One of the most crucial elements for the success of a business is a positive brand image. Your reputation and bottom line will take a hit if there is even the slightest hint of bad press. It should be a priority for every business to create a positive image of their respective brand because Google is watching your every move and will rank you accordingly in search results. This affects the traffic coming to your website and ultimately your sales.
Whether you’re building your brand reputation from scratch or want to do damage control to create a strong and positive brand image, you can take advantage of this step-by-step guide.
Step 1:
Know your target market
There can be no business without customers. You must have a clear understanding of how your products and services can benefit your customers. Once you understand the benefit, you can figure out who requires those benefits and then target them accordingly. You should also review your competition to see what market they are targeting. You must come up with unique selling propositions for your target market and then communicate with your clientele.
Step 2:
Get a strong brand identity
You need to have a strong brand identity before you can create a positive brand image. What makes your brand different? What is your mission? After establishing your identity, you can begin to develop the right message to reach your market.
Step 3:
Establish an online presence
Every business needs a website and you need to make sure it’s fast, professional and easy to use because it’s the first point of contact. So you want your customers to get your message quickly and keep bounce rates low.
This means that the website must have fast loading pages, a modern design, as well as a solid user experience and interface. Bounce rates will be high if the website is too difficult to navigate or lacks the right information. Your audience can become frustrated and lose interest, which means you’ll miss out on opportunities.
A business should also follow the same rules for other areas of online presence, such as personal branding sites, social media, and blogs. The tone, feel, look and message of all online platforms must be consistent.
Step 4:
Analyze search engine results
Every business should be aware of what customers and employees are saying about the brand. Are there positive or negative reviews? How does your page rank on websites like Tripadvisor, Glassdoor and Trustpilot? It’s also imperative to keep an eye on the media and press and be sure to share any positive mentions on your own media channels. If there are negative mentions, you will have to work to counter them.
You can get most of this information by simply doing a Google search for your company. There are a number of free tools available that can be used to monitor your company’s search engine results.
Step 5:
Reach out to your community
You’re investing your resources and time in understanding your customers, so it makes sense that you interact directly with them as well. Be sure to respond to all comments on social media, whether positive or negative. The same goes for review sites and other channels. You can set up a feedback form on your website to find out what your customers think about your business and your offers. Respond to what your customers say, so they know you value their feedback. Use feedback to make improvements.
Step 6:
Create good content
If you want to get the attention of your customers and keep them, you need to have a consistent flow of useful and valuable content. You need to create infographics, blog posts, thought leadership posts, how-to guides and white papers and distribute them to the public. This gives the message that the company’s goal is to provide value to its customers, and this is something that must be achieved in order to create a positive brand image.
Although creating good content takes time, but it is worth it. Plus, you can reuse this content and it will enhance your PR and digital marketing efforts.
Step 7:
Don’t forget SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help increase the quantity and quality of traffic coming to your website, which provides an increase in your website’s ranking in search engine results. Appearing on the first page of search results for potential customers can often be the difference between a thriving business and failure.
You can take advantage of SEO by ranking well for phrases and keywords that your target market is likely to use for search purposes. This can be challenging because Google and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms. But you can hire an expert for this purpose.
Step 8:
Prioritize customer service
If you want a strong and positive brand image in the long run, you need to prioritize providing quality customer support at every step of their journey. Every company must be equipped with the necessary channels and tools to serve its customers efficiently and quickly. There are a variety of tools that businesses can use to serve their customers’ needs, including live chat services, help desk software, and AI-based chatbots.
Step 9:
Handle any crisis properly
A business can lose about 22% of potential customers due to negative press. It could be an attack from a competitor, unfavorable coverage, or even a negative online review. All your efforts to create a positive brand image will be instantly erased because it will become negative. So, you need to be calm and proactive when facing this crisis.
If there is a mistake, you need to apologize, take responsibility and maintain consistent communication to present a strong brand image. You can also use professionals to help you recover from a PR crisis.
Follow these steps and you can create a positive, powerful and strong brand image in this competitive market.
