Maintaining a strong brand is one of the most important aspects of running a successful company. Think about the last purchase you made. Chances are that your choice of product was based primarily on two factors: price and brand.
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Customers gravitate toward brands they know and trust. Imagine you are taking a vacation to a foreign country you have never visited before. You have just arrived and are exhausted and hungry. You wander into a shop and see dozens of unfamiliar products in a language you don’t understand. You have no idea what to select. What if you buy something and it is disgusting? Or worse, what if it is not safe for you to eat for any reason? Suddenly, your eyes spot a bright yellow bag of Lays potato chips. Even though you can’t read any of the words on the bag, you know exactly what the product will taste like. They are twice the cost of any of the other chips, but you are not in the mood to gamble, so you grab them and head to the checkout.
This kind of customer trust is created by the company first developing a consistent, high-quality product and then investing in marketing & branding. Once you create customer trust, though, you also have to maintain it. A key aspect of maintaining your brand reputation is effective brand monitoring and brand defense.
Brand monitoring involves tracking instances where your brand is mentioned. At YouMailPS, we use state-of-the-art AI tools to scan content and determine the status of your brand reputation. This brand monitoring is an ongoing service that helps to identify potential problems. YouMailPS notifies customers when we detect potential trademark infringement. We also alert customers of potential unlawful behavior associated with voice calls.
Brand defense involves taking down bad actors who are misusing the brand’s identity. Brand defense uses information about incidents that have already occurred. YouMailPS uses content-based analytics tools to gather definitive proof of unwanted activity. This proof can then be used in enforcement. Enforcement can occur by removing bad actors from networks, supporting legal action against said actors, or a combination of the two.
In addition to stopping brand imitation, YouMailPS works with brands to respond to trends that are identified during the brand monitoring process. By staying knowledgeable about their brand reputation, companies can respond to any misperceptions customers may have about the company.
Brand scandals are taking up an increasing amount of space on the front page of newspapers. A huge amount of people are aware of AirBnb’s battle with New York City or the 2016 data breach that resulted in Uber having to pay $148 million. People love a scandal, and brand scandals are becoming almost inevitable for large brands.
Identity management is a key part of maintaining your brand reputation. It is already hard enough for businesses to survive in a world where innovation is being challenged at every corner. If you don’t invest in identity management, your brand reputation will likely be compromised by incidents that your company didn’t take any part in initiating.
Let’s look at an example to understand why identity management is important to maintaining your brand reputation. In 2017, a Florida man used 100 million robocalls to imitate a variety of different companies, including TripAdvisor, Marriott, and Expedia. The robocalls offered customers fake vacation packages [https://www.invoca.com/blog/what-businesses-can-do-to-stop-robocalls-and-call-fraud] and connected them to a call center in Mexico that sold these deceptive packages.
The reason TripAdvisor became aware of this scam was that they were actively investing in identity management. It was through analysis of an inordinate influx of negative reviews that TripAdvisor was able to identify that their brand was being imitated by this man. Companies like TripAdvisor already have enough to worry about when it comes to maintaining their brand reputation without letting bad actors run wild.
The best way to maintain your brand reputation is by working with protective services like YouMailPS. We use automated systems to continuously monitor mentions of your brand and notify you of any potentially damaging patterns that are emerging. We also offer a full suite of services that will help you with your brand defense and identity management.
Ongoing brand monitoring is essential to defending your brand against misinformation and imitation. The quicker you can identify situations, the less damage fraudsters can do to your brand. You can read more about the services offered by YouMailPS here.