Step-by-Step Guide:
How to Create a Strong and Positive Image of Your Brand
One of the most crucial elements in the success of a business is a positive brand image. Your reputation and bottom line are going to take a hint if there is even the slightest hint of bad press. It should be a priority of every business to create a positive image of their respective brand because Google is watching every move you make and will rank you accordingly in search results. This affects the traffic coming to your website, and eventually your sales.
Whether you are building your brand’s reputation from scratch or want to do some 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 need to 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 these benefits and then target them accordingly. You should also check out your competition to see what market they are targeting. You need to come up with unique selling propositions for your target market and then communicate with your clientele.
Step 2:
Come Up With 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 you establish your identity, you can start developing the right messaging to reach out to your market.
Step 3:
Establish an Online Presence
Every business needs to have a website and you need to ensure that it is fast, professional, and easy-to-use because it is the first touch point. Thus, you want your customers to get your message quickly and keep bounce rates low.
This means that the website has to have quick-loading pages, a modern design as well as a strong user-experience and interface. The bounce rates will be high if the website is too difficult to navigate or does not have the right information. Your audience can become frustrated and lose interest, which means you will lose opportunities.
A business should also follow the same rules for other areas of online presence, like personal branding sites, social media, and blog. The tone, feel, look and the message on all online platforms should be consistent.
Step 4:
Analyze Search Engine Results
Every business should stay on top of what customers as well as employees are saying about the brand. Are there any positive, or negative reviews? How does your page rank on websites like Tripadvisor, Glassdoor and Trustpilot? It is also a must to keep an eye out on media and press and be sure to share any positive mentions on your own media channels. If there are any negative mentions, you will need to work to counteract them.
You can get most of this insight through a simple search of your business on Google. There are a horde of free tools available, which can be used for monitoring your business’s search engine results.
Step 5:
Reach Out to Your Community
You are spending your resources and time on understanding your customers, so it is sensible for you to interact with them directly as well. Make sure that you respond to all comments on social media, whether they are positive or negative. The same is true for review sites and other channels. You can set up a feedback form on your website to know what your clients think of your business and your offerings. Do respond to what your customers say, so they will know that you value their feedback. Use the feedback to make improvements.
Step 6:
Come Up With Good Content
If you want to draw the attention of your customers and retain it, then you need to have a consistent stream of useful and valuable content. You need to create infographics, blog posts, thought-leadership posts, how-to-guides, and whitepapers and distribute them to the audience. This gives the message that the goal of the business is to provide its clients value, and this is something you need to accomplish for creating a positive brand image.
Even though coming up with good content takes time, but it pays off. Moreover, you can repurpose this content and it will enhance your PR and digital marketing efforts.
Step 7:
Do Not Forget About SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help in boosting the quantity as well as quality of the traffic coming to your website, which gives your website rankings a boost in search engine results. Featuring on the first page of the search results of potential customers can often be the difference between a thriving and failing business.
You can leverage SEO by ranking well for phrases and keywords that your target market is likely to use for search purposes. This can be a challenge because Google and other search engines continuously change their algorithms. But you can hire an expert for this purpose.
Step 8:
Prioritize Customer Support
If you want a strong and positive brand image in the long run, then you need to prioritize offering quality customer support at every step of their journey. Every business needs to be equipped with the channels and tools necessary for serving its clients in an efficient and prompt manner. There are a variety of tools that companies can use for addressing the needs of their customers, such as live chat services, help desk software and AI-powered chatbots.
Step 9:
Properly Address Any Crises
A business can lose about 22% of potential clients due to negative press. This could be an attack from a competitor, unfavorable coverage, or even a negative online review. All your efforts of creating a positive brand image will be wiped out instantly because it will turn negative. Therefore, you need to be calm and proactive when you are facing such a crisis.
If there is a mistake, you need to apologize, hold yourself accountable and maintain consistent communication to present a strong brand image. You can also use professionals for helping you recover from a PR crisis.
Follow these steps and you will be able to create a positive, powerful, and strong brand image in this competitive market.
