Brand Reputation Management Made Easy with SMS Marketing

As a business owner, it’s easy to get freaked out by bad reviews that go viral — knowing that this could potentially happen to your business. The good news is that it doesn’t have to, thanks to brand management with SMS marketing.

First, let’s define brand reputation and then explore how SMS marketing helps make it more efficient.

What is brand reputation?

Brand reputation relates to the public’s perception of a brand based on direct personal experiences or indirect experiences. Brand reputation is what customers positively or negatively associate with a brand and how they perceive that brand as a result. To build and grow a successful brand, you need to understand brand reputation.

Why is brand reputation important?

Brand reputation has always been important. But the way it’s managed has changed now that we live in a digital world.

It used to be different. If someone had a bad experience with your brand, word of their experience would only get around to friends and family. Now reviewers post bad experiences to gain thousands or even millions of views.

Just think about how many viral negative brand experiences you’ve seen online. These reviews quickly take on a life of their own and are incredibly difficult to deal with after the fact.

Even if you rectify the situation with the original customer, it’s nearly impossible to undo the damage to your reputation. You likely just lost future business.

What makes a good brand reputation?

So what goes into a good brand reputation? Here are some of the different elements that you need to focus on:

• Proactivity: To achieve a good brand reputation, you need to be proactive. Being reactive will only hurt your reputation. It’s impossible to control what people say and think about your brand after a mistake or issue occurs.
• Specificity: To achieve a good brand reputation, you need to specify what you’re offering your customers. Do you offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee? Do you offer two-day free shipping? Do you offer 24/7 customer service? Whatever your product or service, under promise and over deliver to benefit your brand’s reputation.
• Authority: To achieve a good brand reputation, you need to be authoritative. You need to set yourself apart from all the other companies offering similar products or services. You should also show off your product features, product quality, and production efficiency.
• Consistency: To achieve a good brand reputation, you must be consistent. Each customer should receive products and services of the same quality. Everyone should receive the same level of customer service. That way, people won’t feel that a poor product or service is duping them.
• Execution: Finally, you need to deliver on promises laid out in the previous areas. For instance, if you’re offering a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, make sure that customers can return products within that period if they’re not satisfied. Companies like Costco are well-known for their return policy. It positively contributes to their brand reputation. If you’re offering a high-quality product for a premium price, it can’t break down after a few uses. Companies like Apple are well-known for selling premium and long-lasting products at higher prices.

Maintaining your brand reputation requires consistent effort and strategizing. The best way to do this is to develop a brand reputation management strategy. It will help you build and maintain a positive brand reputation.

What is the role of brand reputation management for your business?

Brand reputation management is the process of tracking how customers perceive your business and taking action to address any undesired perceptions.

The good news: Brand reputation management is based largely online, giving you access to tons of information. The bad news: It can be difficult to manage all of this information from various sources effectively.

How social media impacts brand reputation

The biggest contributions to your brand reputation are social media platforms and review websites. Social media platforms allow users to interact with each other and with brands. It’s easy for people to share brand experiences on these platforms for billions of users to see.

Your brand should be active on these platforms to establish a positive online presence. Consider creating business profiles on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if you haven’t yet. If you want to reach a younger demographic, consider business profiles on TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.

The most well-known and most widely used review website is Google. Others include Yelp, Angie’s List, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and more. Make sure to claim your business on these websites to monitor and respond to customer reviews and feedback.

How to use SMS marketing to manage your brand

There are four different components of reputation management. Let’s learn more about each one so that you can practice it effectively.

1. Research and survey

For starters, research and survey your customers to know more about where your reputation stands and how you can improve it. The best way to accomplish this is to send out customer satisfaction surveys directly to customers using SMS texting.

SMS is ideal because it’s interactive (unlike email) and allows your customers to feel like they’re having a conversation with your brand. Once you text your customers a question, ask for their response. Give them the option of responding with a “yes” or a “no” or a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. Send the next question, and so on. TextSanity is a great platform to help you send out customer satisfaction surveys via SMS message.

2. Craft a strategy for reputation management

Now that you know a bit more about your current reputation, you need to start crafting your strategy for reputation management. Start by identifying your weak points and develop plans to address these points and turn them into strengths.

Then turn to your strengths and develop ways to highlight your strengths so that you can base your reputation on these positive aspects rather than the negative ones.

3. Read comments, reviews, and feedback and act on them

Read all of the comments, reviews, and feedback, and then act on them. When dealing with negative comments and reviews, it’s always important to respond as quickly as possible so that the customer — and others reading these comments — see that you’re responsive. You want them to feel that you care about what they say.

The best approach is to include direct contact information for someone at your company who can take action to handle the issue at hand. Hopefully, the dissatisfied customer will reach out, your team will resolve their issue, and they’ll change their review.

However, you shouldn’t just be reactive to these comments. You need to be proactive as well. If you’re seeing many comments about a specific issue with a product, location, or associate, recognize this trend and take appropriate action to address it.

4. Continue to take these steps into consideration

Managing your brand’s reputation isn’t a one-time objective. It’s a constant process that requires consistent work. So instead of sending out customer satisfaction surveys once and never doing it again, send them out regularly!

You may not want to send them to customers after every single purchase. Set a specific quota or timeframe during which you send them out.

Instead of responding to comments and reviews once, actively monitor your social media pages and other review websites like Google and Yelp. Check each platform at least once per week to respond to comments.

Manage your brand successfully with SMS marketing

Brand reputation management isn’t always straightforward — but SMS marketing makes it much easier. Customers drive brand reputation, and you need a way to make sure they can communicate their feelings to you.

SMS marketing with TextSanity helps you reach your customers easily and efficiently. Contact TextSanity today to get started!