What Is a Brand Image and How Does Your Brand Impact Your Company?

Brand Image on laptop office space creating a better strategy
What is a brand image? Your brand is how customers recognize your company and your products. Here’s how your brand impacts your business.

A positive brand image is vital to not disappearing in the sea of over 30.2 million small businesses in America.

A company brand image helps inform potential customers whether or not they want to do business with you. When you’re competing with a multitude of other businesses that offer the same services, you need a positive brand image to help set you apart.

It doesn’t matter what your industry specialization is. Brand image advertising is always vital in the success of a business.

A positive brand image will earn you customers. A negative one will lose you customers and worse, possibly lead to the failure of your business.

In this article, we’ll answer the question of, “what is a brand image?” and much more.

What Is a Brand Image?

Brand image is the manner in which people view your company or product. It’s the reputation that precedes your business. Your brand image determines how you’re perceived in the marketplace.

A positive brand image builds trust with your customers. It’s a reflection of how customers feel about your service or product.

Every action taken by your business or employees impacts your brand image.

What Happens If You Have a Bad Business Reputation?

A negative brand image can lead to the failure of a business. Over 50% of businesses fail after being open for five years. In some of these instances, it’s because their business reputation wasn’t properly handled.

Many factors can combine to cause a business to fail.

The most preventable cause is brand image. This is why you should always invest in the management of your brand’s image. Customers should be dealt with respectfully, as they are the key component in ensuring the survivability of your business.

Strive to Create a Positive Brand Image

If you want to have a positive brand image, you must engage in proactive measures.

One way to ensure you build up a positive brand image is to interact with customers respectfully. If your customer service is on par with societal expectations, you’ll attract more buyers.

Even if you are dealing with an unreasonable customer or negative reviews, the response from the business should never attack the customer. No reply is better than a negative reply.

Also, make sure that the product or service you sell is always of the highest quality. Once your business develops a well-known reputation for quality, you’ll attract and retain more customers. Consistency is a vital aspect of any successful business venture.

Protect Your Business

There exist many different forms of threat to your business. Most of them you can control though.

No matter the business, every single one has reputational risk. Reputational risk means the measurable possibility that your business will encounter negative attention.

Being aware of your reputational risk is the first step to addressing it. There are several factors that can lessen your risk.

Controlling how your business operates is a vital component in preventing reputational risk. If you’re transparent in the dealings of your company, this will help you avoid it.

You should always be honest with your customers and strive to exceed their expectations. By doing this, you build up a cushion that can help to absorb any reputational damage you may encounter. By always trying to reaffirm the trust and expectations of your customers, you will go a long way in preventing many disasters.

Then there’s the internet to contend with.

A company that ignores the internet does so at the risk of its own reputation. This is why many businesses employ an outside marketing team that specializes in monitoring brand image online.

Many of these marketing agencies claim to have secrets that will catapult you to the top. Do not fall for extravagant claims. Instead, search for those with a record of success in building up positive brand images for various companies.

Reviews Are More Important Now Than Ever

For customers, reviews are a huge determining factor for whether they want to deal with your business.

One of the very first things most customers do before purchasing a product or service is to look at online reviews. This directly affects their decision. If there are good reviews, a customer will then proceed to the next step of shopping around at your business.

If and when your business collects bad reviews (it happens to everyone no matter what!), how your company engages with those reviews will be reflected in either your success or failure.

If a business loses the trust of its valued customers, it can’t retain or attract new business. Without those new customers, profits will plunge. This in turn soon leads to a death spiral that’s difficult to escape from.

If you fail to address growing dissatisfaction with your business’ practice or products by being negligent in your response to negative reviews, failure will surely follow.

Invest in Your Brand Image

While there’s no escaping risk, there are numerous factors within the realm of your control.

By managing reputational risk and understanding how your brand image impacts your business, you are already well on the way to improving the success of your business.

So, what is a brand image? It’s the accumulation of factors such as the quality of your service or product, how customers perceive you, and how you relate to your customers.

With the advent of the internet, doing nothing with your brand image is a surefire way to ensure the doom of your business. The online marketplace is a booming industry that is ever-evolving and fast-paced. You can’t afford to wait around for something bad to happen.

Steps must be taken now to build up your positive brand image for the day negative publicity finds you. Remember, you don’t have to do this alone. There are businesses out there that specialize in brand image and handling business reputation.

At REFUGE Marketing & Consulting, we have a team of specialists ready to help your business with its brand image. Let us be your refuge in the marketing storm. We handle the marketing and brand image of your company so that you can focus on running your business. Contact us today to protect the future of your business reputation.

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Tiffany

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