In today’s article we will discuss how to build a trusted brand. This includes how to ensure your company gains a foothold in the local market you operate in.
Building a trusted brand can be a difficult task. It takes time and effort to gain credibility in your community, and secure a strong foothold in your local market.
There are various ways to build a strong brand presence in your community. You can ensure the brand you have built can be trusted and supported by your customers.
What is a Brand?
When discussing brands and branded elements many small businesses believe all they need for a brand is a strong logo design and a storefront. This is not the case. There are various elements that go into making not only a trusted brand, but a strong one as well.
A brand is essentially the face of the company, and portrays what services your business offers to potential clients. This includes what the company values such as customer service.
What this means is that branding is a fickle thing, and cannot be encapsulated by a simple logo. When developing your brand there are multiple aspects to consider
Establishing A Trust Factor
One of the crucial steps to building a trusted brand is to establish a trust factor with your clients. This means as a company you must be completely transparent with your clients
When selling new products, or beginning new ventures be transparent about it. Make sure you alert your clients that this is a new and exciting opportunity for your company. Assure them that although you are just beginning the service or selling a new product you will learn quickly. Don’t however start a new service or selling a new product and state your company has been doing so for years. This is what we mean by full transparency.
When a company tries to portray itself as something it’s not, it negatively affects the company and their trusted brand value. If a company has spent years trying to build a strong and trusted brand, but is caught lying this will have severe negative consequences.
Adjusting Your Business Model
Building a trusted brand starts with the base model of your company. When you are trying to build a trusted brand you have to align your core values with the industry you are in. This includes what customers want from this industry as well.
Let’s say you are in the construction business, and you need to portray strong customer service. At no point should the employees on the site be rude to clients when they want to check up on the house building process.
This is essentially the same for any business. You must cater the values of your company to your client base. Furthermore, you need to ensure these values are upheld and followed by every staff member.
Ensuring Everyone Is On Board
In order to build a trusted brand, it is important to ensure the employees you hire have similar values to those your company upholds. Having trustworthy employees who will portray these values to clients will ensure that a trusted brand image is portrayed.
When you are trying to establish a trusted brand, it is important to adopt the values you want to portray to clients. These can include customer service, quality, or reliability. When you hire employees who embody these values at work it will assist with your brand gaining trust in the community.
However, if you hire employees who do not embody these values it will diminish the brand you have been working so hard to build. Let’s say you are trying to portray customer service as a key value for your company. If your employees are rude it will diminish your brand.
Taking A Ground Up Approach On How To Build A Trusted Brand
Establishing how to build a trusted brand takes a considerable amount of time and effort. As such, it is important to ensure your entire company is embodying these values.
This essentially means that your company must embody the core values you are trying to portray through every service you provide. As a company, it is important to ensure customer service is on the forefront of your values. If this is a key value you have chosen everyone in the company must portray it.
A company like Imperium, who specializes in customer service ensures it is on the forefront of every project they undertake. Having a testimonials page for clients to provide their input is just one of the ways we do this effectively.
Build Your Brand Around Your Target Audience
Having a specific market you want to target is important to build a trusted brand in a local community. A targeted audience is key, because it will allow your company to cater your core values to your customers.
This audience will likely be the ones who support your company the most. As such you must ensure that your values are portrayed when they purchase your services.
Having a target audience who support your business will help with local brand recognition. They will greatly increase the trust in your brand on a local level.
When other people notice your target audience trusts your store, has left great reviews, and discusses your services this will ensure growth.
Differentiate Yourself From The Competition
When establishing a trusted brand image it is important to have an understanding of your business competitors. Research what they do well, and what they struggle with.
In order to establish a trusted brand in a local community you will have to compete with already established businesses. Often times they have already earned the communities trust. The best way to do this is to do extensive research, and find out what their company does well and what they struggle with.
This is important for two key reason. After finding out what they do well, you will have to ensure your company can do it just as well. This will show the community your competitors are not the only ones who exceed in this industry. They will now have options to purchase your specific service offering. Secondly you must research what they do poorly, and ensure your business does is well.
This will establish you in the community as the superior company that offers your service. If their company excelled at customer service and so do yo that’s a good first step. However, lets say they take a longer time to complete a project to ensure quality. See if your company can do it faster, while also upholding the quality of your service.
Having A Great Logo
Having a great logo is not a crucial step to ensuring your trusted brand. However, it will help your business stand out, and be recognized by your community.
When your company is trying to build a trusted brand, having a strong logo, or brand image will help gain attention from the community. Many older companies do not want to update there logo, because they believe it is a community staple. They believe their logo is recognizable to the community and if they change it they will attract less attention.
This is an opportunity for your company to ensure you have a sleek and professional looking logo. This will help you stand out from the opposition.
The Next Steps
Now, having said all this any small business owner would be overwhelmed, and this is understandable. Building up a trusted brand can be difficult. Especially when you have to focus on running your business and making sure everything is operating properly.
The best choice for building a trusted brand is to hire a third party company who can work behind the scenes for you. This is a great option for those who might not have the time to create a trusted brand.
In this guide we have explained some important steps on how to build a trusted brand, however the choice is yours. If you have the time to build the brand yourself, this is an effective way to build local community trust in your business. However, if you don’t have the time to do this, we recommend hiring a third party company.
