A positive brand image is important for the success of any business, organization, or company. The slightest of bad press can have a detrimental effect on your bottom line with search engines’ watchful eyes, especially Google’s. The search engines watch every move you make and rank you accordingly.
You must make sure that your brand is getting as much positive exposure as possible.
It doesn’t matter if you are building the online reputation of your brand from the scratch or doing some damage control after a failed campaign. You will find exactly what you need to boost your image when and where it matters the most.
Here are some steps to create or improve the positive image of your brand.
Understand Your Target Audience And Market
Your prospects are the lifeline of your brand. And if you begin with the analysis of your offering, then for each of your products or services you have to make a note that describes the benefits of them to the customers. Let’s say you are a rental car agency offering additional liability insurance. Now the benefit you offer is peace of mind while traveling. You can focus your efforts on those customers who need those benefits, such as middle-class families with children.
After this, you have to research your market. Analyzing and understanding your competitors is one of the most important things while creating a brand image. How are they targeting the customers and what is their target audience? Everything you need to know.
You can also go after a different niche to try. If this is impossible, you can find out the unique selling propositions, such as how are they communicating with the customers and what can you do to improve your communication with your prospect.
Develop A Strong Brand Identity
Before creating a positive image or even improving it, you need to have a strong brand identity. You have to evaluate what makes your brand unique, what are your unique selling points and what are the mission and core values of your brand.
Once you establish the identity of your brand, you can begin to create the appropriate message to reach the customers. You have to tailor your message that incorporates your brand’s value and give the audience a feeling of companionship.
Invest In Website
You must invest in a website for your brand that is professional, fast, and easy to use. Most of the time as the first touch point, you have to optimize your website to reduce the bounce rate and get the message to your prospects quickly and easily.
This means that your website must have a modern design with quick-loading pages, and a strong UX (user experience) and UI (user interface). If you design hard to comprehend design with difficult navigation, or slow page loading then the bounce rate will be high because it will leave the visitors’ interest and frustrate them and you will lose the opportunity.
And the same thing goes for blogs, social media, and personal brand sites. Ensure to keep the look and feel, tone, and messaging consistent.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is another way to establish a credible and authoritative brand image. You can go for several types of social marketing, such as videos, blogs, infographics, tutorials, guides, how-to, and much more. Wikipedia pages are also the newest and trendiest way to build a brand image. Marketers are using this platform to inform people about their brands and list their accomplishments to become more valuable.
Make a Wikipedia article about yourself and your brand to be visible to more audiences. It also can help you to get a high ranking in any search engine. The best part about Wikipedia is that it is a credible source and can create a trustable image of your brand among your prospect.
Analyzing The Search Engine Results
What the customers and employees are saying about your brand. Are they writing reviews and if yes are they positive or negative or is your page ranked properly on sites like Trustpilot, Glassdoor, or TripAdvisor?
You should also monitor the press and the media, so you can share the positive mentions on your own media channels, and also work to encounter the negative ones.
You don’t have to work hard for this. A simple Google search can give you a lot of insight. Although there are some free tools that can help you better monitor the performance of your company’s search results, such as Google Ads.
Communication With Your Community
If you have spent the time, effort, and resources on studying your customers, it only makes sense to interact with them. You must respond to comments (both positive and negative) on social media, review sites, and other channels your audience use to communicate. This is to show your clients that their feedback is important.
Public Relations
You have to get the key message and the company updates published in the most relevant news outlets, blogs, and industry publications. Remember that the journalist gets swamped with the company pitches day and night. So, the only way to get their attention is to produce newsworthy content that can interest them in their readership or followers.
Take time to research and follow the important journalists, reviewers, and influencers in your niche. This is the best way to follow market trends and get familiar with the content types they like to share.
