As an S.O.B. (small owned business), you want an upstanding brand reputation - but what even is brand reputation?
In this week’s episode of the S.O.B. Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are talking about what brand reputation is, why it’s important for your small business, and how you can go about managing it for your brand. We want all you S.O.B.s to have a strong brand reputation - so check out this episode and go be the BEST S.O.B. you can be!
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave a Review
02:29 Introduction to Brand Reputation
10:35 How Brand Reputation Affects SEO
14:02 Brand Loyalty
21:18 Brand Reputation & Collaboration
23:57 Managing A Good Brand Reputation
39:46 Measuring Brand Reputation
42:10 TLDL: Brand Reputation - Its Importance and How To Manage _________________
𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓:
SEO in 2025: https://youtu.be/aZG5wBIfVDo
How To Set Up Google Alerts: https://youtu.be/cnJqsNJXaWw?si=a4oXTA-3uBJux8s4
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Vivian: If it holds true for dating, it holds true for small businesses. If you don't think there are groups, there are Facebook groups that pop up over people's shared hate of products, okay.
Chelsea: Yes!
*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Chelsea: Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in small business, we would never call you guys names. Before we get started, a little bit of housekeeping. Have you left a review? Don't lie to me. I bet you haven't left a review. Go leave a review right now. Five stars. It helps us get in front of other small business owners and that's what we want to do. We want to help you guys feel confident in your marketing.
Also, do not forget that we have a TLDL chapter. Too long, didn't listen. We get it. You are small business owners. You guys are busy. That's why we have a little summary at the end of this episode. You can go listen to the summary, but I want to say.
We would love it if you came back and listened to the entire episode, then you can get all the nitty gritty details. If you have a topic you want us to talk about, please let us know. You can send us a DM, you can leave it in the comments, or you could email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com. We want to talk about whatever you guys want to hear about. Vivian, what are we talking about today?
Vivian: Well, Chelsea, first of all, I mean, she came out of the gate, y'all.
She told you guys exactly what you needed to do to help us out to build this SOB, Small Owned Business Community. Thank you for that. But today's topic, we are actually talking about brand reputation. The elusive brand reputation. If you guys are sitting there thinking, I know what it is, but it's kind of like nailing jello to a wall. I don't exactly know how to go about approaching it.
This topic, this discussion today is going to be extremely useful because we're going to review a couple of things, why it's important. We're also going to be talking about how to manage it. Then, you know, we're just going to have an overall discussion that I think addresses a lot of this woo woo stuff that's out there that we're like, what?
Chelsea: Exactly. So brand reputation that is...guys, you're never going to believe this, but the reputation that your brand has.
Vivian: What? I'm shocked. Color me shocked.
Chelsea: I know, right? But this is, like you said before, this is one of those topics where like, yeah, that's what it is. But, you know, why does it matter? How do you go about it? It is like you said, like trying to nail Jello. It can be really confusing. But I have five reasons why your brand reputation is important. Okay.
The first one, and the one that I find the most important, but that's just my opinion, is going to be trust and credibility. If you have a bad brand reputation, people are not going to purchase anything from you. If you have a good brand reputation, people are more likely to feel comfortable with you. They're going to trust you. You're going to be a credible business. Credible.
Yes, I said that correctly.
Vivian: She corrected herself. Well, and to that point though, let's go ahead and just...the way, because this is a marketing podcast and we understand that. Marketing and advertising plays into this brand reputation so much because it's kind of this two-way street. If you do your marketing and advertising correctly, then I think your brand reputation plays into it.
But it's going to be a lot, you have to do a lot less convincing. Yes. Okay, so it makes it a little easier to approach and to do your marketing and advertising. The other way too though is if you have a bad brand reputation, it's going to negate what you're doing on the marketing and advertising side.
That's why we think that this discussion is so important to your overall marketing strategy as a small business owner, because we don't want y'all throwing money away. I mean, if you want to throw money away, go ahead and send it to us, PO Box 785. I will gladly take it. But let me introduce you guys, because Chelsea, she's going to do the eye roll here. She already knows I like me a good analogy. I think this analogy is going to pair well with the factors or the bullet points that she's about to walk through.
Number one, she already walked through one of them, you know, it builds trust and credibility. If you single ladies out there are dating, you may know about this Facebook group. There are actually closed Facebook groups. I think they do it by regions in the country. There's one in the Southeast and it's called, *redacted*. The sole purpose of this and...
I'm married, you guys, happily married. So I was not in there...I was doing some PI work, okay? For a friend. So the interesting thing is the purpose of these groups, and they have a ton of women that are engaged in it, is basically just to, you post a picture of the guy you're dating, and then it's like, okay, if it's a red flag, you're alerting other women like, hey, this guy is a cheater or he's a pathological liar or he's not exactly, you know, up to par.
You see a lot of women that are unfortunately married and their husbands are stepping out on them. So they're posting on there and they're like, hey, if you're dating this guy, he's married with three kids. So very scandalous. But that to me, is equal to brand reputation for a business in the sense that: if I'm a man that's out here dating, the last thing I want is to have my face appear in one of these Facebook groups because it ruins my dating reputation. Everybody is going to be like, I'm not coming near that guy with a 10 foot pole because he's known to be a liar. He's known to be X, Y, and Z.
It's the same thing when we talk about your small business reputation. Chelsea, using this analogy, you don't get trust and credibility once your brand reputation's in you know, the tank.
Chelsea: in the the toilet?
Vivian: Yeah, in the toilet, right? Yeah. Like once people are like stomping all over your business name.
Which is what is going to tee up later on and we're going to go over, you know, how you can just help manage a lot of that. But I think that's a very good reason as to why it's important. It's probably the most important reason. Credibility and trust.
Chelsea: Absolutely. Well, because credibility and trust, if they don't have that, then they're not going to purchase from you. So your brand reputation is going to influence purchasing decisions. A good reputation means people are willing to buy from you. Bad reputation means, I'm definitely not going to date this guy. He's a cheater.
Vivian: Exactly. Well, and I think that's the...if we think that in today's day and age, the same...if it holds true for dating, it holds true for small businesses, y'all, okay? If you don't think there are groups, there are Facebook groups that pop up over people's shared hate of products, okay? Or brands. Yeah.
What was that scandalous brand? The pants, it's not Lululemon's. It was...it was the one that everybody sold, the dresses and the...
Chelsea: It wasn't Lululemon?
Vivian: No...
Chelsea: Lulularoo? Did I not say that right?
Vivian: I think you added one too many lulus.
Chelsea: Oh, so lularue. That sounds wrong too. I don't think, I think everyone knows what we're talking about maybe. But the really, the really bad leggings, that's what we're talking about. Okay.
Vivian: Not Lulularoo.
Yes. So the reason I brought up that brand was because there were entire groups that were dedicated to that brand because they thought it was like a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme.
Chelsea: Well, it was, but yeah.
Vivian: Same thing, what was the shake one?
Chelsea: Shakeology?
Vivian: No, Herbalife.
Chelsea: Herbalife.
Vivian: Same thing with Herbalife. So going, steering this back to brand reputation.
It's because if enough people start to pick up and say, hey, we have a shared dislike, distrust, shared experience of a particular brand, they will start to congregate. I think that's where, you know, just understanding, we don't want to scare you as a small business because we do think, you know, you guys are out there, you're putting out good products, good services.
You have a great small business. We just want you to understand that getting ahead of some of this stuff can help prevent it becoming a bigger issue down the road.
Chelsea: Yeah. As long as you don't have a Ponzi scheme. Yeah.
Vivian: If you have a pyramid scheme, probably don't promote it.
Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. Vivian, let's go back to the cheaters and relationships because I want to talk about your analogy that Google is a matchmaker.
Brand reputation affects your SEO. And I know you guys are forgetting about that, but Google's algorithm does take into account your brand reputation. It makes sense because Google is a matchmaker. They want to get the best businesses in front of you. If your business has a bad brand reputation, they're not going to show it to anyone.
Vivian: Yeah, and I'm so glad that you are touching on this because you guys, there are two sets of realities nowadays. Let's just be honest, there is the real life in-person reality. I'm sitting here next to my baby sister, and then there's the online reality. I think that's something we as small business owners have to accept.
We're not going back y'all, it's 2025, I'm sorry. Google has been here how many years now? It's here to stay, so is social media. That means that even though you may have a stellar brand reputation in person. Let's say you're a restaurant, maybe your Yelp reviews suck, maybe your Google reviews suck, and then that therefore is feeding into the search engine optimization, the SEO that Chelsea's talking about. So even though in reality you have a great reputation and people love your restaurant, what is showing online is people hate it. Yeah. Is not matching. Then the only thing Google can do, because it is a matchmaker for the person that's using Google, it's going to say, you want, you know, a pizza place to go to, I'm going to put this one on page three of Google search results.
Chelsea: Exactly. I have another example. So I have a wedding that I'm going to in May. So I'm looking for wedding guest dresses. Google is going to show me all the reputable businesses first before they show me any of these shady businesses that I know you know what I'm talking about. I know you know what I'm talking about. You always see the ads for them. Yes. You always see the ads for these websites where you're like, that's too good to be true. That's got to be like a shady business from China. Like you don't trust it. You always see it as an ad. You never see it in the wild, correct?
Vivian: Yeah. You never see it as an organic search result.
Chelsea: Because Google's not going to show that to you.
Vivian: Yeah. Probably lulululu la ru is on there.
Well, so Chelsea, so love, love, love that you talked about organic searches, also how brand reputation, online brand reputation specifically is going to play into where you get listed. All of that. If you guys are new to this podcast, we actually just did a couple of episodes ago, a whole thing on SEO in 2025 and how Google is changing stuff. Go give that episode a listen.
Just because I do think it's super valuable, there are things that are going to be changing here in the next year or two. So you want to be sure that as a small business owner, you stay ahead of that.
Chelsea: Absolutely. Okay, so my next why it's important bullet point is going to be brand loyalty. Okay, if you have a good brand reputation, which means people had good experiences with your brand. That means they're going to purchase from you again. Or at least they're more likely to consider your business again.
Vivian: Yeah, and you guys are going to be so sick of me bringing up this dating Facebook group. But I will tell you, not all of it is doom and gloom. What I love is that the women in there, because the whole purpose of it is just, they just want to save women years if a man's just not looking to settle down.
There are some women in there that are like, I'm just looking to have fun. I really don't care for a long-term relationship. Perfect, this guy might be for you, okay, because he's not either. But there are times where you'll see a photo posted of a gentleman and all of the comments are going to be super great. They're like, you know, he was very respectful. I went on a couple of dates with him. We just didn't jive.
There are people that say, oh, I've grown up with that guy. Very respectful. He has a great family, this and that. I do think that there are times that specifically when you're talking about you have a good reputation, there is a sense of loyalty. These women are going out there and actually taking the time to type something on behalf of a gentleman that, you know, they could care less if he's got a girlfriend or not. But they're saying like, hey, there's no reason for him to be plastered on here in a negative light because it's not true.
Chelsea: Yes. That's actually a really great example. Thank you.
Vivian: Well, because I think...Let's translate that into a small business owner, because this analogy, this is not a dating podcast. This analogy is supposed to lend something to small business owners. I just want to say that because I think we undervalue, if we have a great brand reputation, the loyalty that comes with that. We all know brands and businesses that do this so well. One of my favorites here locally, small business, Donut Shop or Donut Connection in Goose Creek, South Carolina, you guys. Joanne and her husband own the shop and I kid you not, they have such brand loyalty that in these Facebook groups, I'm in a lot of these like foodie Facebook groups. Anytime that somebody goes in to pick up their donuts on a Saturday, they post in these foodie groups, the picture of the donuts, free advertising. The person's like, I just bought a dozen and they are all amazing, and I love them. Here are my favorites. By the way, you guys go ahead and actually pre-order because they sell out so quickly.
She has been on a streak now. I want to say the last like four months, she's been completely sold out. Like you have to pre-order her stuff ahead of time. But that's what good brand reputation does. She's consistent with the donuts that she puts out there, and she also has excellent customer service. She's very kind. She's engaging with people come in. They love that. And she goes in and she responds to these comments and also questions that people ask in the groups.
I just think all of that combined, she literally has to do no advertising and marketing because she's got a group, an army of people that will support her and say, go out there and buy her stuff.
Chelsea: She has brand evangelists.
Vivian: Yes. A term we have not heard in a while.
Chelsea: I know. Y'all, if you're new here, if you listen to like one of our first episodes, Vivian actually had to explain to me what a brand evangelist was.
But now that I understand, one of my favorite terms.
Vivian: If you guys don't know why maybe sometimes there's discrepancy between Chelsea and I, yes, we're both marketing professionals. We both went to the same college. We both were raised in the same family. The reason we have this discrepancy is because of our age difference. We're 15 years apart, okay? And I'm the oldest, obviously, but big sister.
That's where the terminology for brand evangelist, when I was talking to her in that episode about this, she stops me and she's like, I have no clue what that is. Like, what does that term even mean? Okay, so y'all, the cool kids ain't talking about brand evangelists these days. So I had to explain it to her. I do think that's, I love though that we are able to have that open conversation here on this forum because small business owners just know, even as marketing professionals, there's stuff we're learning on the daily every day.
Chelsea: I want to talk about the fact that brand loyalty does not have to mean that they're going to continue to purchase from you. It might be that they send other people your way.
Vivian: True.
Chelsea: So that as well. It's good word of mouth. Brand loyalty is going to help with word of mouth as well. I have another example of brand loyalty. Southern Curiosities. We've had her on the podcast before, eclectic, whimsical taxidermy. This is actually becoming-
Vivian: You guys, I love telling people that it's mice on stripper poles.
Chelsea: I mean, it is.
Vivian: Yeah, on motorcycles, on toilets, stripper poles. She does do butterflies and other stuff like that too.
Chelsea: And in teacups, stuff like that. This has actually become more popular in recent years, and I've been seeing a lot more small businesses venture that way. Which is great, good for y'all. I'm not going to stop you, but I'm going to be honest.
Vivian: I would love to see you stop a small business owner from doing anything.
Chelsea: Well, I hope you guys have all the success in the world. When someone asks me where to go to get something like that, I'm telling them Southern curiosities. When I want whimsical mice on stripper poles, I'm going to Southern Curiosities. Like that, I have such strong customer loyalty that I won't even consider these other businesses. And there's nothing wrong with those other businesses. I'm sure they're great. But my girl, JessC, is who I'm going to be supporting.
Vivian: Well, and think of it too, there are other industries that lend a lot to this - tattoo artists.
Yes. Okay, right. So there are people that once they find their tattoo artist, the person they can entrust to tat them up correctly, you know, in a fashion that they like, they're not going to steer away from that.
Chelsea: Or the other way around. If you have a bad experience with a tattoo artist, you're going to tell everyone, don't go to that tattoo artist.
Vivian: Yeah. So brand reputation, especially in some of these industries, is going to definitely play a heavy part, but I do think any and all small businesses just need to be aware of it.
Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. So my last reasoning as to why brand reputation is so important, and this is a big one for small businesses, is it affects your opportunities and the kind of collabs you can do.
Collaboration for a small business can be so amazing. What's the word I'm looking for? Like it can be a big opportunity.
Vivian: Yeah, it can be very beneficial, right?
Chelsea: Yes. But if you have a bad brand reputation, those doors close. People are not going to consider even being close to associated with you. When you have a good brand reputation, that's when people are saying, you know what, let's do a pop-up together or I'm a micro influencer. I want to work with you, stuff like that.
That's only possible if you have a good brand reputation.
Vivian: The other side of this coin is also because nowadays small business owner, you may feel like you are forced to be a content creator. Let's look at it from the content creation side, exactly what you just said.
If a micro influencer, if a brand reaches out to you. My husband and I were just talking about this this morning, because he made a TikTok for our homestead out here. So he's on the TikTokky now. Lots of chicken videos to come. But I was telling him how, you know, it's interesting when you see some of these social media channels, when they start to get bigger and brands start to send them stuff. So you guys all know this, you know,
If you're a car guy or you follow anyone that's into cars on social media, you know that some of these brands will send them, whether they be tires or let's say car wash stuff or whatever it is. So any industry -
Chelsea: Are there any brands out there that want to send me tires? That'd be great. I'd love some tires. I'm not a, I'm not a car girly, but I can, I can become one if that's what I need to do to get some free tires.
Do you know how many flats I've had in the past five years?
Vivian: That is hilarious. Yes. So if you guys want to collab with us, because that makes complete sense. But that's the thing.
So I love that you added this angle to it because small business owners, we understand that there is a part now where some of you may be deeming yourself a little more of content creators. These partnerships, these collaborations are going to heavily rely on your brand reputation. So now that we've covered all of those bases, Chels, how exactly do we go about managing a good brand reputation?
Chelsea: It's all about being in the know. You got to actually know what's going on out there, y'all. A lot of small businesses, and I'm not telling you you're wrong. OK. I want to say that first. You're not wrong, but you don't have to Google yourself like every week. That's a lot of work. It's perfectly understandable to Google yourself maybe like once a quarter, as long as you have Google Alerts set up.
That's really the thing that is going to help you keep a pulse on your brand reputation, is Google Alerts. So basically Google lets you put in a key phrase, a word, a name, and you can set it up so that Google will email you any time that keyword or phrase is mentioned online. Any time.
Vivian: Yes. Such a pro tip. We are all about giving you guys shortcuts. So like Chelsea said, you don't need to stress yourself out about Googling, remembering to Google yourself every week, every month, if you have these Google alerts set up. They are beautiful because you can include as many phrases as you want. So my recommendation would be, I would set a Google alert up for your name. I would set a Google alert up for your business name. And I would set a Google alert up of like a variation of your business name or even, if you guys want to be a little sneaky, okay? You can even set a Google alert up for your competitor's business name, okay? Those are just, not being sneaky, but it helps because if you do want to stay in the know about just newsworthy stuff that maybe your competitor's doing, it will alert you of anything that's posted in like the news station or sometimes on a Facebook post, it'll tell you. It doesn't pick up a lot of Facebook posts a lot of times, because that would be a lot.
Wonderful tip right there. We have a whole YouTube tutorial on this. If you guys are interested in that, just go to The Seasoned Marketer, use the search bar and then type in there Google alert.
Chelsea: Yeah, it's it's a real simple process, but definitely go watch the video just so you don't have to sit there trying to figure something out like Vivian and I. We got new...
We got new tech and we spent probably five, ten minutes figuring out how to plug in this thing. Maybe we should have just Googled it.
Vivian: I mean, or read the instructions. Ce la vie.
Chelsea: My point is we have instructions out there for you guys, so go watch them.
*S.O.B. Community Commercial*
Vivian: You know what we keep hearing from you fellow S.O.B.s?
Chelsea: Small Owned Businesses.
Vivian: Yes, small owned businesses. You guys are so overwhelmed with your marketing.
Chelsea: And we totally get that! You didn't start your bakery, or your boutique store, or your jewelry business to become full time marketers or content creators, or ad designers.
And marketing can feel really overwhelming.
Vivian: Oh yeah. Then you S.O.B.s try to go figure it out, because that's what you do. You Google stuff, watch videos, and end up spending hours trying to figure it out, only to sometimes end up more confused.
Chelsea: This is my full time job and trust me, the way marketing is talked about on the world wide web can be really misleading.
Vivian: Let's not even talk about trying to hire an agency for help. It's daunting, they don't know your small business like you do, and so they are not as effective. And let's not even talk about the cost.
Chelsea: We understand why a lot of you S.O.B.s feel ready to give up. That's why we even bothered to create The Seasoned Marketer.
Vivian: That's also why we started the S.O.B. Community. We wanted to create something practical and affordable for people who can't, or simply don't want to, outsource their marketing.
Chelsea: Right. So for $50 a month members can get free downloads and templates, step-by-step tutorial videos, a weekly live Q&A call with both of us marketing professionals and other S.O.B.s. You also become part of a supportive community to bounce ideas off of.
Vivian: It's like having a boardroom of like-minded individuals and marketing professionals where you can talk through all your marketing questions.
Chelsea: Without having to pay boardroom marketing agency prices!
Vivian: So if you're tired of wasting time trying to figure it all out on your own...
Chelsea: Or spending money on things that don't work, join us over at the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian: We'll help you turn your marketing stress into marketing success. And hey, it's just $50 a month.
Chelsea: So click the link in the description to join, and we can't wait to see you in the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian & Chelsea: Now back to the episode.
*End of Commercial*
Chelsea: Social media, I'm glad you brought that up. It is very helpful to search your brand on social media. There are some tools out there that will do this for you. I have never found one that is free.
Vivian: Yeah, ditto.
Chelsea: Yeah. So honestly, I mean...It's up to you, but I think you can just search yourself.
Vivian: Yeah. The key to this is just remember, go to the social media platform you're looking for. Go in there, type in your business name, and always remember to look at the type of post. Okay, so in Instagram or in Facebook, I know that Facebook in particular, you type the business name in there. On the left, there's going to be basically a thing that tells you like, are you looking for posts? Are you looking for stuff you've already seen? Are you looking for users? You want to hit the posts thing because that will let you.
Then just remember some people have their stuff locked down and so you're not going to be able to see all of them, but it is good to every once in a blue moon, go in there and just see what it is.
Chelsea: See what people are saying.
Pro tip, a new pro tip. We're moving on, we're going to talk about reviews. Y'all please respond to all of your reviews, even if it's a negative one. If anything when you get a bad review, that's a chance for you to show how you respond to criticism. That's your chance to say I'm so sorry that this happened. Let's move this offline, I want to fix the problem.
You know, sometimes people actually, if you fix their problem well enough, they'll remove the bad review or they'll even change it to a good review based off of how you responded and how you interacted with them.
Vivian: I think that's a really great point because people I think are not wanting you to be perfect. I think everybody understands that, right? We give small business owners, we give small businesses a little grace. We understand it's not always going to be perfect. Actually, if something negative has happened, but I have a really good experience with the way that the business handled it, it's going to do more in my eyes then if I had just had an original good experience there. S I think it's great for recovery, you can recover that relationship, you can show them that you're stepping up, that you're doing the right thing. Then also it's great for training opportunities, you guys. I hate to tell you, I've been working a long ass time and let me just tell you that the hardest thing to do as an employee is to figure out how to deal with uncomfortable situations.
When something has not gone right and a customer has had a bad experience with you, it's difficult, but the only way you're going to get through that is to actually fix the problem. Then for next time, you know how to preemptively stop it before it gets there, or you know exactly what to do if that were to happen again. Right. So I think, so what I'm saying essentially is like not addressing it is not an option.
Chelsea: Absolutely. That - you will upset people more by not addressing the issue. One.
Two, negative reviews are so helpful because it shows you where there might be kinks in your small business, where things might be going wrong. It's a learning experience. So I know negative reviews hurt. Sometimes we get negative comments and I'm like, well, you know, but that's not the correct response.
Vivian: Yeah, Vivian handled those.
Chelsea: Yes. First off, Vivian handles them. Second off, take into account what they're saying, they absolutely could be right. You could have a problem that you can fix. So that's my two things.
Third thing, do not copy and paste a response for bad reviews. Like don't have a curated response.
Vivian: A canned response.
Chelsea: A canned response, that's what I meant. Yeah, don't have a canned response ready for bad reviews because that is going to piss people off even more.
Vivian: It sounds to me like you've had personal experience with that.
Chelsea: Absolutely. When I worked at the allergy office, I would respond to reviews, except for I wasn't allowed to deviate from the canned response that they had. I tried to have this conversation like, hey, you know, when you have a canned response, it just shows people that you're just doing the thing. You're not actually caring. You're not actually reading anything that they're saying.
There were a couple of times where people responded with, look at this, they don't even care. They just have the same copy and paste answer.
Vivian: Yeah. We said this in a previous episode, not too long ago. When you talk to people's pain points, when you respond to a Google review, this is an opportunity for you to make somebody feel seen.
What better way, when somebody gets what you're saying, when I am peeved at you because my dental appointment did not go right and this and that, and I'm leaving that angry review and someone responds back, not with a canned response, but with a, Mrs. So-and-so like, I am really sorry. You know, we understand that there were circumstances beyond our control, whatever. Then they actually say, if you want to talk to somebody directly about this so that we can resolve this issue, call this number. I mean, you're giving them a actionable thing they can do in order to get on the road to recovering this relationship, but it makes them feel seen. I have aired my grievances. You guys actually give a damn and now we can move forward and hopefully come up with a solution.
Chelsea: Yes. Other point, do not forget that there's not just Google and Google reviews. You did mention Yelp earlier, so that's great, but y'all just remember that there are Yelp reviews... What's another example?
Vivian: Next door.
Chelsea: There you go. Next door. Yeah. Okay. Do your research of review pages, but just make sure that you're claiming your business and you're actually looking at what's going on on all those review pages to make sure that your brand reputation isn't suffering.
Vivian: I'm glad that we did bring up Yelp. Curious if you guys tell us in the comments, do you want us to do an episode on Yelp? Because I have this like hate-hate relationship with Yelp, and I feel like a lot of small businesses do, but it's been so crucial to the restaurant industry that I don't know if it's just a me thing or if it's like a legit like, you know, Yelp, just isn't really good at what they do. So you guys tell us in the comments if us covering Yelp for one of these episodes would be a good thing or if you want to see it. Or if you have personal experience with Yelp, let us know because maybe we can have you on to talk about it.
Chelsea: Side note, I do have something I'd like to share about Yelp, which is Apple Maps pulls Yelp reviews. So when you're looking up a restaurant or a business, it'll show you their Yelp reviews. But now, if you click on the review to read it, you can't look at it on your browser anymore. You have to have the app downloaded. So now I'm just not going to be able to read the reviews. So now I'm only looking at numbers because I can't read the reviews. So I just want to see if they have 4 point whatever out of five now.
Vivian: Wild.
Chelsea: Lastly, for managing your brand reputation, and this is a simple one that all small businesses can do, and it's simply asking your customers for feedback. Ask people. Ask people if they are having a good experience with your small business. Do they like your brand or not?
Even having a short survey after someone checks out can really help you make sure that things aren't going wrong and your brand is not taking a hit.
when it comes to their reputation.
Vivian: It's 2025, you guys, you can automate this stuff. It has never been easier to do this. OK, so two things you can automate an email to get sent, depending on what platform you're using. If you have a point of service like, you know, platform that you're using in store, you could probably set something up automated. The other thing is don't sleep on SMS. OK, text marketing.
There are a lot of industries now that are moving forward to, restaurants do this a lot, healthcare does this a lot, where you'll get a text after a visit and it'll basically say, hey, how do we do, right? Click the link and then basically it prompts you through five questions and it's really easy. You could do it on the phone. Something like that, make it easy, less cumbersome and you're collecting data points. Then that way you have an opportunity to have your finger on the pulse of what your brand reputation is.
Which leads me, Chelsea, to data, data, data, data. okay. Okay. So we-
Chelsea: Love data.
Vivian: Yes, we do love data, but we've also talked about how this is kind of like a pie in the sky thing. Chelsea just walked you through why it's important. And also we talked about, you know, how you could go about just keeping up with it.
At the end of the day, there are three key things that I think you can do to see or gauge where your brand reputation is.
So if you want to start to gauge where your brand reputation is, ask yourself these three things. Number one, brand awareness. How many people know about you? Because brand awareness is going to be an indicator of whether or not you have brand reputation. Remember, I gave you that example earlier of that donut shop here in Goose Creek, South Carolina. Lots of people know about her, right? She can easily go on Facebook and see where people are talking about her small business. That leads you to believe that the brand reputation is going to be on the good side because so many people are talking about it, right? Now, I know in extreme cases, the opposite can be true, right? So many people can be talking about it, but if we're not talking about being notorious around here. We don't want you to be notorious. So ask yourself, how many people know about my small business?
The other one is brand perception. What do people think about my small business and you guys are going to hate me for this. But perception is reality when it comes to marketing, you guys. All right. I know that's not fair in all cases. However, in the eye of the customer beholder or potential customer, they are telling you what their experiences and what their overall data and information that they have crewed over time is telling them about your small business. That serves as something. You have to pay attention to that. So brand perception, what do people think about your small business?
The last one's going to be brand loyalty. Do people become advocates for your small business? If they come in and they buy from you one or two times, do they typically talk about you to other customers?
Donut Connection here has got that down pat, okay? Like literally, they're not asking people to post about this. They're not paying people to do it. They're not telling people like, hey, let your friends know about us. People just want to say, hey, I got the coveted donuts that are absolutely delicious, right? They're bragging about it. So are people becoming brand advocates for your small business or IE brand evangelist?
Chelsea: Well, Vivian, do you think we're ready for the TLDL?
Vivian: I think so.
Chelsea: Okay. So if you have skipped ahead to this chapter, make sure later on when you have time that you listen to this entire conversation. But today we talked about brand reputation, what it is, why it's important and how to manage a good brand reputation. So real quick, why it's important: trust, credibility, influences purchasing decisions, it affects your SEO, it affects your brand loyalty, and it affects the opportunities and collab opportunities that you have as a small business.
There are many ways to manage a good brand reputation. You want to make sure you have Google Alert set up. You want to respond to all reviews. You want to ask people for feedback.
There are three ways you can measure your brand reputation, which is going to be brand awareness, brand perception, and brand loyalty. So again, make sure you listen to this full conversation because that's a very short synopsis and you probably want the in-depth stuff for this one because brand reputation can be a little confusing.
Also want to say thank you so much for listening. Now that you've listened all the way to the end, make sure you go and leave us a review. Five stars, we will only accept five stars, nothing less. And if you have a topic you want us to talk about, make sure you email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com or you leave a comment or you send us a DM and make sure you go be the best SOB you can be.
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