How To Damage Your Brand in 6 Easy Steps

Your brand is one of the most valuable parts of your organization and every effort should be expended to protect it. Building your brand takes a lot of time, hard work and attention to detail. There are many moving parts and interactions that take place over a prolonged period of time. After all, your brand is the projection of your reputation in the marketplace. That’s not something that is easily built over night. 

However, it is easy to damage your brand quickly, sometimes to the point where it is permanently damaged. Something that you might think is inconsequential could actually have a big impact on your brand. That’s why it is important to pay attention to the details.

If you’re bound and determined to ruin your brand, here are 6 steps to take to make sure you do it with very little effort.

1. Make sure you have inconsistent messaging and brand image

Your brand is the perception people have of your organization. It is your reputation. It is your promise to behave in a certain, consistent way. Behaving inconsistently or putting out inconsistent messaging will begin to create confusion in the marketplace and is a great way to damage your brand.

2. Over promise and under deliver

You can create ill will in the marketplace really quickly when your product or service doesn’t perform like you say it will. Not being truthful in what your product or service can, and can’t, do and over promising performance goes a long way towards damaging your brand.

3. Make sure it’s all about you

Everyone loves talking about him or herself, but when you spend too much time talking about yourself you will do damage to your brand. If it’s all about you, you’ve got it all wrong.

4. Be sure to misuse social media

Social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy and is a good way to strengthen your brand and have a conversation with the marketplace. However, it’s also a great way to damage your brand. What you post to social media needs to have relevancy to your brand and your brand promise. Your messaging needs to be consistent with the brand and the frequency needs to be such that the marketplace doesn’t feel inundated with your messaging and tune you out. Spending too much time talking about how great you are or posting irrelevant information is a surefire way to turn people off. Filling my Twitter or Facebook feed with meaningless content will go a long way toward making me dislike your brand.

5. Provide low quality content

Your target market associates your brand with the quality of content you produce. The lower the quality of the content, the greater the likelihood that it negatively impacts your brand. Think of the different ways you produce content; video, blogs, whitepapers, advertisements, articles, social media, etc. Is it relevant to what your customers need and want? Is it meaningful, well thought-out and consistent with your brand message? Do you have poor grammar or misspelled words? Is the lighting or sound in your video poor quality? All of these seemingly small details can doom your brand.

6. Have a poorly designed website

For many, if not most, brands, the website is a critical piece of your marketing and brand strategy. A well designed website that has an organized and uncluttered layout will have a strong influence on consumers’ perception of your brand. Pay attention to the amount and size of the text, the use of navigation tools, imagery and the overall layout. Is the website consistent with the overall look and feel of your brand? Having a poorly designed website that is hard to navigate and does not provide useful and meaningful content is one of the quickest ways to damage your brand. 

Building a strong, consistent and quality brand doesn’t happen overnight. It can take years of hard work and effort to get where you want to be. However, it doesn’t take much to damage your brand. One small mistake and years of hard work, effort and goodwill could be gone. Make sure you are vigilant when it comes to protecting your brand.