Jan 14, 2025
13 Best Brand Reputation Protection Strategies for Lasting Success
The internet has created a double-edged sword for brand reputation protection. On the one hand, it has given businesses a way to connect and engage with customers like never before. On the other hand, it has created a public forum where customers can air their grievances for everyone to see. And when it comes to complaints, people trust strangers online more than they do the businesses themselves. So, if you don’t manage your brand’s reputation, you could wake up one day to find that your customers have all vanished and your sales and profits have plummeted. This article will offer valuable insights to help you achieve your goals, like implementing effective brand protection strategies to protect your brand’s reputation and ensuring long-term success, customer trust, and business growth.
One of the most effective ways to protect your brand’s reputation is to monitor the online marketplace for any copycat products or counterfeit goods that could harm your business. Bustem’s copycat detection tool can help you identify these threats quickly so that you can take action, protecting your customers and your brand’s reputation.
Table of Contents
What is Brand Reputation and Why It's Important
Brand reputation is the perception of a brand based on the experiences and opinions of:
Customers
Stakeholders
The public
It reflects how a company is viewed regarding:
Trustworthiness
Quality
Ethical standards
A strong brand reputation can lead to customer loyalty, competitive advantage, and growth, while a damaged reputation can harm sales and erode trust.
Reputational Risks to Keep Your Eye On
Elizabeth Arden coined the phrase, “Repetition makes reputation, and reputation makes customers,” I believe she was entirely right. When consumers make a conscious (or unconscious) choice between brands, for example, they are affected by a whole nexus of influences, broadly summarized as “reputation.” Someone buying a car may choose a manufacturer with a record of reliability. A perfume buyer might opt for a brand with an image redolent of luxury and elegance. A person looking to purchase electronic devices may decide based on an image of stylish design and efficient functionality.
Building and Protecting Your Brand Reputation for Long-Term Success
We can all think of examples: Apple has traded on the looks and youth appeal of its goods for decades; Chanel has a hard-wired reputation as the epitome of Gallic chic, and Audi’s ubiquitous “Vorsprung durch Technik” slogan has served the Ingolstadt automaker’s marketing well for nearly 40 years. Bluntly, reputation is a major contributor to sales and profit. According to the World Economic Forum, a quarter of a company’s market value can be directly related to its reputation, and 87% of executives think that reputational challenges are more important than other strategic risks. That’s not something you can ignore.
Leveraging Online Reviews to Build Trust and Enhance Reputation
The importance of reputation is growing, too. Online reviews are now a key part of a brand’s business model. Nearly 40% of consumers have come to distrust traditional advertising—think about that for a moment and consider how much is still spent in corporate marketing departments—but most will take online peer reviews in good faith as infinitely more reliable, authentic, and "real."
Building Trust with Social Awareness and Sustainability in Branding
Customers increasingly seek social awareness in the brands they purchase or the companies from which they obtain services. Millennials are strongly characterized in this way. For example, many (significantly younger) consumers are highly conscious of sustainability and ecological concerns. The use of palm oil in confectionery is now a toxic association, as Nestlé discovered when Greenpeace parodied an ad for Kit Kats. BP is now promoting a low-carbon future to offset the optics of its trade in fossil fuels, and more recently, the scale of the problem of nonrecycled plastics has dominated the news agenda. To attract the lucrative younger demographic and groom them as lasting customers, brands must present a green face to the world.
Reframing Corporate Strategy: Purpose, Values, and Reputation Beyond Profit
This represents a broader issue of simply “bad publicity” or “good publicity.” The ICCO’s report reveals that the dynamism in corporate strategy is now coming from purpose.
What is a company for?
What are its values?
The plain answer of profit is no longer enough. Indeed, it looks somewhat outdated. Uber, for example, has had a huge effect on the urban landscape in the last 10 years, genuinely revolutionizing how we travel. Still, it is a loss-making enterprise, and when it launched its IPO earlier this year, it admitted that it might never be profitable.
Embracing Purpose-Driven Leadership: The Path to Lasting Brand Reputation and Growth
Purpose seems to be the defining characteristic of the future of business. In his annual letter to shareholders this April, the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon talked not about the cold figures of the bottom line but of the bank taking “advocacy to the next level” and devoting its energies to causes like education, immigration, and tax reform. The Ford Motor Company, inspired by Henry’s vision in the early 1900s, has cast itself as a leading force in changing how the world moves, plowing money into autonomous driving technology and developing digital tools. Purpose first, bolstered by reputation; then profit.
Safeguarding Your Brand Reputation: Building a Foundation of Trust and Integrity
Imagine a majestic pyramid—glorious to behold—that would crumble before your eyes if you pull back even a single cornerstone from its foundation. Brand reputation, built painstakingly over years of focused effort, can be brought down in minutes if left unguarded. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” — Warren Buffet.
Examples of Reputational Risks
To understand the complexity of reputation management, let’s look at some real-world reputational risks faced by major brands:
Defective Products
Knight Capital’s $440 million software error is a stark reminder of the havoc a single technical failure can cause. The incident resulted in massive financial losses and severely impacted the firm’s credibility.
Discriminatory Marketing and other Marketing “faux-pas”
Failing to “read the room” when creating marketing content has led brands to face social media backlash, damaging their reputation almost overnight.
Data Noncompliance and Breaches
High-profile companies like Apple, Google, Meta, and Uber have all faced public scrutiny over data breaches and privacy violations, resulting in stakeholders losing trust.
Proactive Reputation Management: Minimizing Brand Risks and Enhancing Trust
These incidents underscore the critical importance of proactively managing reputational risk to prevent and mitigate brand-damaging events.
Related Reading
13 Best Brand Reputation Protection Strategies
1. Utilize Reputation Monitoring Tools
Reputation monitoring tools are essential for brand reputation management. These tools help you track online mentions and gauge public sentiment. You can quickly address negative feedback and prevent a potential crisis by monitoring brand mentions. For instance, Bustem offers excellent media monitoring and reputation monitoring tools.
Importance of Brand Mention Monitoring
These tools allow you to stay updated on what people say about your brand across various platforms. Monitoring brand mentions is a key aspect of brand identity protection and helps identify areas for improvement. Using reputation monitoring tools also aids in reputation risk management.
Real-time Insights for Proactive Issue Resolution
Real-time insights into your brand’s online presence allow you to swiftly address any emerging issues, ensuring they don’t escalate into more significant problems. Tools like Mediaboard provide a comprehensive view of your brand’s reputation, making it easier to maintain a positive image.
2. Trademark and Protect Your Brand
Protecting your brand includes trademarking your branding elements and claiming your business domain name. If you don’t, a competitor can appropriate your branding and content and establish itself as the rightful owner. They could even theoretically sue you for infringing on their intellectual property rights. (Many businesses pursue intellectual property insurance for this reason.) Consider the following factors involved in protecting your brand:
Trademark Your Brand Identity
Trademarking your brand provides the most potent legal protection against other companies and counterfeiters' unauthorized use of your identity (e.g., your brand, logo, slogans). The initial trademark period lasts 10 years and can be renewed an unlimited number of times after that every 10 years. Before trademarking your brand, check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database to ensure your logo and branding elements are unique. You can also apply for a trademark via the USPTO website.
Protect Your Domain Name
Protecting your brand online with the right digital real estate is also essential, so ensure you register your business domain name. As soon as you have your brand name, ensure it’s available as a domain name and that no one uses it as a social media handle. If you aren’t launching your business immediately, register the domain and claim the social media handles immediately.
Invest in Additional Domains
Regarding your domain name, ensure you have the .com variation as a bare minimum. For further protection, you could also register for .net, .org, and other domains to stop someone else from doing so. If you plan to launch in different countries, invest in their top-level domains, such as .co, .uk, and .de. This approach also means your visitors can find you better even if they don’t correctly type in your primary domain name. Invest in automatic domain name renewal. With all your domain names, selecting the automatic renewal option is a good idea. So, at the end of the registration period, you retain ownership and can stop someone from claiming it.
3. Develop a Crisis Management Plan
A robust crisis management plan is vital for reputation risk management. Your plan should include steps for immediate response, communication strategies, and long-term solutions. Quickly addressing issues can prevent minor problems from escalating into major crises. Including a social media reputation strategy in your crisis management plan is essential.
Proactive Crisis Response on Social Media
This ensures that your brand’s social media channels are ready to respond to any situation effectively. Preparing for a crisis can make the difference between a minor hiccup and a major blow to your brand reputation management. Your crisis management plan should also cover online crisis response.
Handling Negative Feedback Online
This includes having a team ready to handle online criticisms and negative feedback promptly and professionally. Negative feedback handling should be a part of this plan, ensuring that complaints are addressed swiftly and effectively and showing your commitment to customer satisfaction.
4. Engage in Customer Feedback Analysis
Analyzing customer feedback is a powerful tool for brand image maintenance. Understanding customer concerns and preferences enables you to make informed decisions that enhance your brand loyalty-building efforts. Regular feedback analysis helps identify potential issues before they become significant problems.
Identifying and Addressing Underlying Issues
Customer feedback analysis also contributes to online reputation protection. By regularly reviewing feedback, you can identify patterns and trends that may indicate underlying issues. Addressing these issues proactively helps maintain a positive brand image and protect your brand integrity.
Leveraging Tools for Effective Analysis
Using tools like Bustem for feedback analysis can streamline this process. Bustem’s advanced analytics can provide deep insights into customer sentiment, helping you make data-driven decisions that benefit your brand. Regular customer feedback analysis ensures you stay connected with your audience’s needs and expectations.
5. Create and Stick to Your Brand Guidelines
Legally, your brand includes your trademarks (name, logo, and slogans) and your “trade dress” (the distinctive visual appeal of your products, packaging, and overall presentation). It also includes your copyrights such as:
Designs
Content
Marketing materials
Creative works
Nevertheless, in actuality, your brand is so much more. It helps you emotionally connect with customers and bind them to you. It is an expression of your values, reputation, and personality. Encompasses a unique brand story and mission statement. Reflects your promises to your customers and the expectations you must live up to and deliver at all customer touchpoints.
Jesse Swash, branding expert and co-founder of Design by Structure, agrees that branding is all-encompassing. “Brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” Swash explained. “Brand is you on your best day, every day. Brand can be your biggest advocate, your most persuasive tool, your greatest asset.”
Businesses must have a keen sense of identity to build a brand. “Brand is built on understanding who you are, what makes your offer compelling, and recognizing the pain points and challenges you solve for the audiences that matter,” Swash added.
Because branding is so complex and comprehensive, usage guidelines are essential to ensure brands remain unique and easily identifiable. Consider the following brand guideline best practices:
Make your brand guidelines comprehensive: Your guidelines must encompass everything from how your logo is used to the color palettes on your printed and online material. Many brand guidelines even include a linguistic personality: how you address your audience with words.
Share your brand guidelines with all appropriate parties: Ensure you share all brand guidelines with your employees, partners and vendors to ensure application conformity everywhere.
Consider professional help when creating brand guidelines: Many design agencies can create brand guideline documentation for clients who are unsure how to do it themselves.
Periodically review and update your brand guidelines: Companies should also regularly review them to ensure they remain relevant to their purpose and target audiences. Whether you’re establishing a new brand image or rebranding a business, everyone involved must support the brand and what it stands for.
When you do so, “you can create a powerful and persuasive weapon to help you achieve the success you seek,” Swash said. “One company, one brand, one aligned narrative. It works every time.”
6. Implement Digital PR Strategies
Digital PR strategies play a crucial role in online reputation protection. Proactive public relations tactics can positively influence public perception of your brand. This includes:
Creating and sharing valuable content
Engaging with your audience on social media
Building relationships with key influencers in your industry
Implementing effective digital PR strategies also aids in brand crisis prevention. By maintaining a positive and proactive public presence, you can prevent many potential crises from arising. Engaging with your audience through various digital channels helps build trust and loyalty, essential to brand loyalty.
Building Brand Identity through Digital PR
Digital PR can enhance your brand identity protection. Consistently delivering high-quality content and positive messages reinforces your brand’s values and reputation. This proactive approach ensures that your brand remains top-of-mind for consumers, reducing the impact of any negative publicity.
7. Become a Cyber-Secure Company
Protecting your business from cybercrime is another way to safeguard your brand and business reputation. If you suffer a serious data breach involving customers’ sensitive information, it may be hard for them to trust you again. A data breach may also lead to the theft of valuable intellectual property, ruining your business's competitive edge.
Incorporate cybersecurity tenets into your brand promise to sustain and improve your reputation. Here’s how:
Share your security efforts with your customers: On your website, provide a link to information on protecting your clients’ privacy and complying with all regulations.
Conduct a cybersecurity risk assessment: Carry out a cybersecurity risk assessment to identify and fix areas of vulnerability. Include a response plan to enact if a cyber-incident occurs, and include guidelines for transparent customer communication.
Shore all cybersecurity measures: Create a cybersecurity plan focusing on cybersecurity technology and employee training. Invest in the latest equipment to protect your system against current cybersecurity risks. Consider pursuing certificates like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 to demonstrate your commitment to protecting your business information.
8. Monitor Your Digital Footprint
When was the last time you Googled your business or searched for what people said about you on social media? Typing your company or professional name into a search bar once a week can uncover eye-opening information.
When you browse the internet through a customer’s eyes, you may find online reviews you didn’t know about. Or, worse yet, someone gossiping about your business on social media and other public commentaries that pop up whenever someone mentions you or your business by name.
If you can see negative information when you search for your business on Google or other search engines, so can potential customers. The good news is that you don’t have to let negative comments sit there and ruin your reputation. Make it a point to monitor and take control of your online mentions in an organized daily process that includes the following:
Note the location and date of any bad or inaccurate information and delete whatever you can. If you can’t remove the information myself, talk to the site owner about having it removed or posting a rebuttal.
If you can’t remove inaccurate information, generate SEO-optimized, positive content to drop the negative comments to page two of the search results.
You shouldn’t delete negative mentions only when they are legitimate customer reviews or complaints.
You should respond to all online reviews publicly, quickly, and with the goal of a satisfactory outcome.
9. Handle Negative Feedback Effectively
Negative feedback handling is a critical component of protecting brand integrity. When addressing negative reviews or comments, responding promptly and professionally is essential. Show empathy, provide solutions, and take the conversation offline if necessary. This approach not only helps in resolving issues but also demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.
The Importance of Effective Negative Feedback Handling
Effective handling of negative feedback is crucial for brand reputation management. Ignoring or mishandling negative feedback can lead to a damaged reputation and loss of customer trust. By addressing complaints effectively, you show that you value customer input and are committed to improving their experience.
Leveraging Tools for Swift Response and Resolution
Using tools like Bustem can aid in monitoring brand mentions and swiftly identifying negative feedback. This lets you respond promptly and maintain a positive customer relationship. Regularly reviewing and addressing feedback ensures ongoing brand image maintenance and protects your brand integrity.
10. Generate Your Own Good Press
Outside of customer reviews and comments, most of what is known about your brand online comes directly from you.
Here are some tips for generating good brand press:
Engage with customers online. Staying active in forums and engaging with customers online helps generate genuine positive comments and feelings about your company.
Give behind-the-scenes glimpses of your company. Leverage your online presence by using your social media accounts to post behind-the-scenes glimpses of your team in action and feel-good photos of happy customers.
Consider hosting a Facebook Live Q&A to answer customer questions and introduce team members.
Create content about your brand. Generate evergreen content that ties your brand journey to the customer journey. Use your small business blog to create helpful content that inspires and adds value to your customers.
Address negative reviews or complaints publicly. Respond to negative comments as soon as they are received. Consumers appreciate brands that show concern for customer satisfaction and a willingness to take responsibility for righting a wrong.
Never pay for reviews. While it’s OK to solicit positive reviews or testimonials actively, never pay for positive reviews. Fake reviews can backfire and cause additional damage to your reputation.
Shaping Your Brand Narrative: Building Authenticity and Trust in a Digital Age
Lauren Bayne, founder of Personal Brand Creative Director and former chief brand officer for Lodgewell, believes these tactics are essential for shaping the narrative around your brand. “This approach allows you to showcase your authenticity and values directly to your audience,” Bayne explained. “By consistently engaging with customers, sharing behind-the-scenes content and addressing concerns publicly, you’re not just managing your reputation—you’re building a relationship with your audience based on transparency and trust.” According to Bayne, controlling your brand story is critical in an increasingly digital world where consumers seek genuine connections with the brands they support.
11. Gather Social Proof
Consumers are likelier to listen to recommendations or warnings about products and services from friends than paid spokespeople or ads. Organic word-of-mouth advertising is social proof; building social proof for your brand or company is crucial to encourage trust.
The following actions are some of the ways you can provide social proof:
Engage trusted and popular influencers to market your brand.
Deliver the best customer service.
Encourage social likes, comments, and shares.
Enable and encourage brand ambassadors who will spread the word about your brand.
Seek out user-generated content, including online reviews, social media posts, testimonials, blog posts, and video content about your brand.
12. Design Your Website With the User Experience in Mind
Your website is often the first interaction you have with your audience. Ensure your business website design prioritizes security and the user experience.
An excellent user experience accomplishes the following:
Draws more visitors to your page
Keeps visitors on your website longer
It makes it more likely visitors will return to your website
Helps elevate your website ranking in search engine results
Your layout should be clean and easy to navigate
Your website should contain useful, relevant content and links
The checkout process should be secure, fast and hassle-free
Choose a reliable hosting service with a high uptime percentage, and use a content delivery network to improve speed and performance.
13. Get Personal With Your Prospects
In the age of AI and other machine-learning technologies, human-to-human interaction can get lost. Employ advanced tech to streamline and automate core functions; this frees up your staff to focus on personalized service and addressing customer pain points. For example, you can write personal emails to customers offering special discounts, build customer loyalty programs, or send cards for holidays or customer birthday greetings.
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Find and Take Down Copycats with One-click Today
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Images
Videos
Headlines
Text
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With over 2 million DMCA notices filed daily and businesses losing $29 billion annually to content theft, we've made protection simple and cost-effective. Bustem helps you identify and eliminate copycats efficiently, whether dealing with competitors:
Using your product images
Copying your ad content
Stealing your copy
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