When you run a business, you are going to find yourself putting a lot of work into focusing on a lot of different areas. You’re going to need to make sure that you create an impressive product or service at a great price. You’re going to have to collaborate with manufacturers to produce it en mass. You need to create an order fulfilment process, a website to ensure customers can browse and view your products, a payment system so that people can order as and when they please. The list goes on. You’ll quickly find that a major element of focus will be your brand – what your customers will recognise your business by. But coming up with a bring isn’t where this area of focus will disappear into obscurity. Instead, you’re going to have to put a lot of consistent work into managing your brand and its reputation. Here’s some more information that will help you to achieve this.
Importance of Brand Image and Reputation
How customers see your brand and perceive your brand can make or break your business. A good brand image can see more customers flock to shop with you and recommend you to their family and friends. A bad brand image and reputation can see people wary to spend their money with you and warding others from your products and services too.
Customer Service
New online reputation stats have shown that one of the key factors impacting brand image and reputation is customer service. People tend to be understanding of brands making a mistake every once in a while, as long as issues are dealt with in a fast, professional and positive manner. Make sure that you have plenty of customer service assistants fully trained and ready to deal with customer queries, requests and complaints. You should also offer your customers plenty of means of contacting you, as this makes contact more accessible and preferable to them. This could include a phone line, an email address and instant chat messaging options.
Collaborations
Nowadays, many brands are collaborating with celebrities and social media influencers to promote their brand and products. You need to make sure that you really do your research before choosing anyone to collaborate with your brand. Not only do you need someone who is popular with your target demographic, but you need to make sure you check their history to ensure that they haven’t done or said anything problematic or offensive that could come up later down the line.
Staff and Supplier Treatment
People are mostly looking to buy ethical products produced in an ethical way. You need to make sure that you are an ethical employer to keep people on board with your brand. This can entail all sorts of change and policy implementation in your business. You should make sure that your staff work fair hours and are paid a fair wage. You also need to ensure that you are using ethical suppliers.
Hopefully, some of the information above will help you to manage your brand’s reputation and image too!
