All you have in the business world is your name and your integrity. If you want to survive the trials and tribulations to become a large business one day, you have to keep these two things intact. Trust, honor, confidence and reassurance is what you must offer to consumers. They want authenticity and they won’t settle for anything less. That’s why brand value is so crucial to the power your business has on the street. When you make a wrong move and you lose the trust of consumers, you’ll have the black spot as sailor’s during maritime used to believe. It’s bad luck, it foreshadows the impending doom of your business. It’s very hard to rub off once it’s on your name and your reputation will significantly suffer. If you’re serious about keeping a clean sheet, employ these protective strategies.
Create a unique name
Right from the word go, your business needs to be unique. Sometimes small business owners will choose a name that they hope will explain their business to consumers. For example, if you’re an electronics business, don’t have electric or some form of that word in your name. This makes your name generic and there are plenty of such names floating about. Legally speaking, it’s harder to get protection for your name when your name sounds somewhat similar to other business names. Be entirely unique. You wouldn’t know that Apple makes computers from just reading the name. It’s a distinctive mark which gives it, it’s own island to stand on.
A badge of approval
One way you can ensure trust in customers is to work closely with your contracted distributors. Amazon sells a lot of products and many resellers will be selling your product right alongside your fully approved deal with the company. But how do customers know that out of the pool of sellers, yours is the one they should trust? Giving retailers a badge of approval, to show customers that the product they are viewing comes straight from you and they can trust the retailer to send them an authentic product is very powerful. This is one of the ways you can protect your brand online as noted in this guide. By giving your authorized retailers tools to prove they have official resale privilege, you will massively improve your sales. Consumers know they will be buying a brand new product which is the ‘real things’.
Give employees tools
Your customer service employees will sometimes be dealing with irate customers. By giving them an employee handbook that will backup the product to ensure it’s quality, materials and uses erects yet another plinth for your brand’s integrity to stand on. With such a handbook, your employees can answer any questions that customers throw at them and clear any doubts they might have.
The integrity of your brand name is invaluable. Once you lose some of it, it’s hard to scrub off the mud. So, always work closely with your retailers and give them the tools to prove they are working with you officially.
