There are many things that can threaten your brand. Protection of your brand is essential for you to be successful. To protect your brand against these threats you should manage reviews, protect your intellectual property, monitor competitors, keep your website updates, educate customers, create NDAs, have a social media presence, and fight rogue websites.

Manage Reviews

Online reviews are a great way to highlight your brand. 88% of consumers place their trust in online reviews, as much as they would for recommendations from a friend or family member. Highlighting these on your website are a great way to build trust and a following in your brand. High numbers of positive reviews will help offset any negative reviews that may arise. Positive reviews will come as you build a relationship with your following and respond to any feedback. Manage your reviews by responding to them. Let your following know that you are responsive by implementing changes you may see suggested. If multiple reviews offer the same feedback, it may be worthwhile to make that change.

Protect Your Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is work or products created by you. Intellectual property can be anything from art, content, blogs, names of products, or your business information. To protect your intellectual property, keep all information about your brand secret. Don’t discuss it with anyone or promote your work in the public unless it is protected. Document your content and concepts by creating detailed descriptions, plans, or records. This will be proof in the event someone tries to claim your ideas as their own. Take the next step in protecting your intellectual property by applying for a trademark. You should then work with an attorney to register your intellectual property to be fully protected.

Monitor Your Competitors

Protecting your brand against competitors is how you will be successful. Monitoring your competitors is important to watch their every move. This allows you to gather important data. This data will give you insights on things like funding and pricing. Based on what you see from your competitors you can streamline your business plan to adapt. Monitoring the competition let’s you know strengths in each area as well as weaknesses. These weaknesses are something you can use to your advantage. You should monitor both direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are companies with the same or similar products. These are the companies that will be the most threat. Indirect competitors are companies with different products but have the same base of customers.

Keep Your Website Updated

Businesses need to be aware of website security issues that can threaten their brand. Websites are subject to many threats such as phishing, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, CEO fraud, viruses, and spyware. Keeping your website up to date is an important step in preventing website attacks of any kind. You should continuously monitor your site and even invest in website security services to ensure your site is secure. This is especially important if you are involved in sales where people’s sensitive information could also be subject to attacks.

Educate Customers

Your customers are a great asset in protecting your brand. You can educate your customers to avoid getting tricked by helping them to know the differences between real and fake products. Educate your customers about counterfeiting and how much that will harm your brand among other harms. This will help them avoid seeking out counterfeit products and come to yours instead. Your customers are a great asset when they are educated because they can also report counterfeits as well as educate their own friends and family to stay away from counterfeits.  

NDAs

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are a legal agreement that will protect your intellectual property. When you are collaborating with anyone, you are sharing your intellectual property. This property is essential for your business, but it may not always be public. An NDA ensures that whomever you collaborate with will not be able to share your information without you authorizing it. You could also enter into a confidentiality agreement where the scope is much broader on what needs to be kept confidential and when you want a bilateral agreement then information will not be shared. Legally a confidentiality agreement and a non-disclosure agreement will work the same. This will ensure that your information is kept on your terms and will prevent anyone from trying to slander your company using information they learn.

Social Media Presence

Your social media presence can help to boost your brand. It can help you bring brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, increase leads, give your brand more credibility, boost the recall of your brand, increase engagement, and generate customer insights. Being a presence on social media allows you to secure your brand name. This will prevent your competitors or others using your brand name and building a presence. Being a presence on social media allows you to be authentic and showcase your brand. Your social media will allow you to build a following and gain more traction. Being present on social media allows you to monitor mentions and helps you to keep your reputation under control by screening them.

Fight Rogue Websites

Fighting rogue websites is an important action to protect your brand. Rogue websites are counterfeit sites whose purpose is of criminal or malicious intent. Rogue websites can be imitation sites that try to deceive consumers that they have reached a real site of your brand. Bait and switch operations don’t try to trick the customer, but also sell what your brand sells. Cybersquatting is another rogue website that takes domain names of your brand and has bad intent with it. Fighting these sites will help you keep in control of your brand and protect your consumers.

There are many ways you can protect your brand. Because there is much that can threaten it, you should invest in people who know how to protect it. This investment has a great return because your protected brand will have continued success.  

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