Personal Brand

Are You Making One of These 3 Reputation-Killing Mistakes?

July 17, 2019

Reputations are earned, not meted out at random. If your business is going to have any longevity, you have to gain a reputation for being trustworthy and able to evolve as necessary. Without a comprehensive brand strategy, you could be unintentionally sabotaging your reputation in all kinds of ways, such as committing these three mistakes.

Poor Advertising

Advertising is how you communicate with your customers, but you need to make sure that you’re doing it in a constructive manner. As The Loomis Agency explains, great ad campaigns can propel your company to new levels of awareness. Bad ad campaigns can be disastrous. Some of the unwise decisions can be a tone-deaf address of political issues, an offensive message, or just a generally confusing presentation. Sometimes, these bad campaigns can give your company publicity through how poorly thought out they are, but you shouldn’t try to find success on the back of flack. It should come from actually having something customers want to buy or use. 

Mismanaging Data

So much personal information is entrusted to companies, but if that information isn’t protected properly, your reputation can be left in tatters. Merchant One says that PCI compliance can be an overwhelming and complex thing to achieve, but securing your customer’s data and letting them know they’re safe is key for business success. Consumer privacy laws need to be respected, and you need to make sure there aren’t any gaps in your security. Even if your system is 99.9% protected, that .01% that’s exposed could open the floodgates and lead to chaos. The safety of your customers’ data should never be considered optional. 

Ignoring Reviews

Not every positive review is going to be useful, and not every useful review is going to be positive. While it’s counterproductive to try to please everyone, you should note trends in your feedback. Monitor your reviews and reply to customers. Focus on the ones that actually seem to have something constructive to say. Don’t listen to the reviews that are just effusive or critical, especially not the ones that are just trying to be inflammatory. Instead, look for ones that have a good balance. They should be able to outline what you’re doing well and what could be improved.  If these mistakes haven’t yet killed your reputation or if your business doesn’t seem like it’s in any real danger, don’t think that you can just sit pretty. Being willfully ignorant of what makes a business successful won’t help. You shouldn’t only be influenced by what others think, but you should certainly be aware of their opinions, especially if the general consensus is that you’re making the wrong choices or not making choices at all. If you need help developing your brand, check out what we can do for you!

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Mike Pirtle