From Feedback to Framework: How We’re Redefining Messaging at Reputation

Over the last year, Reputation has been on a long and rather laborious messaging journey. The company once had very specific, targeted messages for a very specific, targeted audience. But as we built the customer base and added products, features, and services, “messaging creep” set in. It was time to rethink our messages. And to do that, we needed to step back and really listen to our customers, employees, and the industry. 

Today, we’ve updated our website. The new pages reflect many hours spent on zoom calls, researching, iterating, learning from feedback, and reiterating. This is only the beginning of a multi-phase roll out of content and functionality. 

The Journey

We set out to learn two major things: 

1. Who are our current and potential customers?
2. What value do they need, want, or already get from our solutions?

We worked with an outside consulting firm to analyze our customers, prospects, and the current market. We built out our first iteration of the answers to the above questions and then went on a roadshow, validating what we learned with internal and external stakeholders, including: 

• The entire sales & marketing project team
• Cross-functional employee groups from every department from G&A to Engineering
• Customers across segments, industries, and regions
• Industry analysts
• Executive stakeholders 

Once we got executive buy-in, stakeholders built out the new messaging framework, ensuring a continuous focus on our core audience and the value they required from our solutions. 

The Messaging Framework

We started out with a simple framework: 

• Who we are
• What we do
• How we do it
• Why we’re different
• How we support our claims 

We iterated and received feedback from audiences we urged to be “brutally” honest. Then we did it again. And again. 

Some of the feedback was brutal. Two comments that stuck out:

• “I don’t feel the pain you’re solving for”
• “That is a throw away slide, I’d never use it.”

That stung. But if your messaging doesn’t resonate with your sales team, you’re dead in the water. So we went back to the drawing board until we hit the bullseye. 

After rolling it out to employees and customers - and hearing customers and employees repeat our key messages, I couldn’t be more thrilled. 

Our Key Messages

We at reputation already have the technologies and analytics capabilities to be the single source of truth for reputation performance. 

Our customers always know what their customers are saying about them and always act on that information. 

We've hit a tipping point where consumers are buying –or NOT buying – based on reputation. Today’s consumer no longer simply believes brand promises or sales pitches. They’re crowdsourcing information across hundreds of review and social sites in search of  consumers that will tell them the truth. 

Your brand promise is who you want to be. Your reputation is everything consumers say about you - and that changes every day. Your reputation in the market should validate your sales pitch and uphold your brand promise. 

We at reputation provide a platform that allows you to deliver on that brand promise by measuring, managing, and scaling your reputation performance in real time, everywhere. 

This website is a first step in dominating the reputation management space.  Take a look and let me know what you think.