Have you been looking to grow your brand? Online reputation management makes up no less than half your brand’s market value, so you can’t invest too much into it. And if there’s any presence of your business online, you already have an online reputation.
What makes online reputation management important is that it can help you control your brand image. So, tag along to learn all about the benefits of online reputation management.
Table of Contents
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management combines marketing strategies, public relations strategies, and search engine optimization [SEO]. They aim to improve a business’s reputation and create a more positive one.
Also, they make it easier for online users and search engines to find the correct information when doing research on their brand, eliminating misinformation and lies. After all, good customer experience urges customers to associate with products, brands, and organizations.
And consumers may be more willing to pay for a service or a product if the company providing it has a strong online reputation. In other words, business and retail reputation management is safeguarding the online image of an individual, organization, or company and should be part of your digital marketing strategy.
It’s also critical to note that your business’s online reputation is dynamic. So, you have to monitor it on a daily or even hourly basis if you don’t want to risk loss in leads and sales. Furthermore, reputation management is composed of:
- Review generation
- Review marketing
- Reputation monitoring
- Online reputation repair
- Search engine reputation management
- Survey campaign management
- Social media follower growth service
What Is Social Media Reputation Management?
Similar to online reputation management, social media reputation management aims to build a positive online reputation for your brand. Its focus is on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It can also extend to user-generated content (UGC) on review sites, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and more.
As for its strategies, experts monitor positive and negative comments and online reviews, engage with customers, and post brand-centric online content.
Is Your Business Represented Fairly Online?
Statistics show that brands with one or two stars on Yelp, Google, and other platforms for online reviews are at risk of losing 86% of their prospects. And about 62% won’t buy from companies that censor business reviews. Not to mention, 9 out of 10 customers check online reviews before buying from a business online.
So, you see how user-generated content can be the best or worst thing for business growth; it all depends on what consumers say about it. If your brand’s social proof reflects poorly on it, potential customers will be less likely to purchase your products or services.
Accordingly, your company must counteract the negative material about it, mainly consumers’ negative opinions. But how can you do that?
Typically, an internet user will skim through the first page or first few pages of a google search engine results page (SERP) or so at most. Internet users have higher trust in online reviews since they’re aware that they’ve ranked high due to how trustworthy and relevant they are.
As a result, if a user looks up your brand and the top results are negative information, that can damage their first impression or public image of your brand. Otherwise, a positive recommendation online can give them a great first impression. So, it’s vital to invest in goal-driven reputation management and increase the number of reviews your brand has.
Why Your Business Needs Online Reputation Management
If you’re skeptical about the benefits of online reputation management, consider that it can:
Generate Positive Business Reviews
One of the benefits of online reputation management is building trust, a crucial factor to generating more business and attracting more consumers. Naturally, online users check other users’ reviews of the products they have in mind. That’s how a positive reputation builds trust with potential clients, and a negative word of tongue or review does the exact opposite.
To demonstrate, in 2020, 93% of consumers would search online for local businesses, and 87% of them would read reviews before making a purchasing decision. That is a big percentage compared to the 81% of 2019.
Thanks to review monitoring and reputation management, local reputation management is the way to go because it highlights brand-empowering contact sites and search engines.
In other words, it allows you to curate the perfect brand image or impression instead of leaving web content to speak for itself. With online reputation management services, positive online reviews of your products may go viral. Just think about how much that can boost your business!
Improve Online Visibility
As said, 93% of consumers search businesses online (by conducting a google search or so), so exposure is vital, and your business should appear on the first page of search results.
One of the benefits of online reputation management is that it improves visibility. It can get your reach to spread faster to almost every potential customer in your area. Even if a client gives someone personal recommendations and statements about your products, they’ll probably still search online for it themselves.
You can improve your online visibility with a website that has an excellent design and consistent, high-quality, positive content. Moreover, such strategies employ Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as digital marketing channels and manage them to keep up with daily user activities.
Using Google Business Profile improves search engine rankings. Also, inspect the results about your brand to ensure they don’t include inconsistent content, and check the listed address and smartphone number to ensure they’re correct.
Of course, the more positive reviews your brand gets, the wider your audience becomes. So, you’ll get more click-through and lower bounce rates. Also, you can increase brand awareness by sharing testimonials and positive reviews, thus attracting customers.
Increase Your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Loyalty
It’s 6 or 7 times easier to sell to existing clients than it is to generate new clients. Still, it isn’t easy by any means to maintain a solid relationship with existing customers and keep them happy in the long run.
One of the benefits of online reputation management is increasing your customer lifetime value by promoting brand transparency and adding to its credibility. Still, you may wonder how reputation management does that. The answer lies in using positive reviews and negative reviews to prove that you’re dedicated to ensuring customer satisfaction.
For example, you’ve seen how an online reputation management software can position positive reviews so that they’re what users view on the first page. As for negative reviews, you may be unable to remove them entirely.
Instead, a better idea would be to reply to these customers’ reviews in a friendly and apologetic tone. You can engage them in a real conversation and address their complaints. Also, quick action makes all the difference; responding within the same day or in real-time builds trust and ensures that your existing clients don’t switch over to other brands or competitors.
Attract High-Performing Employees
A professional staff is a critical ingredient in any successful workforce, and effective online reputation management is a crucial aspect in putting it together. After all, many applicants reject job offers from companies with a bad reputation online. That’s especially true for qualified applicants who do their research before accepting job positions.
Accordingly, reputation management strategies can give you the positive image your brand needs to attract high-performing employees.
Furthermore, you can use internet reputation management to maximize employee satisfaction. That’s possible via measuring employee engagement and finding actionable insights. This way, you can enhance your staff retention and acquisition tactics.
Appeal to High-Intent Prospects
One of the benefits of online reputation management is appealing to high-intent prospects. Potential clients usually read online reviews and depend on them to make a purchase because they act as valuable insights that tell them how customers feel about your brand. Accordingly, they may hesitate to purchase products from your brand if you hide or delete online reviews.
With negative and positive review monitoring and reputation management, more positive reviews become visible to users than negative ones over social media platforms. Also, online reputation management can generate higher star ratings, getting you more clients.
Overall, implementing such an online reputation management strategy increases revenues and profit and boosts sales.
Boost Your SEO Efforts
Search engine optimization management is integral to online reputation management because it creates awareness about your brand, improves search engine rankings, and enhances your online brand image.
In addition, reputation management companies can incorporate user-generated content into your Google My Business (GMB) profile and employ other digital marketing campaigns.
As a result, when you invest in online reputation management, you generate more reviews on review sites, thus collecting more user-generated content and getting more qualified traffic and conversions to your landing page and higher click-through rates (CTRs). This way, your brand or product may go viral, attracting a lot of attention and gaining even more traffic.
Generate Good Business Insights
To improve customer experience, you should read reviews and use them to your advantage. Reviews can help you win over new customers if you place them in the proper channels. Even negative reviews can be valuable because they provide you with feedback. So, use them to improve your business and enhance your next product before its launch. You can also lean on your Google Analytics behavior data to help determine how your customers interact with your website.
In addition, the benefits of online reputation management analytics include having valuable insights about which of your products or services are best sellers. It can tell you about any future improvement that boosts sales. In short, if you maintain online reputation management, you can make more informed business decisions.
Improve Your Bottom Line
As mentioned, web reputation management can preserve your brand image, thus growing your eCommerce store, brick-and-mortar business, multi-location company, or else. To illustrate, online reviews increase conversions by 270%.
To tie this in with SEO management, the benefits of online reputation management include solidifying your relationship with your prospects and increasing the multitude of interaction channels.
Appeal to a Younger Audience
Having no social proof or online presence is not a smart business strategy in the digital era because you’ll probably be missing out on an entire generation of younger consumers who tend to have a strong online presence.
To back this up, Pew Research Center conducted a study in 2019 demonstrating that 86% of millennials are on social media compared to 59% of baby boomers.
The Consequences of a Poor Reputation Online
Are you still unsure that effective online reputation management is all that it’s made out to be? Don’t underestimate the power of negative comments, negative reviews, and inconsistent content, as they can undermine your digital footprint. Here are some ways not using an online reputation management strategy can have your business struggling:
- Less revenue
- Low search rankings
- Less profit
- Lower retention rate for customers and employees
- Reduced customer engagement
- Lack of trust and credibility
- Tarnished online reputation
- Higher digital marketing expenses
What Does Your Online Reputation Look Like?
A set digital marketing strategy isn’t enough to draw more customers and revenue. Instead, you need to engage your customers and maintain your brand’s credibility. So, responding to an online review or message from customers online is necessary because it showcases that you want to ensure customer satisfaction.
Still, you may wonder if your online reputation management strategy is framing your brand to have the positive reputation you aim for. As mentioned, trust is critical if you want to attract customers, and they trust online reviews by real current customers, whether that’s a positive review or a negative one.
So, it can be tricky to monitor the amount and type of online feedback associated with your business name. But you can use the following tips to ensure that your online reputation management software is servicing your business.
For one, set out to get a rating of at least three stars because 82% of shoppers won’t buy from a retailer with less, according to Synup’s state of retail report. And make sure a potential customer views new online reviews from your other customers, as 23% won’t consider customer feedback credible if it’s over two weeks old.
Also, make it so that potential customers find at least ten recent online reviews over different review sites since the average consumer reads ten reviews of a brand or product before they associate with it. Moreover, be active on social media to personalize your company and give your customers a glimpse of who you are.
Additionally, you can adjust your social media settings. After all, how people perceive you impacts their perception of your business. If your accounts are private, you can post your opinions and political views without worrying that they’ll draw your customers away. And if you make public posts, make sure they paint you and your business in a positive light.
Also, don’t limit your online presence to reacting to what’s being said about your business. Instead, create consistent and positive content yourself to engage your customers.
To exemplify, you can create relevant informational posts on your business social media accounts. You can even create a blog, enabling you to showcase your content and expertise. Not to mention, it can enhance your Google rankings.
Online Reputation Management FAQs
Is It Possible to Remove Negative Brand-Related Content From Search Results?
Yes, you can do so with certain content, including fake customer reviews, incorrect and misleading blog posts, and press releases.
However, you can’t remove negative content merely because it’s negative, and you shouldn’t. Instead, responding to such customer feedback is good for customer loyalty. After all, people think twice before buying from brands that delete negative information.
How Do I Get Something Removed for Google Search?
There’s more than one google reputation management strategy to remove negative content from the internet. To exemplify, you can contact the person who has written it or file a formal complaint against them with search engines to alter or delete the content if there’s a legit reason for it.
How Do I Get More Reviews on Google and Other Platforms?
There are various methods for generating more online reviews, but arguably the best is to employ online reputation management software and top-notch review online reputation management services.
Do All Review Management Companies Offer Comprehensive ORM Solutions?
No, some reputation management companies fixate on particular aspects, mainly review monitoring and review generation. But there’s so much more to online reputation management than that, including running social media follower growth campaigns and survey campaign management. With some services, their professional staff gives you the whole package.
What Is the Most Distinct Advantage of Online Reputation Management?
The most distinct advantage is how online reputation management enables you to curate a positive and good reputation that matches your vision and goals. Accordingly, it promotes positive reviews and suppresses negative ones to create the ideal digital footprint for you.
How Can I Make Use of ORM if My Business Doesn’t Collect Customer Data?
Whether you collect data or not, the benefits of online reputation management include creating a live landing page on your website so that your customers can easily leave a review. You can also share the link to it with your customers so that they’d write positive reviews.
Do Online Reputation Managers Write the Reviews for Your Company?
No, legit online reputation management services don’t write online reviews for your brand because it’s unethical. Not to mention, a fake online review can breach the trust of your customers online.
However, such an online reputation management agency manages customer feedback, uses tactics to get people to write reviews, promotes positive reviews, and suppresses negative ones.
Can Reputation Management Place the Same Review on Multiple Platforms?
In online reputation management, it isn’t recommended to use the same positive review or positive reviews on all social media platforms, as this can lead Google to consider them fake and penalize you.
Do I Need While Label Reputation Management Software to Manage My Clients’ Campaigns?
Absolutely, white label reputation management software is an effective tool allowing you to manage your clients’ online reputation. To elaborate, it provides you with accurate information about your clients’ campaigns and generates trustworthy campaign reports.
Does the Quality of Review Software Differ per Company?
Yes, online reputation management services utilize various software. So, find one with review software, which allows CRM and POS integrations and makes marketing automation over 100+ review sites easier.
What Are the Top Considerations in Choosing the Best Online Reputation Management Company?
When considering which small business reputation management company to work with for advertising, you should find an online reputation management expert who’ll learn about your business and decide on the best online reputation management strategy accordingly.
Moreover, it should offer access to online review management software, have good reputation management packages within your advertising or marketing budget, and provide review widgets.
