

Influencers have already built credibility and trust with their audience, and you can quickly grow authority in your own brand by teaming up with them. The best influencers for your business are the ones who will act as brand ambassadors and authentically show how your products or services benefit them. Make sure to select influencers who share your audience’s demographics and who are trusted by their followers.

Protecting Your Online Presence With Brand Reputation Management

There are several brand reputation management strategies for protecting your online image or repairing a damaged brand reputation. Here are some of the primary ones to know about.

Monitor Your Online Presence

There are a number of tools and strategies for tracking mentions of your brand online, such as Google Alerts and more advanced social listening software. By getting an alert whenever your brand is mentioned online, you can stay on top of reviews, media coverage and social commentary.

While you can take this on yourself, it’s often more effective to outsource brand monitoring to an online reputation management (ORM) company. They’ll have the experience and tools necessary to keep an eye on your brand around the clock so you can focus on the aspects of your business that you truly enjoy.

Manage Negative Reviews

Every business will receive a negative review now and then, but it’s how you deal with it that matters most to your audience. Here are a few tips for professionally dealing with negative feedback:

• Respond as quickly as possible. According to BrightLocal’s 2024 Local Consumer Review Survey: Trends, Behaviors, and Platforms Explored, most consumers expect a response to their review within 2 to 3 days and no longer than a week, though ASAP is always best.
• Acknowledge their experience and apologize for it. You don’t need to agree with what they say in order to take responsibility and show empathy.
• Move the conversation offline. While you want the public to see that you’ve effectively handled a problem, it’s best to finish the conversation in private to offer a personalized solution and avoid too much back-and-forth.
• Offer a solution. At the end of the conversation with the unhappy customer, it’s important that they have some sort of solution, even if it’s what they initially requested.

If you’re able to effectively manage negative reviews, you’ll reduce their impact and save the brand-customer relationship.

Be Prepared for a Crisis

There isn’t a brand that’s safe from a potential crisis, and knowing what you’ll do ahead of time is key to rebounding as fast as possible. Common steps that companies take include the following:

• Acknowledge the issue. By publicly taking responsibility for whatever happened, the public will see that you’re facing the situation head-on.
• Communicate clearly and often. Employees, customers and stakeholders don’t want to be kept in the dark. Even if you have to regularly update them that there’s nothing new to report, keep the lines of communication open.
• Analyze what went wrong. Internally, analyze the situation to determine what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening in the future.

InternetReputation.com provides the information and services you need to protect your digital presence. Get started with a free online reputation analysis by calling 941-259-4554 today.

5 Tips for Recovering From a Damaged Online Reputation

The worst has happened and your online reputation is damaged. What should you do next? Here are five steps to take to get back on your feet.

1. Assess the Damage

Evaluate how severely your brand has been damaged. Consider the long-term impact so you can make a plan to fix the problem now and down the road.

2. Apologize to Begin Rebuilding Trust

Even if the PR crisis is in the past, it’s important to offer a final acknowledgment of the situation — and additional acknowledgments, if appropriate — to show the public that you consider what happened to be serious. You can only rebuild trust if you accept what happened in the past.

Instead of making excuses or shifting the blame, take total responsibility for the problem, even if internally, you and your team know there are other factors that contributed to it.

3. Use Content and Collaboration To Change the Narrative

It’s time to start putting positive content out there to influence the online narrative, media coverage and search results. Create neutral and positive content that will rank highly on the first search engine results page (SERP), collaborate with influential people in your industry, and communicate authentically with customers.

4. Influence Your Google Presence With SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) tactics can push down negative content so it’s so low in Google results it’s never found. According to Backlinko’s organic CTR analysis, most users don’t go past the first SERP — less than 1% were found to click on a result on the 2nd page.

At the same time, you can use SEO to improve the ranking of the positive content you want users to find when they search for your name online.

5. Develop a Long-Term Strategy

While open communication and content creation will help in the short term, you also need a long-term strategy for rebuilding your reputation. Highlighting customer success stories, regularly showcasing your brand values through community involvement, and making sure to follow through on promises can keep your brand reputation on an upward swing.

Final Thoughts About Your Brand Reputation

At InternetReputation.com, we provide online reputation management information to individuals and businesses who want to create, grow or repair their digital presence. Whether you’re prioritizing your personal or professional online reputation, our advice, services and team of experts can help.

We offer a range of ORM services, including content removal, online review management, and reputation repair following a PR crisis. Our five-step process includes analysis, web property development, content creation, publishing and promotion.

Do you need to speak with an expert about reputation monitoring, management or repair? Get in touch with us by calling 941-259-4554 today. You can finally develop the brand reputation you deserve.