Image by Megan Rexazin from Pixabay
By Henry Brown
If you want to move your small business forward, you’ll first need to improve and protect your business’s reputation. These days, reputations matter. People will make decisions on whether to use your business’s services or buy your products based on the reputation of your brand and the experiences other people have had, as well as what other people are saying. So read on now to find out how to do that.
Give something back
Giving something back to the people in your community and the customers who have stuck by you is never a bad thing. It shows people that they really are appreciated by your business, and that you’re willing to have a positive impact and do things out of an interest in the common good. You don’t want to be perceived as a company that’s simply out for profits and nothing more.
Ensure your employees represent your business in the correct way
Ensuring your employees represent your business in a positive way is important. If someone has a bad experience with your business due to the way an employee handled the interaction, they’re not going to hold it against the employee, they’ll hold it against your business as a whole. And that’s when you lose customers and your reputation takes damage.
Investigate and shut down malicious attacks
If you find that rivals are trying to sabotage your business and damage its reputation online by leaving fake reviews or spreading false rumors, you should do what you can do to take action. You could hire a private investigation company to get to the bottom of it and have the stuff taken down that’s damaging you, for example. It’s important to stay on top of these potential attacks because they do occur.
Be transparent with customers
Being transparent and open with your customers is something that’s very necessary indeed if you want to win them over and show them that you really do care about them. Try to be honest about what’s happening and what you’re trying to achieve, and when something goes wrong, don’t hesitate to be open about that too. Admitting you got something wrong is something customers can really appreciate.
Don’t make promises that can’t be kept
Finally, you should make sure that your business never makes promises to its audience that it can’t keep. It’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver than to do it the other way around. Your reputation will be damaged if you deliver below what you were originally promising your clients and customers, so don’t make that mistake. It’s a classic case of tripping yourself up and it doesn’t have to happen.
Your business’s reputation is worth far more than you realize. If your business isn’t trusted by its base of customers, they’re not going to buy from you. It really is as simple as that. So be sure to make the most of the tips above and ensure you do everything you can to enhance and protect your brand’s reputation.
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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.
