Why is brand reputation important?

Why is brand reputation important?

It’s how the right people find you and stay with you

When we build a brand to share our gifts and talents with the world, we ultimately want to build long-term relationships with the right clients – relationships that bring happiness and benefits to both sides.

In that context, we can see our brand (the extension of ourselves and our talents) as a person who meets other people (clients) throughout its life, to walk and work together, forming happy, lasting and mutually beneficial relationships. Brand reputation, which forms and makes the brand’s character, is key for forming and growing those relationships.

At first, the client does not know your brand, just like a stranger at a party does not know you. For there to be the first contact, there needs to be a reason why. In branding and in ‘real social life’, that reason is resonance: something catches the other’s attention, there is interest, there is a need, a conversation starts. From there, for that connection to become a relationship or friendship, there needs to be trust, mutual interest and reliability – be it the relationship to a person or a brand.

Resonance, the initial attraction, is needed for the relationship to even start. Trust and aliveness is the only ground on which it can grow and blossom.

Brand reputation is important

-> so you attract the right people (your dream clients) because they resonate with and need what you are and offer, as your brand embodies honesty and alignment to your truth

-> so that those people feel safe and met in this relationship and keep coming back to weave and grow this connection with your brand

-> so that the client feels the brand is alive and vibrant and, in a dynamic way, keeps offering them what is deeply important and relevant to them

It’s all in the body

Be it the first moment of resonance with your brand, or the ongoing interest and inspiration, in Embodied Branding we’re aware that it is through the body that the client will feel and know her initial yes, her growing trust and her ongoing curiosity to keep living her relationship with your brand. It is a felt sense from the depth of being, body and psyche that guides the client in both – to connect in the first place and to keep coming back to weave and grow this relationship.

It is vital to perceive how the power of an embodied experience of trust can activate your inner yes and can help you with your brand. Feel free to understand more here.

Now, let’s see what are some practical ingredients for our brand reputation; ingredients that will attract the right audience and make them stay and grow with us.

Main ingredients for successful brand reputation

Or how to grow happy and lasting relationships with your dream audience

1 // Resonance

How do we stand out in the vast sea of voices that want to be heard?

The global market is a big, colourful and loud place. Our prospective client needs a good reason why they get in touch with us, in the midst of so many offerings. That reason is resonance. It is that moment when something inside the client stops, feels and consciously or subconsciously notices an opening inside the being, heart and body; a resonance with our brand and what we are and offer; an inner yes. An invisible string in our client vibrates in resonance with the image, values, flavour or character that is our brand. Our brand is distinctive and has been recognized by the client we have been looking for because it offers exactly what the client needs. There’s a vibrational match, yay!

What do you need to do for that to happen? The most wonderful thing is that this happens by you and your brand being uniquely you, by your brand being distinctive through you ‘just’ being yourself! There is only one flavour and vibration like yours in the whole world. This flavour makes your brand, and this is exactly what will pluck this ‘string’ inside your client, who is looking for exactly what it is that you have to offer.

You don’t need to work hard or have an amazing strategy to be distinctive or original, you already are. What you do have to do is to start with presence, receptiveness and patience, right in the centre of yourself and allow that which you are and wish to share with the world to arise in you. Before you can touch that place inside your client that brings resonance, you have to be touched by that yourself and let it expand and ripple into all of you and the brand that you are birthing and growing. This asks for deep inner alignment, honesty and truth about who you are and what you want to offer. It also asks for the willingness and courage to be and show yourself as you are, in your brand and offering, without any masks.

As you know, in Embodied Branding we learn and discover with and through our bodies. So, if you feel called to a deeper exploration of your brand, here is a link to a guided tree of life movement meditation, to support you in your embodied inquiry and manifest your project. 

After your ideal client has found you and the first contact has been made, the next question is: what can you do so that this client keeps coming back?

For that it needs two things: a delicate balance between relevance and coherence – the art of listening, moving and staying fluid with your offering and the necessity for an established ground and stability.

2 // Relevance

Is what I’m offering of use to the world and is it sustainable for me and others?

Relevance is very important on your branding journey: if your brand is not relevant to yourself or your clients, it loses its vital spark and its reason to be. Relevance is the crucial why – your own why, the very reason for your brand and your clients why for contacting you.

In order to remain relevant and vibrant in your branding, it is necessary to stay open and receptive to the web of life that your brand is woven into – the world at large and your clients’ world. Your offering wants to always be informed by you listening to the needs of our audience and adapting your offering to stay aligned with that.

There is a certain degree of fluidity that is necessary so that your brand stays relevant, to yourself and your audience. Instead of being rigid, as if we were branded for life, we stay fluid in our listening and offering, adaptable to what is relevant. The key question is always: Is what I am offering of use to this client? Through constant listening and some fluidity in your offering, we are able to keep being true to ourselves and we acknowledge that our brand is in fact an organic being, who keeps evolving, shifting and growing. For our clients, this is very attractive, they feel met, heard and spoken to and what we offer remains relevant to them, while at the same time offering a sense of vibrancy and aliveness that is very magnetic.

3 // Coherence

Can our dream client recognize us every time?

To explore the question of how clients keep coming back to you, I like to return to the analogy of a developing friendship or relationship. The reassuring and grounding stability of consistency is very powerful and is what makes us trust and feel safe; it is that which makes us stay and go deeper in a relationship. With friends or partners, it is that inner felt sense of ‘knowing where we are at’ with the other. We can trustingly rest in our repeated experience and embodied knowing of their main flavours, characteristics, shades or quirks. It is knowing (predictability) that makes us feel safe.

It is the same with our clients. When we provide the right amount of stability and consistency, our clients can trust us and feel safe, because they keep sensing and experiencing our essence – that ‘something’ they said yes to in the very beginning when they felt that resonance. They keep feeling and experiencing something they know and felt drawn to. The holding and stability which repeatedly gives the client an experience of knowing and recognizing your brand.

How do you provide stability? Stability and consistency partly come from repetition. In branding that is our communication and, most important, how we communicate. That means using the same colours, flavours, frequency, font, language, etc. Repeating what is known, what has become known as ‘you’. Furthermore, your clients also sense consistency in patterns, which means in smaller elements and ideas that make up your brand, elements that are all connected through a distinct and recognisable pattern. This pattern is your brand’s values and beliefs, which weave like a red thread through all your endeavours, products, statements and offerings; it is the core of your brand, that which is at the centre of your personal ‘why’ of your brand or business.

So, know your own inner why and keep letting that shine and sing clearly through all your communication and touchpoints with your clients. This will keep reminding them of that resonance they felt inside when they first met you. It is that which grows a firm ground of stability, consistency and trust underneath the relationship you are embarking on with your audience.

I’d like to offer you another free embodiment practice here that will help you to connect with the deep ‘why’ of your brand in a physical, contemplative and embodied way: Embody your Why.

Short and sweet recap

-> Brand reputation is key because it directs the right audience to connect with you and grow a dynamic relationship with your brand.

-> Know the deep why of your brand and embody that in an authentic, honest and truthful way in your branding so that the right clients feel a strong resonance with the unique gifts you are and offer.

-> Keep listening and adapting your offer to the changing web of life your brand is woven into so that it says relevant to your clients and their needs.

-> Establish coherence for yourself and your audience so that they can trust your brand more and more over time and feel safe to keep coming back to build their relationship with you.

~

image by joshua abner @ pexels.com