Your reputation is working harder than you think
Mention reputation management and it won’t be long until somebody starts talking about crisis communications.
Something’s gone wrong, the press is calling, social communities are kicking off and someone needs to work out what we’re going to say and do - quickly!
Of course, that’s one part of reputation management, and arguably the more exciting version (yes, even on a Friday night!)
But it’s not the whole picture of reputation. Your reputation exists WAAAY before something goes wrong, and this is what can help you if it does.
It’s shaped in every interaction with your customer, every third party review, every social comment, employee and vendor experience.
And whether we like it or not, what people think of our business will always have a commercial impact.
What is brand reputation?
Strip away the jargon and brand reputation is essentially what people believe about your business based everything they’ve seen, heard and experienced.
The tough pill to swallow is that it’s difficult to own the outcome of someone’s opinion. You can spend years on brand positioning, investing heavily in marketing and carefully choosing everything you say about yourself. Ultimately, that’s what you tell people and this can be swayed by what others tell them about you.
That’s why it’s a topic to be taken seriously.
A strong reputation gives customers comfort in making that final purchase decision, it can attract them to you above your competitors as you’re essentially removing the friction and fear of making the wrong choice.
Brand reputation and commercial performance
Imagine two businesses selling broadly the same thing at broadly the same price. Happens a lot right?
One is highly recommended, it’s leadership has credible and visible opinions, it appears in positive and relevant media round ups, great reviews and supporting organisations.
The other… well, probably every bit as good, but you can’t find much evidence of everyone else saying so.
Which feels like the safer decision? That is reputation doing some heavy lifting on commercial outcomes.
It’s one of the reasons that separating brand, comms, customer experience and commercial performance rigidly just doesn’t make any sense.
They’re all working together to contribute the same overall impression of the business.
Reputation is built before you need it
This becomes obvious as soon as something goes wrong, plus the absolute worst time to start thinking about building trust is when you’re already trying to put a fire out somewhere else.
Businesses that have spent years communicating openly, building relationships and earning a strong reputation have positive signals already pointing their way if something goes wrong - making it much easier for customers to give them the benefit of the doubt. Journalists already know them, what they stand for and are much more willing to listen.
This doesn’t mean that genuine issues disappear, a good reputation strategy is not about cover up or hiding, but rather it focuses on building trust over time to create resilience.
It’s also why relationships matter so much, you can’t manufacture trust on the day you suddenly need it.
Being proactively reactive for crisis readiness
The most useful reputation conversation one is a proactive one:
What do we want to be known for?
Is that what people currently think about us?
Does their experience with us meet the expectations we’re setting?
Where are the gaps?
From here, we can map out communications gap closing strategies. That might involve public relations, thought leadership, executive profiling, social media commentary, strategic partnerships, customer case studies or simply more consistently talking about something the business already does really well.
The answer should, and does, always depend on the business. But tactically, we have to start with understanding what reputation we need and not chasing visibility for the sake of being seen, because your reputation is being shaped by what people see whether you actively manage it or not.