Many businesses are local. However, when going worldwide with marketing and business sales, the scope of your business grows substantially and with it, the business risk expands.
Let’s take a look at business reputation and why it becomes more relevant when actively expanding.
The Smaller Company Expands from Its Early Beginnings
For smaller businesses that are on an expansion push, there are many new concerns to be aware of. One of them is often overlooked: reputation management.
Perhaps the company was small enough before to not worry too much about its reputation; it was just trying to grow its revenues and expand into a larger office. It’s only when a major customer complaint crops up on public message boards or Twitter that the small company realises it may have a big problem.
Expansion Creates New Management Challenges
Maintaining a business at its current level is fine. The staff know what to do. They’re all trained up (hopefully) and the operations run smoothly. There are only so many local customers and they haven’t tended to want to make a fuss when something didn’t go according to plan.
With expansion, it creates considerable disruption. There are larger offices, an increased staff payroll and many new people to train and manage. The tight-knit group is no more. And the stakes are higher. It’s easy to suffer from overly tired staff when recruitment lags staffing demands. This can lead to extra mistakes because employees are tired.
A customer reply or a company tweet that’s ill-advised goes out. Error rates on customer orders might lead to vocal customer complaints online and sales growth has hit a wall. A lowered business reputation is the end result. Growing pains!
Expansion Creates New Competitors
The business was previously small enough to only have local competitors rather than deep-funded worldwide brands with a staff that dwarfs your own. And the local competitors – you could handle them. Perhaps you knew the owners and there was an agreement to not step on each other’s toes.
Expanding globally is a different situation altogether. It’s the big league now. Competitors are at each other’s throats. Even if there are only a few customers complaining, a competitor could get an article published about your company that’s less than flattering. It happens! Reputation management is there to protect you and deal with this type of issue by getting the piece unpublished or making it less prominent via internet searches.
Saving a Business Reputation
Protecting a business reputation that’s come under some unfair scrutiny is the job of reputation protection firms like ReputationDefender. They aim to protect their clients from harm and resolve damaging online reputational issues. This might mean getting some positive press out to overcome a bump in the road or combatting negative comments to make them less prominent. They’re the friends you need when a brand is under threat in a more competitive marketplace.
Hoping a reputational problem just goes away isn’t an appropriate business response. It will undercut the prospects going forward if it isn’t handled correctly. Seek professional advice on the issue before it becomes an even larger problem.
