Change your brand perception in 5 steps

Changing the public’s perception of your business after negative press, bad customer reviews or internal issues seems like mission impossible. Often brands avoid publishing any content in fear of fuelling the fire, but it’s a Catch-22 because if you don’t control your message, everyone else will.

If you’re ready for your customers to move beyond a recent incident, here is how you can start to change your brand perception using effective communication.

1. Understand the current perception

Remember that you don’t dictate the perception of your brand, instead your customers create it based on how they think, feel or interact with you. To get a better overview of how people currently perceive your brand, create an online survey or ask for feedback through your social channels. This way, you can get answers to the questions you really want using up-to-date data that won’t cost you anything.

2. Don’t forget you internal stakeholders

Many businesses revolve their actions around their customers who are important, but it’s your internal stakeholders (staff, suppliers, contractors etc.) that interact with your customers every day and should be your biggest advocates. Understand your internal audiences better by holding focus groups or workshops to get their buy in – you never know what insight they might be able to provide.

3. Be clear on the desired perception

If you don’t know where you want to get to, how will you know how to get there? Once you know how your external and internal audiences perceive your brand – what they like and dislike, their challenges and desires – you then need to have a clear view of how you would like them to perceive your brand. If you’re stuck here, try using the positive comments from the surveys and focus groups to build on what people already like about your brand and create your new perception framework.

4. Create a plan

Knowing your desired perception will drive the communication plan or roadmap. The plan should include key messages, your communication channels, timings, content (videos, images, copy etc.) Q&A’s, a media policy, style guidelines and evaluation metrics. It may be worth tasking people in your team with different responsibilities to ensure quick action.

5. Evaluate as you go

It’s a good idea to work to a specific timeframe and break down intermediate goals to keep you on track. For example, if you want to change your brand perception by June 2019, monthly updates from your team will keep everyone focused and allow you to tweak your approach if necessary. When you reach your end date, try gathering data the same way you did in the beginning to compare results and determine the outcome or future steps.

Changing the perception of your brand is no easy task and can take years to accomplish, it requires dedication and resources devoted to rebuilding client trust and loyalty.

Elevate Communication has helped transform the perception of hundreds of businesses from a variety of sectors. Call our team for a chat today on 07 3180 3666!

Still interested in PR, have a read of some of our other blogs!