Why Your Business Needs Help With Online Reputation Management?
Would you buy from a company that ill-treats its customers? Why would you recommend someone to a brand that sells defective products? Would you leave a positive review for a brand that gave you a bad customer experience? Absolutely not! So, why do you think people reading bad reviews about your brand online will ever hire you? Believe us, how you carry your brand online matters and that’s exactly why we want you to know everything there is to grasp about online reputation management!
What is Online Reputation Management?
We are living in the digital age. Everything, and we mean everything, is now available on the internet if you know how to find it. In this day and age, when internet and smartphone penetration is at its crest, how you represent your brand online can make or break your business. In other words, the reputation your brand has online matters. In professional terms, we call it online reputation, and the tactics we use to build and maintain online reputation is called Online Reputation Management or ORM.
Before we go onto discuss the benefits and how-to of ORM, let’s talk numbers. Here are a few online reputation management statistics you should certainly know in 2021.
- Percentage of people that find online reviews impacting their buying decisions – 93%
- Percentage of people that dedicatedly read online reviews before giving business to a brand – 90%
- The percentage of customers that take online reviews just like personal recommendations – 91%
- Percentage of customers that are convinced to trust a local business after reading positive reviews – 73%
- Percentage of consumers that need at least a 4-star rating before contacting a business – 49%
- An increase of one star in rating on Yelp results in a 5-9% increase in revenue.
Benefits of Maintaining an Online Reputation in 2021
Here are the top benefits of deploying an online reputation management strategy for your business. Let’s discuss them in detail.
1. Makes your business credible
How do you think you’ll get more customers if you don’t have a great online reputation? People prefer purchasing from brands they find credible. Since trust is a major factor in any successful buyer journey, a negative online reputation can put your potential customers off. Consistently managing your online reputation helps you track your brand’s negative mentions and feedback effectively. When you strive for a positive online reputation, it becomes easier for you to tackle a negative reputation before things get out of control.
2. Builds a perfect brand image
Your brand image is everything. A customer journey usually begins with a simple online search before moving to your social media pages and then finally to your website to make the purchase. A well-drafted online reputation management strategy allows you to take care of every nook and corner of your online presence and build the perfect brand image. It gives you ample exposure to negative information being spread about your brand, helping you take the necessary action to keep your online reputation intact.
3. Better reputation, more sales
Let’s talk more about the customer journey before we explain how a positive online reputation gets you more sales. As we mentioned earlier, most customer journeys begin with online research. Customers look for your brand name or the products and services you have to offer. Once they find you, they tend to look for what other people have to say about your offerings. In other words, they are looking forward to reading the online reviews left by your previous customers or even employees! To attract prospective customers, you ought to have positive reviews against your products. Most prospective customers will skip past a brand that is plagued with negative reviews. The better the online reviews, the more are the chances of your company getting hired.
4. Makes business easier to trust
Want to build trust with your clients? Work on your online reputation. Believe us when we say that ‘word-of-mouth’ is by far the best online marketing strategy you could ever have for your brand. It has a trickle-down effect on your potential customers and audience. But, what drives word-of-mouth marketing? Your reputation does! The experience a customer has when it connects with you and your products/services are often shared online or offline, which has a direct impact on your business. Now, if you have superb online ratings and reviews, it will become easier for your prospective clients to trust your services and give you more business.
5. Boosts search engine rankings
A great online reputation also increases your chances of ranking higher on a search engine. Here’s how it works. Google and other search engines rely heavily on what users like and don’t like to click on once they make an online search. If your company’s website has more clicks and longer sessions, you will automatically start ranking higher than your competitors. Now, how do you go about getting more clicks? By having great reviews for your company! Positive reviews for your products and services will attract attention and influence your prospective client’s buying decisions. The more attention your reviews get, the more clicks you will have, and the higher your search rankings will be.
6. Cost-effective marketing strategy
That’s right. Maintaining an online reputation for your company is not expensive. Once you hire a professional to get it done for you, you can attract tons of positive reviews and recommendations for your business and enjoy a consistent flow of leads. Online reputation management can be employed as a free online marketing tactic that can provide long-lasting results. It surely is time-taking, but the impact it has on your business is truly worth it.
7. Get more talent for your business
At the end of the day, a company relies on its employees to provide the customers with the best services possible. You, as a business owner, need to hire employees that share the same vision and dedication towards the customers. Just like customers, employees also tend to look forward to reading the reviews your previous employees have left on your profiles and listings. Online reputation management allows you to attract professional and well-qualified applicants.
How to Maintain Online Reputation?
Now that you know the benefits of having a solid online reputation and deploying ORM tactics, it’s time you know how you can get started with managing your company’s online reputation.
1. Monitor your online reputation
Check what customers have to say about your brand on local listings and citations sites like Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and others. Check the reviews people leave for your products on Amazon, eBay, and other online shopping sites. The best way to do that is by using an ORM tool.
2. Develop an online review strategy
You need to build an online review strategy for managing ORM. Take the help of professionals or do it yourself by asking your customers to leave a review every time they purchase a product or get help from your customer support team. Make sure you don’t get a customer review just when you piss them off. Most importantly, ask for the review nicely and tell them where to leave it.
3. Leverage influencer marketing
Influencers know exactly what your audience needs to hear and read about your brand. Hiring influencers to take your online reputation to a new level is not a bad idea at all. They will improve your brand’s reach, visibility, and recognition. Not just that, it will also prove vital to give credibility to your online presence.
4. Deliver what you promise
There’s no better online reputation management strategy than delivering on what you promise your customers. Make follow-up a habit across all your departments and train your customer relationship managers and customer support staff to dedicate themselves to resolving customers’ issues. Once you do that, everything else falls in the right block.
5. Know what your competitors’ are doing
Keep an eye on what your competitors are offering their customers. Know what exactly people love when they give your competitors business. Not just that, monitoring your competitors will also give you an opportunity to NOT make mistakes they made. Lastly, it provides you a window to reverse engineer their marketing strategies and find why they are leading the industry.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. We have shared everything you need to know about creating and managing a positive online reputation for your brand. Online reputation is vital for your business and as more and more brands tend to pivot their business models online, you just cannot survive the competition with a bad online reputation.
Want to get started building a positive online reputation for your company? Connect with us today! At 10:23 Digital Marketing, we provide various online marketing services, starting from website development & design, review management to SEO & PPC campaigns. Contact us for a free consultation at 904-667-4123, or by submitting this form.
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