Building your brand requires consistent effort. It doesn’t stop when you’ve created a logo and built a website. It doesn’t stop when you’ve perfected your tagline. It doesn’t stop when you’ve released your first advertisement. It is an ongoing process as it needs nurturing.
The thing about branding is that it takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only a single post or a short statement to destroy it. If you don’t want to kill your brand’s reputation, it’s best that you try and avoid the following things.
- 1. Breaking a brand’s promise
Gallup reports that a brand promise is what a company stands for. It’s your statement about what your brand has to offer. It’s what makes you different from your competitors. However, if you fail to deliver this promise, then you most likely will not be able to gain customers. On the other hand, once you’ve shown that you can deliver what you said you would deliver, make sure that you will not cheat your customers by changing it suddenly. Remember that trust is the foundation for creating deeper engagement with your customers.
- Violating values important to your loyal customers
Forbes makes a good example of this violation in the image of Paula Deen, the once famous celebrity chef known for her Southern recipes. That’s her personal brand. However, when she was caught speaking the N-word, lots of her loyal followers were reminded of the painful past. Deen lost her “positive southern living” brand image, and she failed to recover from her fall.
- Overselling products
You might or might not know Juicy Couture. However, back in the early 2000s, it’s the biggest brand among the youth. It’s hard not to spot one person wearing their tracksuit. But where are they now? They have lost their shoppers’ interest. Experts say that one reason for this is that in their effort to increase revenue, they had oversold their brand and their fanbase was soon overwhelmed.
- Failing to engage followers
We now have social media platforms. You need to be able to use them to your advantage. You no longer have any reason for not being able to engage more with your followers. Failure to respond to your customer’s concerns will only make them feel like you are not listening to them.
- Being inactive
When you don’t give updates about your brand regularly, customers will soon come to forget it. So, be sure to let them know your presence. How? Be present in the digital world. Make sure that you have accounts on all the biggest social media platforms. Build your own website. Organize events. Release timely advertisements. Ask help from a branding agency San Francisco if you have to. Just do things that will keep your loyal customers interested in your brand.
- Lacking innovation
Most brands that are continually losing their value like Aeropostale, Coach, and Abercrombie all share the same problem– they fail to update their product listing. What they offered when they first started is still what they offer now. But competition is getting tougher. If they don’t offer something new, they will most probably find themselves in the same situation as Nokia, which lost due to its inability to compete with smartphone brands like Apple.
Final Thoughts
The current market is demanding. There are a lot of things you have to maintain and do in order to stay on top of the competition. Thus, if you are serious about making your brand a success, you need to have dedication.
