Some bad publicity or some unfortunate PR can be a hazard that just about every business may experience from time to time. It doesn’t have to be a disaster, though. Rather than courting the situation as a disaster and trotting out apologies and excuses, which seems to be the norm these days, take this unfortunate publicity and turn it into an marketing opportunity to extend your brand awareness.
- The first thing you need to do is to quickly turn the bad publicity into some serious good publicity. The most effective way to do that is to overwhelm the criticism. You must immediately put out a ton of press releases, social media posts and emails, declaring all of the great things about your company and go into detail about all of your recent victories.
- You can also approach those most loyal and valued fans, customers and clients. Get them to come out and make some positive statements about you and your business. In an age where peer reviews carry a lot of weight, these comments will be an enormous help to your damage control efforts. In fact, it is the perfect time to post a feedback and positive review page on your social media platforms and at your website.
- Perhaps you can take a page from all of the politicians in the world and show everyone how you are simply a victim of a hate campaign against your company. Again, get those loyal clients and customers involved. Rally everyone in support of false and unfounded accusations against your business.
- The best way of all, of course, is that if there is any validity at all with regard to the recently endured bad publicity, see it as a wake up call. Take the time to put aside your enormous entrepreneur ego and actually fix the problem. This solves a couple of immediate and future challenges. The first is that you have actually recognized that the complains are legitimate and that you must fix them for the survival of your company. Another is that you are showing everyone that you respond to all comments, negative and positive, and are always working toward making things better at your company.
You never have to just sit by and wring your hands when bad PR comes along. Turn it into an opportunity to improve.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
