Your reputation is perhaps your single most valuable asset in business. Conventional wisdom is that knowledge and experience are, but those can be hired, acquired and outsourced. A reputation takes time to build, and yet can be lost in an instant.
Reputation drives word-of-mouth marketing, the most effective marketing for entrepreneurs (studies show that networking and referrals drive roughly 2/3 of business for entrepreneurs).
As your business grows and you create a pool of satisfied customers, your reputation will grow naturally. But when you're first starting out, how can you build a reputation when you don't have any customers yet?
I've put together a list of five basic ways you can build your reputation from scratch, and some practical ways to apply those concepts:
- Part 1: Your Most Valuable Asset
- Part 2: Be Prolific
- Part 3: Be Ubiquitous
- Part 4: Be Generous
- Part 5: Be Dependable
- Part 6: Be Credible
Great article! The paragraph dedicated to the “30 second elevator pitch” can’t be more true. It is something that every professional should practice every now and then, since you are your best advertiser.
Another way not mentioned here to help build your reputation is to have your few initial clients testify about their good experiences with your work. There are many ways to do it, let them write comments on your website, prepare “success stories” telling the story and accomplishments or have them vote for you in Trust-index to get a plain 5.
That’s exactly we want to do to help local business build their reputation. Trust is the only keys that guarantees to bring the customers back.
With the reputation marketing done right, local business don’t have to spend too much on other traditional marketing practices.
All local business should read article to make sure they understand how important building trusted relationship with customers are!
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That was information dense! Well done. It seems like people (including myself sometimes) have a hard time seeing the opportunities right in front of them. There’s enough in this article to keep someone busy a couple hours a day for the rest of their career.
On that subject; how much of one’s time do you think should be spent on this sort of reputation building vs the actual business and continuing education and whatnot?