Reputation Maintenance what You need to know
As the subject of personal and corporate branding becomes increasing popular, it has become imperative that key areas of brand sustainability be looked into with a view to guiding entrepreneurs and practitioners alike on what is important. Beyond just putting up an image on the media space. Branding requires that you carefully and consciously chose how you want to be known and perceived by your target audience. But even more important is how you intend to maintain the image you have made of yourself.
The business of branding is the business of reputation, it is basically how your audience views you and connect with whatever it is you are offering. Therefore, reputation maintenance is a major part of every brand strategy, but what then is reputation maintenance?
According to Wikipedia, the reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behaviour or performance. By social evaluation, it means that the evaluation is carried out by a community, agents or users of the brand. It is also clear that the evaluation is based on a set of known criteria which are within the reach and control of the brand.
Reputation maintenance is the process of identifying these criteria and tweaking them in a way to checks the audience perception of the brand and as well improve critical factors that affect their perception such that the good reputation is sustained and improved while selectively doing away the elements that constitute the bad reputation. Let us identify some of these criteria.
CRITERIA FOR BRAND REPUTATION EVALUATION
The criteria for measuring brand reputation differs across industries. This is because brand expectations vary from one industry to another. It means that the standards that may be employed for reputation evaluation in the entertainment industry might not exactly work for the agricultural or education industry. However, some criteria have been found to work across all industries and could be very good leverage for any brand, irrespective of the niches. These criteria include;
Behaviour: This refers to how you apply your ethical strategies in your interactions with your audience or customers. A brand behaviour is judged at every interaction with everything that represents the brand. From people to channels and even her processes.
Recently, I wanted to change one of the electronic devices I used. So, I contacted someone I know has an understanding of the market within our region to get advice.
He mentioned three brands who according to him are reliable names in the sales of the kind of device I had wanted, but then he went further to explain something about one of these brands. Something I found quite worrisome for any brand to be known for.
His explanations suggest that the said brand though reliable in delivering quality and original products, but lacks good customer Relations. He noted that once you pay, “Its end of discussion “ with them. Nobody will listen to you, should you have any complaint or require any further assistance after purchase.
So, right there, I evaluated the brand reputation and made my decisions about the brand. Interestingly, my decision was to not consider the brand as regards my choice of who to buy from, and the decision was reached without any personal interaction with the brand.
Most of our reputation evaluation of brands are based on information gotten from third parties that we trust or from those that have had a first-hand brand moment interactions with these brands.
The lesson here is that most people already evaluated your character before connecting with your brand and every brand moment should be your opportunity to reinforce the positive outcomes of their evaluation and renegotiate and possibly correct the negatives.
Quality: Quality is the result when a brand performance is measured against consumer expectations. Depending on what performance means for a particular brand, it must be sure to consistently meet and exceed the present expectations, and future anticipations of her consumers and potential customers.
Quality progression for any brand should be from the point where it basically meets needs, become easy to use and then to create an enjoyable experience for the consumers. It becomes enjoyable when it consistently creates an additive experience that makes the brand comes to mind whenever there is a need for consumers. In evaluating brand quality, the consumers will usually check the brand ease of use, performance, durability and ease of maintenance.
Competence: A brand is said to be competent when she is perceived to have the ability to meet and exceed consumer expectations.
It also requires that the brand is able to see and interpret consumers’ perceived needs before it becomes obvious to them. It is a consistent show of competitiveness, resourcefulness, intelligence, skill and innovations.
This brand always seeks better ways of delivering value to stakeholders within the ecosystem. Competence is often what place a brand on the leaders’ board and its evaluations are usually linked to the human resource capital within the brand value chain.
Consistency: Consistency means living out your brand promise in a creative, productive and progressive manner. It proves the effectiveness of your brand strategies. It also shows that the brand has within her ecosystem, the right kind of resource.
Consistency is capital. It translates to experience and experience is a valuable asset when it comes to negotiations and bidding. Brands love to tell how long they have successfully stayed in business because it has a way of affecting their consumers’ biases.
The reason your consumers, customers and partners will ask for your financials and evidence of similar job done is simply to evaluate your reputation.
In maintaining your reputation as a brand, whether corporate or personal, you must play around and master these critical criteria which include behaviour, quality, competence and consistency.
The object of Reputation Maintenance
why is it important to perpetually maintain your reputation? It is because credibility is earned through sustained reputation maintenance. Trust does not fall from the sky neither is it gifted to anyone.
If your brand must be seen as safe to do business to with, you must consistently show up strong and credible.
Originally published at https://esosa.substack.com.
