Your reputation effects might be a bit of a new concept for you, but it's interconnected with marketing and branding, and highly important for new ventures. So when we look at reputation effects, we're really talking about brand awareness and brand perception. Customers tend to buy from companies who which they've had a relationship with. Those that we bought something from before. Or customers will buy from some referral, something they are acquainted with from friends or family. Or they buy something based on branding, what they believe the brand, the product, the service to encompass. So when we look at that, we want to be thoughtful as entrepreneurs, about the emphasis that we put on building our reputation. Of understanding how to align the benefits and the values of our company with the interests and ambitions of our customers. And with that, it helps us to really focus how to market, where to market, how to price. And make other marketing decisions as well, so one element that we want you to think about when you're bringing new product to market, is that you may benefit from focusing on new customers in new ways. In that context it gives you the opportunity to educate them on what you're doing and how you're doing it. And not necessarily rely on trying to compete head to head with competitors. If you bring a new product to market, and you build a great brand around that, it somewhat makes the competition's brand less relevant or, hopefully, irrelevant and that you're doing something new. You're doing something novel and you get to be known for being that innovator and known for being good at that. When we think about dimensions of brand equity, it happens first with awareness. It's a bit of a fallacy to think that the best product always wins, or that the best features always win, or that the best pricing always wins. I would argue it's the best branded and the best marketed. Customers are not able to buy something that they're unfamiliar with. I can't purchase something I've never heard of. So, brand awareness is certainly pivotal to entrepreneurs. Perceived quality is something to think about as well. Perceived quality is very much based on matching or exceeding customer expectations. It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to have, the gold-plated Mercedes. That it has to be everything to everybody, and have every feature that you could ever imagine. Typically, that comes at a price that the majority of your market is not going to be able to afford. So, when I say quality, I don't necessarily mean that you have to have the highest quality out there. I mean that you have to have quality that's consistent, with your price point and consistent the with the brand and consistent with customer expectations. We also want to think brand associations. How do you connect the customer to the brand? Is well as loyalty and what can you do as the entrepreneur to have them affiliate with the brand. And try and maintain that affiliation and that loyalty to your brand. So how do you do that? How do you build brand equity? Well creating and communicating that image is certainly essential. Building awareness and familiarity. Building associations where we have a thoughtful name and logo in design and packaging. And it's all connected and that our business card looks like our website. Looks like our packaging. And in that sense, it all is married together. It's a consistent look, a consistent feel. We also want to think about ways to induce loyalty. It might be rewards. It might be special pricing or special access or other incentives. So in summary, when we think about reputation. It's difficult to come out as an entrepreneur in a startup and compete head to head with a competitor doing exactly what they do, the same way they do it. But if we are different, if we are novel. If we can build a unique and distinct brand that is about perhaps different values or about a different feature set than our competitors. Then we can be better differentiated. We can build that reputation, we can scale that reputation. And we can be thoughtful of how to do that affordably and quickly.
