Brand Perception = Profit. How Can You Boost Your Business’ Reputation?

There’s a reason that almost all new businesses spend weeks or months deliberating over the right font, colour and shape of their new company logo. Whether you’re new in business or exploring another exciting opportunity, there is no doubt that you appreciate the value of brand perception.

However, there are key areas in business where – no matter how flashy your logo – the public will be silently judging your brand. How will you score?

Let’s unpack these and discover how to boost your profits in 3 essential areas.

What Is Brand, or Public Perception?

A brilliant definition is offered by Powers That Beat where they say, “The social phenomenon known as public perception can be seen as the difference between an absolute truth based on facts and a virtual truth shaped by popular opinion, media coverage and/or reputation.”

So essentially, public perception is what people think of your business, whether it’s actually true or not.

This means that the success (or failure) of your business rests on what people think of it. People you don’t even know, that you may never have interacted with in person. There’s some food for thought, don’t you think?

Can we influence public perception? We certainly can. And here’s how.

Don’t Do Downtime

Nobody likes to lose money. Fact. Yet, some frightening numbers are available in cyberspace which discuss the phenomenal (and often unexpected and debilitating) cost of downtime. Let’s assume that your phones go down or your online store goes offline.  According to the Rand Group in the above article, “98% of organisations say that a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000”.

Perhaps you’re a small business and you aren’t even close to those numbers. Does this statistic still apply? Think about this for a second: you see an advert for a hand-made coffee table. You call the number and it’s unavailable. You try again in an hour, and it is still unavailable. How hard will you try to contact that company again? When you see another of their adverts, will you bother to call?  Probably not. Which means that this little business has lost a customer and a sale, is now wasting money on ads that people won’t respond to and will not get any referral business – and they don’t even know it!

A single bad experience for a new customer is enough to discourage them from interacting with you. And in today’s fiercely competitive market, there will always be someone else who can provide the product or service that you are trying so hard to promote.

So, phone lines, email and internet uptime are an absolute necessity to ensure that your business delivers a professional public image.

What options do you have as a start-up here in South Africa? We’ll show you in a sec.

Ditch the Cell Phone

No, we aren’t suggesting that you bin your iPhone. Rather, we are recommending that you steer away from having a business number that is also your personal cell number.

Why?

There are a number of reasons, and here are a few:

Security

Once your business starts advertising its contact number as your own private mobile number, you open yourself up to spam, phishing, scams, call centre, automated calls and pranksters. Therefore, if you do your banking on your phone, have personal images or messages stored, or you retrieve your emails from your phone, these are all vulnerable to malicious attacks.

Scalability

Once your business starts ticking over, you may consider employing staff to assist you. Do they use their cell phones? And if so, how do you keep track of incoming calls, sales, service levels and confidentiality?

Brand Perception

There’s that phrase again. Using a cell number as the main contact for your organisation immediately tells the caller that you are a small business. Depending on the transaction, this may not be a good thing. Can they trust you? Are you professional? Are you a fly-by-night? What recourse do they have if things go south?

How do we counter these issues? As a small business perhaps you don’t have the money to invest in a costly telecom set up? The good news is that there is a simple solution which we’ll highlight in a moment.

Update your Tech

Nothing says “unprofessional” quite like an outdated website (or none at all!), no social profile, or handwritten invoices.

Your level of technology will dictate your customer level, and if you’re aiming for a professional brand perception and all the positives that come with it, then you need to up your game. A great website which is accessible, always on, easy to navigate, fast and easy to use, is a start. Solid and secure data and communication systems are also essential.

Considering all of the above, do you feel a little overwhelmed? You shouldn’t!

We at Huge Connect have made it our business to connect yours. From virtual phone services which look, walk and talk like a landline (while offering scalable, mobile and reliable communications), to secure, dependable and always-up data, web and wireless services – we know how to keep your business on top form.

We also know that start-ups and small businesses need flexible and cost-effective solutions, and may not have the capital to outlay on the serious tech that a burgeoning business needs.

If you’d like to know more, then we’d love to chat. Call us today and let us work out a communications package for your business.