Small Business (Part 3) - Building Awareness And Reputation

This is a continuation of the series on running a business in This Grand Life 2. Previous posts: Part 1 and Part 2

Brand Awareness

Awareness can be built by spending money on advertising, or getting your characters to do certain activities like handing out flyers.

It affects how much foot traffic and how many potential contracts you are offered, which in turn affects how much work is available.

Different types of businesses will have different ways to build awareness. For example, a restaurant can purchase billboard ads whereas a game dev studio would be making cold calls to drum up business.

Brand Reputation

Reputation is something that is earned slowly over time and (usually) cannot be bought. It changes depending on your worker's skills and your ability to complete all jobs every month.

For example, say you run a real estate agency. In this business, the real estate agents and property managers generate the income but they also generate lawyer job hours. You don't need to complete the lawyer job hours to make money and can cut corners by leaving them incomplete.

However, this lack of professionalism will reflect poorly on your business. It will lower your brand reputation for all future business, *unless* it can be offset by having very skilled real estate agents.

The industry inflation system can also play into this decision making. Continuing with the real estate example, imagine a scenario where the property market is booming (real estate agents expensive to hire) and the professional services is busting (lawyers are working for cheap). In this case you might want to hire cheaper unskilled agents, but also hire good lawyers to make sure all job hours are complete and your reputation is maintained.

There are also a few ways to build brand reputation by spending money such as sponsoring a local sporting team, but these aren't available to most businesses.