In business, image is everything. If your business image isn’t right, you’re not going to be getting the triumphant results that other businesses will be getting. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is; the image you present to your audience will make the biggest difference in how well you do.
If you’re interested in improving your business image, here are 13 important ways you can begin to do so ASAP:
Define How You’d Like To Be Seen By Your Audience
If you’re going to enhance your business image, you should first know how you want to be seen by your audience. Only then can you begin making improvements and ensure that your company aligns with the image you want to achieve. Every brand has a different personality. What words would you like your audience to use as they describe you? Trustworthy? Fun? Helpful? Stylish? Think about it and then move on.
Know What Makes Your Brand Unique
It’s absolutely crucial you know what makes your brand unique, and that you use that as a big selling point. If you fail to identify and play up whatever it is that makes you unique, you may miss out to competitors. Each and every brand needs to have something that sets them apart from similar companies. You don’t have to be completely different, but you do need to have a few unique elements that’ll help to set you apart.
Build An Incredible Website
Although your website is really just a small part of the bigger picture, it is going to say a lot about your brand. Think about it: your website is the first thing that people see when they search Google to see what you’re about. It can either look professional and be easy to navigate, or look messy, thrown together, and be difficult to navigate. The latter is going to send potential customers running for the hills making a mental note never to return. However, if you put the money in to making an incredible website (because, let’s face it, you shouldn’t make it yourself), it will pay off. It may seem extreme, but you need to think of this as your 24/7 storefront. Make sure your website is up to scratch in terms of aesthetics, usability, and search engine performance and you’ll be well on your way to improving both your business image and your results.
Find Ways To Strengthen Your Brand
Take a look at your brand and pinpoint ways you can strengthen it. Your brand isn’t just about your font, logo, and colors used, although they definitely come into it too. It’s about your content, how helpful you are, how responsive you are, and even how you resolve issues for the customer. Make sure you inspect every aspect of your brand that can be improved and ensure it is running as smoothly as possible.
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Become More Eco Friendly
As a brand looking to improve their image, becoming more eco-friendly is one of the best things you can do. However, you shouldn’t just do this as a last-ditch attempt to make more money. You need to make sure you’re doing all you can to care for the environment. Even a small business can make a negative impact on the environment if not handled correctly, so consider everything, from how flexible you are with employees working in the office, how much paper you use, and more.
Make sure you cut back on your consumption, recycle and reuse where you can, and try to be flexible in terms of employees working from home occasionally.
Express Your Company Values Openly
Expressing your company values openly, rather than just on the website, is one of the best ways to get a little good attention and let people know what you’re about. What do you stand for? Anti-racism? Feminism? LGBTQ? It’s hard for large organizations to ignore these movements, so choose those that align with your values and principles. Your actions speak louder than words, so it’ll take more than simply saying you support these movements. Do something worthwhile and get noticed!
Focus On Creating The Highest Quality Product Or Offering The Best Service
Although your product or service won’t do well if you don’t have a great image to go with it, you’ll need to focus on creating the highest quality imaginable. When you work on ways to ensure you’re providing the best possible product, or the highest quality service, you’re going to retain your customers. Customer retention can make or break your business! Not only will you retain your customers, you’ll likely get great feedback, and the word will spread that your product/service is the best. Word of mouth from happy customers is something that you can’t buy, and an extremely powerful marketing tool. Remember, though, word of mouth from unhappy customers is just as powerful.
Make Sure Your Staff Act And Look The Part
Your staff need to act and look the part. Make sure they represent your business in the right way, however this may seem most suitable to you. You may want to incorporate a uniform from a place like UniformsAndScrubs.com to make sure everybody looks polished and professional. It isn’t just about looking the part either; it’s about making sure everybody is wearing safe and comfortable clothing that allows them to get the work done to a high standard. Ensure you set guidelines for how your staff are to represent the company should they need to leave to meet with customers, go to customer’s houses, or do anything work related like this.
Share Your Expertise For Free
Sharing your expertise for free may seem crazy and in some cases counter intuitive, but it’ll actually help you to work towards solidifying your reputation as a guru in your niche. People will come to your business when they want help and advice, so set up a blog! Write blog posts answering the most common questions you’re asked, give quick tips using social media, and make sure your main goal is to help your audience. When you offer consistent, helpful content, you will improve your reach and get better results. Plus, the image you’re creating will be tough to beat!
Develop A Strong Social Media Presence
Developing a strong social media presence is crucial in this day and age. Millions of people use social media every single day, so if you’re not using it in your business, you’re missing out. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a construction company, in marketing, or a freelance stylist; you need to make sure your social media presence is strong enough so that people remember you.
Use social media to offer customer service, reply quickly to queries, and share helpful hints and tips. Don’t simply use it to advertise what you’re selling, as that’s not the reason people come to social media. Use it properly and you’ll be able to sell without ‘selling’ at all.
As social media is so important and can take a lot of time to keep up if you have multiple channels, many businesses choose to use a social media manager. While you may not be able to directly account for the money they bring in, you have to trust that it’ll be worth the investment. You’ll have happier customers, a stronger online presence, and experience more benefits from taking this chance. When your social media accounts are left unattended, it simply looks like you don’t care. People may even wonder if you’re still in business!
Make Sure Customers Know How Important They Are To You
You need to show your customers how important they are to you if you’re going to keep up a great business image. You can only get so far with everything else in this post. You can show your customers how important they are to you by offering discounts, loyalty cards, or even by including something small and free in their order. It’s the little touches and surprises that will give customers a good experience and make them want to work with you again.
Don’t Neglect To Treat Your Staff With The Same Respect
Although your customers are an important group of people, ensure you don’t forget how important your staff actually are to your company, either. If you have disgruntled staff, you’ll have a high staff turnover, more sick days, and experience many other issues to boot. By appreciating your staff and finding small ways to show that you care, they will be happier, stay engaged, and likely stay with you longer. They’ll also be great advocates for your business.
The two things that can ruin your business image the fastest are disgruntled customers and disgruntled staff.
Be Consistent
Finally, to enhance your business image and more importantly keep it that way, you must be consistent in all of your efforts. Customers like knowing what to expect with a brand, so make sure your team are on board with everything you’re trying to achieve.
Thanks for reading!
