Table of Contents
Recently updated on November 10th, 2023
A brand crisis hurts a company in terms of reputability and revenue margins. When you own a startup and face such a crisis, you fail to pull in the desired volume of customers to your platform. You fail to get strong leads. The conversion rate falls. Revamping of branding strategies becomes the order of the day.
It could be much harder for a startup business
As a startup business usually faces tough competition, irrespective of the domain in which it operates, tackling a crisis could be a not-so-simple nut to crack. Moreover, even before you have established the brand properly, the business could face a crisis! Designing and implementing optimal and timely marketing ploys would help to tackle the problem.
Understanding the nature of the crisis
Before you implement any strategy to get out of the crisis, the key to effectively countering it is to understand its dynamics or characteristics. Also, you need to be very clear about to what extent it has impacted your business or repute, and to how much additional extent it can continue. You have to work proactively to chalk out an extensive plan to tackle the issue.
Aspects your brand crisis management plan should cover
There are distinct points that your plan to manage the brand crisis of your startup should cover, as mentioned in a nutshell below:
- Defining the crisis your startup is facing (not merely dealing with a single PR moment)
- Determining streamlined content marketing solutions that could be implemented in a phase-wise manner
- Structuring strategies to deal with the media
- Defining the role of each individual in the management team overseeing to tackling the crisis
- Focusing on a well-defined timeline that would cover the whole process
Strengthening reputation management on social media
A brand crisis could also involve backlashes of varying degrees on various social media platforms. There could be memes, caustic comments, etc directly targeting your brand. You have to take immediate and effective steps to counter all these.
The ploy is rethinking the fundamentals of reputation management. Replying to messages and comments cordially, deleting cuss words, and monitoring the social media handles of the company with minute attention are some of the more important steps you need to take.
Also, keep a note on the number of followers and other similar parameters on your pages.
Be aware of the speed at which news spreads
As a modern entrepreneur, you should be more or less aware of the fact that any negativity about any brand spreads like wildfire. Even before you know the full details or grasp the objectivity, thousands of people know it and hundreds share the news on different social media platforms.
There is no scope for showing any laxity while planning for tackling and managing the crisis. As soon as you locate the crisis, you have to start working on it rigorously, taking into account all possible elements associated with it.
Use multiple content forms to counter the crisis
Focusing on a single content form would be a mistake if you want to successfully tackle the crisis in your brand. You have to resort to relying on a wide range of content forms. Some of these could be:
- Blogs
- Short social media posts
- Videos
- Gifs
- Images
- Charts and tables
- Interviews
- Press releases
- FB lives, Instagram reels, etc
Keep in mind to use all these tools simultaneously. There could be situations where applying all these in combination would not be viable. But, wherever you get an opportunity to use these tools in tandem, simply go for it.
Using a little bit of humor could work
Humor could solve lots of problems in a cost-effective, minimalistic way. You can look for a scope to use the sense of humor as a tool to dilute the rage in your customers. There could be some harsh reactions still continuing. Don’t lose your heart or focus.
Humor would also provide you with light-hearted but important opportunities to interact with your existing and potential customers/clients. You would be quick to reach the perspective of your target audience and see the crisis in their shoes.
Be ready for an unexpected turn of event
It is better to be ready for some unexpected moments when you are in the middle of a crisis. The image of the brand that your customers have could deteriorate. Still, you need to stay calm.
Forever learning
A nice way to tackle the crisis is not letting it happen at all! This could be tough to believe, but on practical ground, you must always listen to the queries, doubts, questions, etc of your clients.
It has been empirically observed that companies are more prone to face a brand crisis, especially start-ups, which neglect what the target audience has to say.
You have to learn forever from your target audience, no matter what.
A separate team for brand crisis response
You have to create a completely exclusive team of professionals who would solely concentrate on designing and implementing strategies to minimize the impact of the crisis.
Remember that managing the brand crisis does not mean you have to stop the regular operations of your startup. A separate team ensures you have the necessary backup for the situation.
Brand crisis will no longer be a problem
After going through the content of this blog, it is hoped that you have gained a good position to comfortably tackle brand crises in your start-up, if any.