More importantly, what is your role in it? It’s easy to be in the driver’s seat and perceive the industry around you from your unique angle. But “reputation” doesn’t hinge on your goals, your obstacles to growth, and your ambitions alone.
In many cases, it comes down to the public opinion of your field. And if you don’t key into these thoughts and conversations, you could miss vital marketing opportunities.
Ask people what immediately comes to mind when they imagine your industry and you’ll start to get the picture. You might not like what you hear. Especially as an insider, the negative drawbacks of your industry might not be on your radar.
But it’d be a mistake to say this is a bad thing.
This is where you capitalize and differentiate yourself from the pack.
Reputation Marketing Techniques – Make Your Value Tangible
As Harvard Business Review states, positive reputations attract better people. Relationships and people define the X-factor in business, and the more value you can show on the surface, the more people are willing to pay a premium for your outstanding service.
But you need to break through the mold, your industry set, and redefine your place.
Some of this boils down to loyalty. A well-performing company will continue to attract beneficiaries, whether investors, customers, or other types of stakeholders.
But what if your business relies on intangibles like intellectual capital, brand equity, and more? In these cases, you’re more likely to suffer damage from shifting public opinions than a business rooted in sales and other tangible assets.
Employ Risk Management
If you struggle to manage your brand’s reputation, you’re not alone. Many CEOs struggle to drive the image of their brand forward in meaningful ways, let alone combat overt reputation risks effectively. Often, a CEO will say they’ll wait until the moment a threat is on their doorstep to react. But by then, it’s too late to mitigate any damage.
Risk management, as opposed to crisis management mentioned above, is proactive. This gives you a protocol, a framework to work from, putting you ahead of the ball. Working with your team to quantify and manipulate risks not only keeps you safe from disaster, but it keeps you in the driver’s seat – you can start predicting risks ahead of time and shaping the reputation you want for your brand, even if it contradicts industry standards.
In fact, that contradiction will make you stand out and increase your visibility.
The Reputation-Reality Gap – Elon Musk Gets This!
Reputation is annoying for many practical-minded business owners to deal with. It’s a matter of public discourse and perception, which can extend from customers all the way to potential investors seeing your work and impact for the first time in their everyday lives.
But let’s get this straight: reputation does not equal your company’s output. To really understand perception, you’ll have to put some of your expertise to the side and consider an outside perspective.
In some cases, companies have more positive reputations than the reality of their financial success and growth. Still, while these companies might not have to work for their reputation upfront, their financials will catch up to them – and perception – eventually if they don’t get their act together.
A great example of perception driving markets is unfolding right before our eyes. Tech giant Elon Musk has stirred things up across all industries he’s involved in, and just over the past two years, we can see the tangible results of his reputation erratically shifting stock prices for Tesla. Whether you think his choices have had positive or negative impacts, there’s no question that the reputation he and his businesses create take on a life much greater than their individual impacts on society.
Manage Risk Now to Solidify a Path Forward
Still, your brand’s reputation won’t always be as clearly formed as one that finds itself in the spotlight of the greater public. In some ways, this is good. It gives you a clean slate, and no one move you make will immortalize your brand’s reputation. But this means instead you need to identify and measure how people assess your reputation.
Consider context, objective data, and even quantitative values – where able –, such as the number of people liking and interacting with your business across social media sites. Next, ask why your reputation arrived at this place. Was it an accident that led to some success? If so, you need to reverse-engineer your status and dig at how you got there. Otherwise, you could just as easily lose your reputation to the forces that brought you here.
Establishing a positive reputation requires getting your fingers dirty. You’re going to want to monitor changing beliefs and expectations, and not just about your brand. Rely on your contacts. Ask people what makes them driven to invest in your product, what would have to happen to drastically push them in the opposite direction?
While reputation-mining is a top-down process, you want to dedicate one person or team to the job, as forging your role in the marketplace might be your toughest, and most defining battle yet. Luckily, you might have a lot of these resources in place, ready to go when you organize them for brand risk management.
Still, have questions about how to manage your reputation? The answers are not always set in stone.
Reach out to Foresight CFO today to learn more about how your business could use its resources to clean up your image and set the stage for years of growth.
Stuck in an industry with declining public trust? Even better. Let’s redefine the industry – starting with you. Schedule a 25-minute Discovery Consultation with me
