Gaining a Comparative Advantage by Controlling Your Brand Image

Controlling Your Brand Image: Understanding brand image and perception is vital for every business. 

And knowing what shapes that perception starts by listening to your customers.

Getting a handle on what consumers believe you represent, how they view your products and services, and how this perception compares with competing brands is the key to gaining a comparative advantage in the digital marketplace.

What is Brand Image?

Brand image can be defined in any number of ways. But in the marketplace, it ultimately boils down to consumer perception—and how your company stacks up against the competition. 

This perception develops over time, though it plays an important role in the decision-making process—particularly when it comes to making sense of your company’s position and authority in your industry.

How the image is shaped over time

Brand image is developed in customers’ minds based on their experience with your business. 

Each interaction with your company takes place in a different way—and it doesn’t just consist of purchasing and using your product.

Brand image is shaped during and after the transaction and throughout every interaction with your business—whether the initial search for your services, clicking on your ad, combing through customer reviews, or reading your blog.

As a business owner, it’s essential to carve out an image that is positive and distinct and provides a comparative advantage at every stage of customer experience. 

It also helps to strengthen your brand’s impact on the web, using brand communication avenues like packaging, advertising, publicizing through word-of-mouth, and other promotional tools to heighten visibility and reinforce a positive presence online. 

What is Brand Perception?

Brand perception comes down to the associations people make when they interact with your brand. Such ideas are triggered when consumers become aware of your business each time they see, hear, or engage with your company online—and at every stage of the buying process.

The bottom line: your customers own your brand’s perception. Regardless of the message, that perception ultimately determines the quality of your online footprint. 

Elements that shape public perception

Brand perception is developed, refined, and reinforced during every customer interaction—whenever a potential customer finds or engages with your business online.

From search results and review sites to Google ads and social profiles, your online image is constantly being shaped and defined by a variety of items. 

Perception is crucial to small business marketing.

No matter your business’s size or reach, brand perception is a critical factor in determining the shape and scope of your digital marketing strategy. 

Answering questions like how your product or service resonates with your target audience, how consumers feel about your brand, and what steps you can take to measure customer sentiment are critical to understanding your image and crafting an impactful marketing approach.

Think about your brand. Ask such questions as:

• Why do people like it? 
• Why do they use it? 
• What emotions are elicited when they think about your brand? 

Knowing how you’re perceived and how your business measures up among consumers can help your marketing team steer in the right direction.

Measuring Brand Image and Perception

By analyzing your social presence, your business can better understand the factors contributing to brand image. These insights can then support initiatives that reshape and improve brand perception well into the future.

Social listening platforms allow you to measure the sentiment surrounding your brand. Analyzing conversations can help you better understand negative sentiment and identify the various customer issues harming brand perception.

By looking at these metrics over time, you can determine what causes spikes or upticks in brand conversation and how the perception of your company evolves over the long term.

Of course, brands rarely exist in isolation. Taking time to measure brand sentiment against that of your competitors can be extremely useful and help you understand your position in your industry and the digital marketplace.

Using Social to Gain the Comparative Advantage

Once you know how customers perceive your business and what makes them tick, you can start taking action.

A recent Ogilvy study analyzed 20 channels and found that effective social media use is one of the easiest ways to impact and improve brand perception. 

As a digital ‘word-of-mouth’ tool, social sites can be a powerful way to spread positive news about your brand and enhance your digital image and bottom line.

When you know who your customers are and what they think of your business, you can begin to harness the power of social. And once you’ve got a handle on the social narrative, you can begin to steer the conversation—and use it to gain a comparative advantage over your competition.

The Importance of Brand Image

Ultimately, it’s up to each organization to build, maintain, and control its brand image—to achieve the positive and engaging digital footprint integral to pursuing its vision and accomplishing long-term business goals.

Controlling your online reputation ensures profitability and comparative advantage, attracts new customers, and fosters the relationship needed to earn repeat business.

But reining in online conversation is no easy task, particularly in a complex digital environment that changes constantly and poses new threats to your integrity and bottom line every day.

Reputation Sciences™ is here to help. Our online reputation professionals provide data-driven digital management solutions to improve and fortify your online image—and to gain the competitive advantage you need to thrive on the web.

Contact Reputation Sciences™ today to learn more. 

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