Reputation as Currency
How Reputation Impacts Your Brand’s ROI
Taylor Swift once said, “reputation precedes me, in rumours I’m knee-deep.” Communications leaders may not be knee-deep in rumours, but we know the sentiment is still relatable.
Bad reputation, in this economy, is just as damaging as any rumour. Quite literally: when executives are in a position where budget cuts become necessary, communications leaders are usually one of the first on the chopping block. And yet, these same comms leaders are the very ones fighting to educate their business on the vital role reputation plays in maintaining a company’s bottom line.
For B2B companies, comms leaders understand that brand reputation from earned media and customer sentiment can make or break how customers engage with your brand. Simply put, for both Ms. Swift and B2B brands alike, reputation has an inevitable and direct impact.
Customer perception is vital
In a competitive B2B landscape, customer perception is vital. Research shows that 81% of B2B buyers have already selected a preferred vendor before even speaking to anyone, meaning if you’re not on a buyer’s shortlist early on, you’re more likely not to make the sale. In order to be part of that initial list, brands need to fortify themselves with a strong communications strategy to best navigate the hurdles of reputation.
Ultimately, there’s a correlation between positive sentiment and revenue growth, so if you are struggling to communicate the impact of communications internally, or budgets are being squeezed, the value of reputation cannot be understated.
Bad reputation will cost you… literally
In today’s digital-forward world, a business’s online footprint can influence customer trust, loyalty, and of course, their purchasing decisions. In a survey by UpCity, it was reported that 30% of businesses lost between $10,000 and $50,000 as a result of negative public relations. And 20% of businesses reported a loss between $50,000 and $100,000. In short: your reputation is a direct link to your bottom line.
Not to mention, with the rise of generative AI, fake news, and misinformation, it’s crucial for brands to maintain high levels of positive sentiment to retain consumer trust and reduce revenue loss.
The business impact of a reputational crisis can be profound. Sustained negative publicity can shake shareholder confidence, hurting your brand in the long run. Using high-level trend analysis, we found that share price performance of the NYSE’s ten highest market cap businesses saw a direct correlation with positive media sentiment, and vice versa. While this is not scientific, it does provide indicative evidence of the relationship between reputation and business performance.
Reputation in the B2B world hits different
Reputation is a valuable currency in all businesses, but for B2B brands, there’s a unique challenge. We already know that B2B buyers research extensively before making their first contact with a prospective vendor.
B2B customers are often trickier to please: they usually have highly specific needs to be addressed by a vendor, so when a brand experiences high levels of negative sentiment, customers are less likely to reach out to a brand in the first place.
Managing earned media and customer sentiment are great ways to ensure your business stands out against competitors to protect your brand equity.
Earned media and AI search visibility are your business’s superpowers
Let’s first look at the value of brand visibility. Briefly circling back to that Taylor Swift reference from the beginning, without a strong and credible presence across earned media and search engines, your brand is more likely to be subject to rumours, or hearsay and misinformation. This is especially true with more people leveraging generative search engines to conduct brand research. In fact, for the first time in 10 years, Google’s search market share dropped below 90% — a telling datapoint on the future of search.
With large language models (LLMs) leaning less on paid media and ads, and increasingly on earned media to support AI-generated responses, brands are at an impasse. You can’t pay to influence LLMs, but you can earn it. The brands that double down on value of their earned media strategies are more likely to thrive now than ever before.
Between November 2024 and April 2025 alone (less than 6 months!) there was a 233% increase in daily AI use, including AI searches. To say that proactive brand storytelling is a must-have in today’s tech environment is an understatement.
Your brand needs to have a level of AI search visibility to build trust and engagement with your core audiences. Brand visibility within AI systems has a direct influence on reputation, trustworthiness, both of which impact revenue.
Not only is it crucial for you to leverage earned media to make your brand visible, but stronger earned media can better guide the narrative around what information large language models (LLMs) are scraping about your business from the web to better enhance your AI search engine presence.
But the reverse is also true. Brands today are at risk of having any negative coverage scraped by AI and churned out by search engines. This makes it vital to ensure they’re being talked about for the right reasons by leaning into proactive efforts to manage overarching messaging strategy.
Customer sentiment makes a difference
Customer sentiment, or the perception customers have about a business, also plays a crucial role in shaping brand reputation.
Doubt tends to be the default setting of many audiences, and customers today are more sceptical than ever.
Take compliance and transparency topics, for example. Research by YouGov shows that more than half of consumers are sceptical of brands’ sustainability claims. This is especially challenging to navigate when topics like ESG have become highly politicised.
We know that customers expect transparent information: who’s saying what and where. Maintaining consistent and transparent storytelling is crucial for your bottom line. How a brand tells their story directly impacts customer sentiment which can in turn drives revenue growth (or loss).
So, now what?
Communications leaders, like you, are trying your darndest to articulate the value of reputation. Between shifts in the media landscapes and the rise of generative AI, it feels like an uphill battle to convince non-communications leaders of the importance in taking decisive steps to ensure visibility, credibility and control over your brand’s narrative and ensure positive business performance.
We get it and we’re here to help. Here are a few actionable steps you can take to move your business in the right direction:
- Audit Your Brand’s Reputation Footprint: Start by evaluating how your brand appears across top-tier media, review sites, and generative AI platforms like ChatGPT or Google’s SGE. Answer the question: What story is being told about us, and by whom?
- Own Your Brand Narrative Early and Often: Get ahead of the misinformation gap. Don’t wait for media cycles or negative sentiment to define you. It’s important, especially today, to invest in strong, strategy-driven PR to seed credible, third-party validation that LLMs can learn from.
- Optimize for AI Discovery: Make sure your owned and earned content are aligned for search engines and LLMs. Structured and transparent information across all platforms goes a long way in helping to train AI systems to best represent your brand accurately and credibly.
- Strengthen Share of Voice in Your Category: While hundreds of brand mentions might seem great, outpacing your competitors isn’t just about coverage volume. It’s about coverage quality. Prioritising earned coverage in relevant industry publications that influence perception and purchasing decisions is significantly more valuable than 200 pieces of coverage in publications your stakeholders aren’t even reading.
- Educate Execs on the Value of Reputation: We love to think that non-comms folks understand the value of PR, but in practice, we know that’s not always the case. Taking time to educate your exec board about the importance of building a baseline of positive media sentiment can protect your brand’s bottom line — especially in the event of a crisis down the road.
- Make Reputation a Board-Level Metric: Earned media, sentiment, and AI visibility aren’t just nice-to-haves. They are the direct revenue impact in your reporting and are quite actually board-level metrics.
Reputation, driven by earned media and customer sentiment, isn’t just nice to have, it’s vital for a B2B brand’s success. As the B2B buying landscape continues to evolve, communications leaders need to have a seat at the table to safeguard a brand’s reputation and drive its success. If your comms strategy isn’t prioritising reputation, you’re likely to be left behind.
Fox Agency’s integrated PR and comms team are experts in what works in today’s rapidly evolving landscape. We’ll help you show up, stand out, and stay top of mind on every shortlist that matters.
Need support levelling up your reputation and brand visibility? Get in touch for a chat about how we can help you reinforce the value of reputation within your organisation.
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