Alexander Storozhuk, the founder of PRNEWS.IO

Brand reputation directly influences the choices Ukrainian consumers make. According to Deloitte Ukraine, in 2025, reviews from other users were among the factors that helped 34% of respondents make a final purchasing decision. At the same time, 62% of Ukrainians do not buy products from companies whose sellers or manufacturers have not left the Russian market. Both figures show that price and product quality are not the only things that matter. What people know about a company and how much they trust it matter too.

For businesses, this means that negative information — from complaints about customer service to questions about a company’s ownership and operations — can affect sales before the brand has a chance to explain its position. Reputation management therefore cannot be a one-off crisis response used only when something goes wrong. It requires consistent work while the company is doing well.

This is often hardest to accept when a business is growing. Founders tend to assume that a stronger reputation will automatically follow rising sales. But that logic holds only until the first serious problem occurs.

4 Reasons to Strengthen Your Company’s Reputation Before a Crisis

Imagine that a cyberattack, infrastructure damage, or technical failure takes a banking app or online service offline. Customers’ first question will be: “What is happening, and are my money and data safe?”

A company that has already communicated openly about data protection, published its refund policies, and explained how it handles crises is more likely to be seen as a reliable business facing a temporary problem. If the company has remained silent until that point, complaints, rumors, and anonymous posts may quickly fill the information vacuum.

Building a reputation in advance helps address several fundamental business challenges that cannot be solved overnight.

1. Build a reserve of trust. A strong brand gradually accumulates goodwill among its audience. When a company with a history of transparent communication encounters a problem, customers are more likely to view it as an isolated incident rather than part of a pattern. Without that foundation, even a single mistake can reinforce doubts about the reliability of the entire business.

2. Stay top of mind. When people have a particular need, they rarely compare dozens of options. Their choice usually comes down to a few names they have encountered before. If a company starts telling its story only when it urgently needs sales, it will have to compete with brands that have spent years building a media presence. This presence creates recognition long before someone clicks the “Buy” button.

3. Appear in AI-generated answers. What ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI services say about a company increasingly affects how people perceive it. According to the PACE Panel 2025 study, almost one in three Ukrainians already uses AI to search for information about brands. Even among people aged 45–64, one in four turns to these tools for this purpose.

Traditional SEO should therefore be supplemented with GEO — efforts to help AI services find, correctly interpret, and cite information about a company.

AI services can find even recently published pages. However, a single press release is rarely enough to create a complete and consistent picture of a brand. These systems compare information across multiple sources, which makes consistency, completeness, authority, and citability essential.

The sooner a company begins creating and distributing this kind of content, the more likely AI systems are to explain accurately what it does and why it can be trusted.

4. Reduce vulnerability to information attacks. Waves of negative reviews, fake posts, anonymous Telegram channels, and coordinated smear campaigns can all be used to put pressure on a business. In Ukraine, companies may also face false allegations concerning their owners, ties to Russia, tax payments or support for the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

A brand with little verified information available online is particularly vulnerable to the first wave of negative coverage. High-quality publications do not make a company immune, but they create a factual foundation against which people, journalists, search engines and AI agents can assess new allegations.

All four reasons have one factor in common: time. The sooner a business begins building its digital footprint, the less room it leaves for speculation and other people’s interpretations.

Preventive SERM: How to Strengthen Your Search Presence Before a Crisis

AI has not replaced traditional search, but it has already changed how people gather information. According to Deloitte Ukraine, 27% of Ukrainians used AI for work or education in 2025, an increase of 11 percentage points from the previous year. These services are also increasingly used to find product information, compare features, and identify the best offers.

For businesses, this means that during a crisis, conversations about a brand will take place not only on Google, in the media, and across social networks. People will also ask AI:

• “Why is Company X’s service not working?”
• “Will Company X refund my money?”
• “Is it safe to share my personal data with Company X?”
• “Who owns Company X?”
• “Has Company X left the Russian market?”

AI does not know the internal circumstances of a business unless the company has made that information public. It generates answers based on available sources, including the corporate website, media coverage, reviews, directories, social media, and other publicly accessible pages.

If the company has previously remained silent and recent complaints dominate the information available online, the resulting answer may be one-sided or repeat unverified claims. A company cannot control search results or AI-generated answers, but it can increase the likelihood that its position will be represented.

This is the purpose of preventive Search Engine Reputation Management, or SERM.

The practical principle is simple: do not wait for an angry customer or journalist to raise an uncomfortable question. Identify your audience’s main concerns in advance and answer them openly.

People may search for phrases such as “company name + reviews,” “company name + scam,” “company name + not issuing refunds,” “company name + owners” or “company name + Russia.” These searches cannot be prevented. At the same time, companies should not mechanically create articles with provocative headlines when no such risk exists, as doing so may create an unwanted association with the brand.

Start by reviewing actual search results, Google autocomplete suggestions, Search Console data, social media mentions, and answers generated by different AI systems. Ukrainian companies should analyze queries in Ukrainian, Russian, and English, as well as different spellings of the brand name.

They can then prepare materials addressing the audience’s genuine concerns:

• information about the owners and team;
• registration details, licenses and permits;
• payment and refund policies;
• personal data protection policies;
• explanations of the company’s operations in international markets;
• a service status page with information about outages;
• answers to frequently asked questions;
• authentic customer reviews;
• independent coverage in reputable media outlets.

These pages do not guarantee the top position on Google or a mention in an AI-generated answer. However, they give search engines, journalists and prospective customers verified sources to consult during a crisis.

Where to Start If You Have Never Managed Your Reputation Systematically

If your company has not yet taken a systematic approach to reputation management, begin with five steps.

1. Audit search results and AI-generated answers. Check what Google, ChatGPT, Gemini and other language models show in response to queries containing your company’s name. Look not only for errors and negative information but also for gaps in the available information.

2. Identify three to five sensitive questions about the company’s operations. For example: Why does the product cost this much? What happens if the service goes down? Who owns the business? How is customer data protected? Under what conditions are refunds provided?

3. Publish clear answers. Some information should appear on the corporate website, while broader explanations, expert columns and company stories can be published in reputable media outlets. Owned channels provide completeness, while independent sources add credibility.

4. Collect authentic reviews and respond to criticism. Do not publish only perfectly polished compliments. Neutral and moderately critical reviews often appear more credible, particularly when people can see how the company responds to problems.

5. Prepare a crisis communication protocol. Decide who will speak on behalf of the company, where updates will be published, how quickly the team must acknowledge a problem, and which facts should be released first. Once a crisis is underway, it is too late to design this process from scratch.

A strong reputation does not prevent mistakes. Data breaches, server outages, cyberattacks and leadership changes happen even to market leaders. But a digital footprint established in advance determines which sources customers encounter during the first hours of a crisis: the company’s explanation, verified facts or unsubstantiated rumors.

The difference between these scenarios comes down to the work completed before the company’s reputation was placed at risk.