Brand safety refers to measures that you put in to ensure that your brand reputation is not damaged as you advertise. Brand safety is crucial as brand identity is precious. It is a product of deliberate decisions to get consumers to recognize it, so anything that puts your brand reputation at risk can be costly.
Brand safety is all about measures preventing your ads from appearing alongside inappropriate and offensive content. As a company, you can create brand mitigation measures to prevent your paid ads from popping up in online content that promotes violence or hate speech.
In this article, we shall expound on other essential measures to potential risks to brand reputation. We shall point out how ensuring brand safety is a collective effort of every member of the company and the importance of protecting your reputation in this new world of social advertising. So let us get straight to it.
Table of Contents
Keep Employees and Associates Happy
One of the major causes of damaged brand reputation is disgruntled employees, vendors, or other business associates. Your company’s reputation attracts and sustains anyone who associates with your business. With the employment rates likely to go up in 2023 and 2024, placing happy employees on a pedestal and putting them front nd center is one way to make your brand shine.
Disgruntled employees and associates can quickly damage your reputation by seeking unwanted media attention and writing bad reviews on social media and job boards, among other unhappy ways of voicing their frustrations. They can also ignore security policies to communicate how they feel about their employer.
The best news is that you can move your brand ahead of this by creating a mechanism through which employees and other business associates can report issues and risks. Carry out routine checks in with them and plan on strategic communication to navigate through. Employee and associate satisfaction is part of branding, so ensure that you have it in your overall business strategy.
Generate Your Good Press
Outside customer reviews and comments, most of what should be known about your company should come from you. Take charge and generate good press by controlling reviews and comments, actively engaging your audience online, and staying active on all platforms. Google your business at least once a week to uncover some of the things you might need to be aware of and take a step towards controlling what customers say about you.
Don’t get stuck in the past when Leverage some of the more progressive advertising mediums, such as AR Print Ads, and maintain an active online presence by posting feel-good moments with your team – ideally by generating content that tells your unique brand journey. Make sure that you also publicly address negative reviews and complaints as soon as you see them, as customers appreciate brands that take responsibility for their actions.
Monitor Your Digital Footprint
As you protect your brand identity, be keen on essential metrics for sudden changes that could lead to negative publicity. Use your Google and admin dashboards to analyze downward and upward trends. The best thing is that there are tools that can help you get real-time alerts whenever people talk about you online. Hence, tracking your digital footprints is essential to stay on top of what is being shared.
Protect Your Privacy and Networks
Hackers are on the loose, and it’s uncommon for them to gain access to crucial customer or employee information. Such incidences might be beyond your control, but how you react when they happen will make a difference in mitigating reputation risks. Prevent your networks from such attacks by educating your employees on security measures to reduce human error incidents.
Get Personal With Your Prospects
In an era where AI and machine learning technology are taking over, human interactions are slowly fading. Employ advanced technology to streamline your company’s core functions and free your employees to focus on providing a more personalized experience to customers. Customer interactions are valuable sources of data.
Personalized customer interactions can help you identify their pain points, how you can improve their satisfaction, and what steps you need to take to create an overall outstanding customer experience. Personal interactions create personal bonding in any business relationship, which builds trust, comfort, and goodwill over time. Generally, any interaction with customers is an opportunity to change their opinion about your brand.
Importance of Company Values in Brand Safety
If customers realize a gap between your company values and your behaviors, it can be a risk to your reputation. Your website and marketing materials have a lot to say about your reputation, so ensure that your employees understand them and have behaviors that match those values. Make your values operational. Identify any misalignment and incorporate your values in every aspect of your company.
