Improve Ratings with Savvy Branding and Reputation Management

Most people remember the Marlboro man, but would be hard put to name the CEO of Phillip Morris, the manufacturers of Marlboro. Murphy shut shop some years ago, but most people in their thirties, forties, and fifties will remember the Murphy baby – without having any recollection of what product the baby was the face for. These two examples underline the importance of having a face to represent your brand, and the association that gets built in the minds of even non-buyers.

Make Your CEO the Face of Your Brand

The disadvantage of using a celebrity from entertainment or sports is that their popularity is subject to change. Moreover, unless there is an underlying, or overt connection with your products and services; the connection won’t be established in the minds of your customers.However, appropriate CEO branding through personal branding firms in Wilmington would ensure that your target audience connects your organization with the face, i.e., the CEO. Perhaps the greatest example of CEO branding is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. How many people even know, let alone recall that Paul Allen was the co-founder? Till Steve Balmer replaced him in 2000, Bill Gates was the best known CEO in the electronics industry.

Route to a Healthier Profit Margin

Your reputation can make or break your business as issues like trust, and willingness to buy your products and services will certainly be impacted. If you are still wondering why CEO reputation management is so critical,consider your risks if you don’t do so:

• Your company’s reputation too could be jeopardized.
• Your most innovative ideas won’t gain any purchase.
• People won’t trust you enough to desire to partner you, especially if you are floating a new venture.
• Your best talent might prefer to seek greener pastures as they would be terrified that your lack of credibility will wear off on them.

Therefore, you must ensure that not only your employees, but also your associates and investors trust you blindly. If your CEO’s reputation has taken a hit for whatever reason; you must take proactive steps to counteract it by consulting Top PR firms in Wilmington. Only an experienced reputation management company would know how to counter the flak unobtrusively, and then rebuild your CEO’s reputation.

Stay in the Public Consciousness

One of the primary reasons for focusing on CEO personal branding isto create a place in the public consciousness, and stay there. You would do well to keep in mind that just as Rome was not built in a day, a CEO’s personal brand is built gradually. Those who become sensations overnight, also disappear overnight. Strategies to build the CEO’s personal brand include:

• Create a strong social media presence.
• Be visible at major events related to your industry.
• Host events which are calculated to build and strengthen awareness of your products and services – but center it around your CEO’s physical presence.
• Encourage her/him to develop the reputation of being a subject matter expert.

Be a thought leader: Remember TheDevilWearsPrada? The mere pursing of Miranda Priestly’s lips makes a fashion designer trash an entire collection to recreate another one. That was the power of a thought leader in the extreme.

Bio:

Ascendant Group is one of the leading CEO branding agency having it’s headquartering in Newark, Delaware and Philadelphia. Our prime focus is to prepare CEO branding strategy & CEO personal branding. We have been featured in Forbes, Inc., etc.

Increase Your Sales with Savvy Branding Strategies

Your brand is the identity you have created in the public perception. When you build a brand, you create certain expectations with regard to quality, pricing, convenience, and sheer style. You gain more by being an influencer as it spurs purchasing decisions among those who desire to share some space with you, even if it is digitally. Whether yours is a startup, or a middle level business, you need to work on your branding strategies for them to pay rich dividends in the years to come. It begins with clarity on who are your target audience to ensure that all your messages are honed to target them.

Build a Coherent Communication Strategy

The best way to build your brand, or recast it, would be to hire a branding agency in Philadelphia. In the fast changing economic scenario, building, and retaining brand loyalty has become far more challenging than it was even twenty years ago. There are far more options available to the customer, and far greater access to information. Convert the latter challenge into an opportunity by getting into conversations with your existing and prospective customers. The easiest way to do so would be on social media.As long as the conversation stays positive, it will generate more traffic to your website. Trustworthiness is another aspect you must consider when designing your communication plan. It serves both purposes:

• Clarify doubts
• Generate awareness

Get your branding agency to position you appropriately: The biggest mistake many businesses make is to leave the positioning vague. You must develop a communication plan which capitalizes on consumer emotions, and utilizes the diverse tools available smartly:

• Have a strong social media presence via web pages on them;
• Run a blog page on your own website to highlight your products and services;
• Run your advertising campaign to capitalize on happenings nationally and locally;
• Host events, or sponsor them where there is likely to be a major gathering of your target audience;
• Create a distinctive identity for your brand.

Find the Right Strategic Partner to Boost Your Bottom Line

Customer loyalty fluctuates as much due to prevalent economic conditions, as due to the alternatives available to your buyers. It also depends on whether your niche is in the necessaries club, or in the luxury segment which people can do without during hard times. Therefore, you should work closely with the most astute PR firms in Philadelphia to remind your core customers how much they have benefited from their association with you, and how your products and services improve their quality of life. They will help you focus on relationships with:

• customers;
• associates;
• investors;
• employees.

Gain traction in key markets: Discriminating use of PR would help you generate new leads, and gain traction in key markets. Since credibility is a vital component of your communication plan, PR will gain you greater traction as people are likelier to trust something they read in a blog, or article in a newspaper, magazine, or journal than they would an advertisement.

Build Credibility While Strengthening Your Image

It is a common error of perception that public relation (PR) exercises don’t carry as much weightage as advertising, search engine operations (SEO), and publicity in marketing strategies. Many companies carry out PR activities perfunctorily by way of handing out press releases, usually after they have performed some activities in the community to establish their corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, PR activities are not about planting stories. They ensure that people are talking about you all the time. Another common error is that you need to come across as goody two shoes.

People love the bad boys: The manner in which President Trump won the elections and the continuance of his popularity seem to indicate that the people love the bad boys too. His PR team obviously worked on the philosophy that most people have a hidden (sometimes, overt) desire to reform people, and often believe that things, or people can’t be as bad as they are being portrayed. What else would explain the popularity of the stormy petrels like John McEnroe and Boris Becker, who combined tennis genius with a combustible temperament?

Bolster Your Brand to Expand Into Uncharted Territories

When you are in expansion mode, you can’t afford to miss out activities to fortify your brand. If you are uncertain as to how to go about it, and don’t have the inhouse resources required for it, hire one of the top PR firms in NYC to bring you sterling results. They become your strategic partners, and build your credibility by following the three as in their plan of action:

• Analyze
• Assess
• Act

This will involve analyzing the various components of your business, such as:

• Where you stand now?
• What has been your growth rate?
• How are your competitors faring? and
• Which are your natural strengths?

This will help them to assess what is going right with you, and which of your strategies need reworking. They will also ensure that you reach your target audience – be it through print, electronic, or social media – because they know where to catch the attention of prospective customers. It also means that they increase your online visibility.

They Know the Best Ways to Pitch a Story

One of the biggest advantages of the competent PR firms in NYC is that they know how to pitch a tale, which not only catches, but retains customer attention. Further, they will devise ways and means to send regular messages to the target audience through blogs, articles, and stories run through diverse media. They don’t craft nifty phrases or slogans to sell products. Rather, their strategies help attract the right kind of talent for your company, which will automatically improve processes, and enhance the profitability of your business. Further, their strategies will attract the right business partners, who will add value to your brand by investing in your company; thereby helping you, expand according to plans.

PR firms raise awareness consistently: One of the biggest disadvantages of advertising is that exposure is fleeting. However, PR activities can keep people talking about you brand for days on end at far lower the cost. It creates and sustains awareness of your business.

Open Doors by Creating a Lasting Impression on Your Clients

Establish an emotional connect between your brand and your customers. When your customers begin to associate your brands positively with personal milestones, and events; then customer loyalty is assured. This could be the differentiating factor which makes you stand out from your competition. A growing perception among buyers worldwide is that a significant proportion of a brand or company’s image is colored by how people perceive the CEO. This means that you add to your marketing stratagems by making the CEO the brand ambassador, the face of your organization.

Capitalize on the Persona, Performance, and Prestige of Your CEO

If you desire to make a lasting impression on your target audience; then your CEO branding strategies should focus her/his persona, performance, and prestige. These facets are interdependent. They impact your company’s reputation and performance individually, but collectively they constitute the CEO branding mix. One should view these aspects as a holistic web of interactions among themselves, as well as company reputation and performance. You will understand the success or otherwise of such a strategy by comparing the financial health of your company after a few months/years with benchmark figures you had established earlier. Analyze financial performance indicators such as profits, net operating cash flow, ROI, and market-performance indicators such as market share or stock price to take stock.

Keep your eyes open though: Celebrity CEOs bring both benefits and burdens when it comes to company performance. It is up to you to ensure that the benefits are not short term. Therefore, while building your CEO’s brand, don’t overlook building the business too — and even more important — build trust. Keep in mind that a successful brand self-promotes, stimulates a unique experience, breathes loyalty into it, and offers consistency in the quality of the service it offers.

Motivate and Inspire Your Team

The most effective personal branding firms understand that surging ahead requires motivating and inspiring your team, as much by personal example, as by precept. They will tell you that people form judgments about others based on objective physical characteristics such as gender and age; but also on subjective characteristics like education, social status, appearance, and facial expressions. Therefore, they will advise you to focus on transparency as much as aligning all internal and external communications regarding your organization with the CEO’s activities and achievements. They will remind you of the value of your having a strong online presence to keep your brand in the public view continuously.

Get People to Resonate with Your CEO

A faceless brand is less definitive than one which has a recognizable face attached to it. When you choose to make your CEO the face of your corporate brand, you have multiple benefits, and some drawbacks. In today’s highly competitive markets – national and international – you need to ensure that your brand has the kind of pull to get ahead. In a constantly fluctuating market, you need to ensure that you are forever ahead of the upward curve.

Add to Your CEO’s Star Value

Customer loyalty will depend on their personal identification with your brand. One way to create that personal identification is CEO personal branding. It becomes the differentiating factor when you integrate the CEO’s brand with the company’s public image, as both stand to benefit – the company and the CEO. If yours is a public limited company (PLC); then you would be able to literally capitalize on it. This means that you must curate what information becomes public, and how. Brands are built with savvy information management. It is not necessary for either the CEO or the organization to come across as pure as driven snow. It is more important for there to be a synergy between your company image, and how you manage your CEO’s personal branding. Each should complement and reinforce the other.

Don’t Ignore The Underlying Risk: When your company’s brand is too closely interwoven with your CEO’s persona, your stock could take a hit when you part ways- which is certain to occur sooner or later – as happened to Apple when Steve Jobs went off. Further, if there is any perceived negativity about a CEO, it tends to rub off on the company’s image.

Harness the Inherent Power of the CEO’s Brand

It is important for you to understand that the CEO impacts not just the financial aspects of the company such as its financial performance, profits, and stock returns; but also the non-financial aspects such as job application, and retention. You can create a direct bond with your investors and customers through your CEO. This makes CEO reputation management a more delicate operation than is easily perceived. While such reputation management, especially online reputation management is best left to the experts; you should also periodically review the impact on the ground. Begin from within the organization to check what kind of goodwill the company enjoys amongst its employees. If you find that more than five percent are simply biding their time till when they can move on; then it means you have your work cut out for yourself.

So, if you really want to take your organization to a top-level beyond this market then, you have to work on your CEO branding strategy. And, to make this possible, Ascendant Group is working round O’clock to provide the best strategy. Our CEO branding, corporate branding, and executive branding model uses a proprietary 5 phases of branding system, we focus on brand monetization, brand acceleration, and brand strategy. Our corporate and CEO branding clients have ranged from executive corporate branding clients at Fortune 50 companies to multimillionaire CEO’s and founders of entrepreneurial ventures.

So, be focused, be authentic, be unique, be precise, be consistent, be empathetic, be attuned to timing.

Monitor Public Perception of Your Brand

These days’ reputations are made – and ruined – online. Blogs, comments, trolling, and reviews posted online all combine to build up (or destroy) an image. So, if you are planning to establish your brand as a force to reckon with in your field of action; then you must get built carefully to resonate with your own persona, your brand, and your target audience. Imagine POTUS Trump suddenly becoming courteous, and caring. Of course, sometimes such a shock can serve you very well if you need to catch public attention which had dipped alarmingly.

Your Branding Company Should Be Wholly Vested in Your Success

To maintain a healthy online image, you would be well advised to hire a personal branding agency which will consider your success as a brand – regardless of whether you are an individual, represent a lobby, are a company, or an organization – their personal milestone. Such an agency handles public perception of your skills, capabilities, USP, and reputation as they understand how your reputation can adversely impact your growth as a company. It is a volatile economy now, and will remain so for most of the foreseeable future. Therefore, you need to be doubly cautious, and ensure that any kind of negativity your brand, especially when it is your personal brand.

Your social profile matters: Whether you are a professional, an artist, a musician, a sportsperson, a designer, or a politician; you must build your personal brand saliently. When you are active on social media, and visible offline; you reinforce your image. Remember to do it positively as there will be people searching for your social profile before they decide to support, or oppose you. Also, what you do offline and your reputation in the real world will make its way online?

Brand Extension Is a Financially Sound Proposition

Millions of customer’s judge, reject, embrace, and endorse the brands in their world through blogs, social networks, discussion groups, review sites, and countless other word-of-mouth forums. Be sure tousle diverse media sagely for yourpersonal branding in Delaware. Media for connecting with your target audience have changed radically as now most promotions are done through social media. Social media sites are interactive, immersive, and socially connected. This makes them fundamentally different from the old media archetypes as customers can actively participate in the success or failure of your brand, and your online image. Appropriate brand extension could be the difference between your next venture becoming a blockbuster, or a crashing flop.

Change Public Perception Positively to Boost Your Bottom Line

How well perceived is your company and brand? Your primary target is obviously to attract the maximum number of customers – and retain them. Unless you are able to retain customers, your business will remain shaky. Given the kind of volatility markets have been displaying, it becomes even more critical that you build public perception of your brand should be positive. If you are finding it challenging to conceive, produce, and manage paid messages to influence the public, you probably should hire a public relations (PR) company to handle it.

Build and Sustain Investor Confidence

One of the most important things PR firms in Wilmington ensure is to build investor confidence. Remember that, every brand creates its own brand equity. If yours is a public limited company, its financial health will depend as much on the share prices rising continuously – or, at least staying stable after rising — as it will on the off take of your products and services. That is why PR firms closely monitor the various media, especially social media, to note the kind of public perception of your company is generating. Therefore, they generate positive publicity through stories in the media on issues likely to influence public opinion, such corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

Use social media to increase online visibility: The most powerful tool for shaping public opinion is to use social media presence saliently. This will increase your visibility, especially if you are seen to respond to diverse events — even those that do not impact your company directly. This increased visibility should drive greater traffic to your website, since your aim is not to simply have people talking about you.

PR Firms Are Image Shapers

When you need help to shape your image and the best people to do so are Philadelphia PR firms, which understand that the information ecosystem is now in a perpetual state of agitation and transformation thanks to a deluge of new technologies. These days you cannot control, censor, or cancel out the information you don’t want people to have. However, you can certainly mitigate the adverse effects of negative press with savvy reputation management — which is the precise reason you hired a PR firm in the first place. If for some reason your company is facing a high turnover of personnel, then savvy PR could stem, and then reverse the tide with appropriate posts on websites which are aimed at professionals to share work experience, and rate previous employers.

Make Your Presence Positive and Stronger

As an artist you want to be perceived for your true worth. You should be a brand of your own – a brand which reflects your personal beliefs and values – to kick start your career. This distinctive brand image can be leveraged to build your career. If you are an already established artist, then personal branding would go a long way in giving it an additional boost. Though artists have used some kind of public relations services for centuries; personal branding is of relatively recent vintage. Just as newer markets have opened up for manufacturers thanks to the internet, artists too can reach out to audiences they might never have earlier.

Get Professional Help to Define Your Artistic Identity

It really doesn’t matter whether you are a painter, a graphic artist, a singer, a writer, a dancer, an actor, or standup comedian. You can only benefit from personal branding services. Most artists cringe at the mere thought of promoting themselves as a brand, finding it too brash an exercise. However, artists too need material success, not just creative satisfaction. People will queue up to buy tickets for your show, or your latest painting, or your latest DVD, only if they know your name, and the quality of your work. In the previous century, artists tried to stay in the news to catch the attention of the people, often with weird activities and statements.

Be a little more sophisticated: A good personal branding firm would suggest a more sophisticated approach that is personal branding on social media. This could vary from having interactive sessions with fans on social media to posting blogs about your own industry, and what you are doing to give it a new shape. If such an article is posted on a site like LinkedIn, the chatter it generates in response, ensures your name will be bandied around enough to arouse curiosity, and create awareness amongst those who are unfamiliar with your work.

Present Your Art Work in the Most Professional and Compelling Way

Artists have depended on personal contacts to get shows, new contracts, exhibitions etc. You can now go beyond that circle. You want your artistic ideations to catch popular notice, and be appreciated appropriately, and as widely as possible. This is where personal branding for artists gives you the cutting edge advantage, as it piques people’s curiosity enough to make your brand memorable. Just keep in mind that it is not one massive ego trip, but a serious professional effort to enhance your success.

Accelerate Your Company’s Growth

Popular perception of your company, your brands, and of your products and services could well be way off the mark. The primary reason for this is that your prospective, and even current customers may not have adequate information about you, the strengths and unique aspects of your brands, and how you are better than the competition. You also need to dig out the reason why there is any negative perception of your brands. Don’t make it a manhunt or a blame game. Rather, it should be a critical assessment of your weaknesses and threats to optimize your online presence and offerings.

Choose Your Platforms with Care

A critical factor of securing a positive image online, and improving the credibility of your brand is the choice of platform. Let a savvy CEO branding firm take charge of promoting your brand, and give your image the makeover it needs to become a market leader. Such a firm will guide you on which sites you should be highly visible on, and where you are better not seen. Suppose your company manufactures heavy machinery; it would make little sense for you to be very visible on Instagram partying to the hilt; though being visible on LinkedIn or Reddit would make sense.

Encash opportunities: A healthy cyber image requires you to first identify which is your target audience to establish a connect with them. You don’t want to lose potential customers or repeat orders. Suppose one of your customers is ruffled by something pertaining to your business quality, pricing, delivery, or after sales service apologize, and dig for details to identify irritants and eliminate them.Effective listening is key to successful communication.

Grow Your Leads, Sales, Loyalty, and Reputation

You would be amazed at the kind of response you get when CEO branding is paying off. It would translate into more leads, higher sales, greater brand loyalty of your customers, and an enhanced reputation which would make something of a cult figure in your industry. Only seasoned public relations firms know how to make you appear to be approachable without seeming commonplace. They know how to get the message across, and which would be the most appropriate tools. They would aid you in identifying which metrics to utilize to measure the success of PR activities.

Share information: An excellent way to establish a connect with your target audience would be to share information about your company and your industry. The most successful PR activities are those which convert unhappy experiences into happy memories for customers.

Cut Through the Noise for Greater Business Success

One of the biggest challenges faced by most businesses these days is to be distinguishable from competitors. You don’t want to be trapped in the quagmire of mediocrity. If you get ripped off online by an irate customer, or disgruntled former employee; your sales, and public image both take a hit. To see your business soaring, you need to adopt proactive steps to become unique. Though most people are aware of the need to have a swanky website, a street smart marketing strategy, and catchy advertising jingles; they might not appreciate the value of online reputation management, or of personal branding.

Generate Positive Exposure and Good Press

It is the way you present yourself which will create the difference between having a horde of visitors and conversions, and being just there as a spectator while competitors bask in their customers’ approval. Savvy CEO reputation management will automatically improve your business’ ratings. Not only do you need to carefully build an image which is aligned to the company’s core expertise; you must ensure that you represent the company’s values. Remember, that people seek information and recommendations from friends and relatives, even colleagues, on social networking sites.

The medium is the message: Therefore, if the CEO of your organization is seen and heard frequently on diverse media she/he becomes a household name. Though familiarity is said to breed contempt; in this instance it enhances trust, leading to greater conversions, and better retentions. For this, it is vital that your website is not only visually attractive; but also easy to navigate.

Build a Strong Customer Base Which Swears by Your Company

You can establish your own brand by creating and sustaining a distinctive image. This CEO personal branding has emerged as a significant marketing tool over the past few years. There’s no point in shrinking at the thought of promoting oneself. People remember a brand better if there is a face identifiable with it. Your CEO personal branding goes a long way in humanizing products and services, which in turn makes for a healthier profit margin. In the long run, if you cultivate an image of approachability, it rubs off on to the core brand of the company.

Another collateral advantage: Building your brand on social networking sites protects your associates and colleagues, while warding off negative reviews and propaganda. Using what you know best as your position of strength is capitalizing on a core strength. Don’t let others capture your narrative.