In our increasingly online world, if your brand does not have an online presence, it can be exceedingly difficult to grow and develop your business. The same way you want to be careful about your professional reputation, you want to ensure that you are doing everything in your power to manage your online reputation. It’s extremely easy for one bad review to escalate online, so how you reply matters a great deal.
It can be difficult to manage your online reputation when you aren’t sure what is helpful, what can be left alone, and when you should ask for help. Here are some effective steps you can take to manage your online reputation and ensure that your virtual presence is professional, positive, and reflective of you and your brand identity.
#1. Perform An Audit
If you already have an online presence, a good first step to take to manage your online reputation is to see what your online reputation even is. You can do this through conducting an online reputation audit, which will uncover whether the general public view of your business is positive or negative, the kind of websites that appear for your brand name, how most visitors find your website, whether or not you are popular online, and more.
It’s a good idea to separate websites that your business appears on into ones that you can control and ones that you cannot. For instance, you have control over your social media accounts, so you can use them to reach out to site owners and adjust information that is not accurate. In other cases, the most you can do is reach out and try to talk to someone about why they hold the view they do of your service.
#2. Establish An Online Reputation Management Strategy
Once you know what your reputation is, it makes it much easier to come up with actionable steps you can take to manage your online reputation. You’ll want to establish your goals, your boundaries, your limits, what aspects have the highest impact on your reputation, and what your priorities are. For instance, you’ll want to ensure that there are company-wide guidelines about how you deal with comments and reviews, as well as a consistent, professional tone-of-voice.
You’ll want to determine response templates, what sort of reviews necessitate an urgent response (negative ones that can hurt your reputation), and clear responsibilities within your business, for who does what to manage your online reputation.
If worst comes to worst, you don’t want to be blindsided. One of the most important steps to manage your online reputation is to have a plan in place should a crisis occur. You can help with this by creating alerts for when your brand is mentioned online, how to communicate with your target audience across various online platforms, having quick and personalized replies to bad reviews, and clear chain of command. Online marketing companies like Performance Driven Marketing can help you manage your online reputation and come up with an effective online reputation management strategy.
#3. Encourage Positive Reviews
As everything shifts increasingly online, people rely more and more on reviews to tell them whether or not a business is trustworthy and somewhere that they want to work with. Studies have shown that people are willing to pay more in order to work with a company that has higher ratings and better reviews. Important as it is to reply to negative reviews quickly and well, it’s just as important to encourage positive reviews, to cultivate a good online reputation.
How many positive reviews you receive also impacts where your website falls in search engine rankings. If you have a good online reputation with lots of positive reviews, Google will rank your business higher, while downranking those that have a poor online reputation and customer satisfaction rates.
You can encourage positive reviews through pop-ups, email signatures, and more. And of course, thanking customers who do leave positive reviews helps your online reputation too, especially if you add a personal touch to your thank you. This shows customers that you care and will encourage them to come back and give you more of their business in the future.
#4. Manage Negative Reviews
Oh, how we wish we didn’t have to worry about negative reviews, but this is one of the most important things you must do to manage your online reputation. Online especially, it’s easy for things to get blown out of proportion. A good way to manage your online reputation is to reply to all reviews – positive and negative – and to be aware of how time-sensitive negative reviews can be.
The sooner you address them, the less impact they’ll have, especially if you are courteous, address their concerns, apologize if you are wrong (but only if you are wrong), and communicate with the goal to understand, not confront. Thanking them for leaving a review, asking how you can make it better, and keeping a non-confrontational tone will help with your online reputation.
Giving them a solution and a way to take the conversation offline via a phone number or an email will help in cases that require more in-depth conversion than a review reply can provide. In many cases, people who left a negative review but felt the company responded well end up coming back and giving them another chance!
#5. Get Professional Help
Performance Driven Marketing offers professional online reputation management services to help keep your online reputation positive. It can be hard to know what is right or what steps you should take without professional guidance, and you don’t want to accidentally hurt your online reputation when you’re trying to help it. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help to manage your online reputation!
How often do you pay attention to online reviews? Did you know, “92% of consumers read online reviews specifically for local businesses?” Online reviews matter, plain and simple. Online reviews allow people to learn about your brand, understand your reputation, and determine if they want to do business with your company. Also, reviews enable businesses to learn about shortcomings that need to be addressed and improved.
Online reviews need to be something you intentionally participate in gathering and managing.
How to Manage Online Reviews
There are several free online review tools and several paid review tools. It helps to have tools to manage the various areas with online reviews such as Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
Google is Dominant
Customers usually check Google before they check anywhere else. Google makes it easy for customers to review companies, and for their searchers to find what they want. Start by claiming your Google My Business listing and start encouraging your customers to leave reviews.
Bad Reviews Matter
A bad review can ruin your day, and it’s understandable when you work hard to be successful. However, use bad reviews to highlight areas of the company that needs to be addressed. Perhaps now is the time to discuss internal changes that have a direct impact on the customer experience.
Empathy is essential to customers. Do they feel that you are offering a sincere apology, or just doing this to safe face?
Do not delete the bad review. Respond immediately, reach out to the customer, and focus on rectifying the situation. Ask them to review or update their review following a positive discussion. When other people see how you respond to the negative review, they can clearly see how your company takes steps to improve from mistakes.
Do I Need Reviews?
Yes! Potential customers rely on reviews, but a lack of reviews will also damage your search engine ranking. According to Google, nearly 10% of the search engine algorithm rely on online reviews. If you are below your competition, take a look at their reviews compared to your reviews.
Where Are We?
If you want to be successful with online reviews, find out where people are reviewing your business. While Facebook, Google, and Yelp tend to be the most known, there are thousands of others including;
Amazon customer reviews
Angie’s List
Better Busienss Bureau
Consumer Reports
Foursquare
Glassdoor
Manta
Trip Advisor
Become aware of where you are being reviewed, and claim your profile on those review sites. Start engaging with your audience on these sites to boost your reputation and visibility.
Stay Relevant and Recent
An area where businesses often fall behind is forgetting to thank people for reviewing them. Share positive reviews on your social media accounts. Highlight the customers with positive experiences. Apologize to the customers that have a negative experience. Part of managing reviews is to ask satisfied customers to post reviews to continue gaining a positive reputation in your industry.
A great way to generate positive reviews is by rewarding your loyal customers and encouraging a review. Send them a free product or ask if they would like to be part of testing a new product and sending you a review of it. Customers will feel valued by the business for their ongoing support, and the business, in turn, generates a new positive review.
Natural Ways to Obtain Reviews
No one has enough time to ask each customer to review the business, so use automated tools to help. SMS text message services and email surveys with review links can remind people to leave a review. While these methods are helpful, here are some natural ways to obtain reviews:
Focus on delivering a great product or service. People leave reviews when they are satisfied with their product and overall experience.
Improve customer service. It helps to go overboard and truly fawn over your customer’s needs. Make sure you take steps to make them feel important with each employee and each interaction they have with the customer. If they have a bad interaction, they are likely to take to the review boards to vent their frustrations.
Ask an influencer if you can send them your product and have them review and share it with their audience. Influencers are helpful to gather a new audience for your business, and they do a great job assisting with reputation building.
Reviews on the Go
An easy way to keep tabs on your customers is by installing apps on your phone. Google My Business makes it easy to respond to reviews and connect with customers in real-time. Keeping on top of reviews and responding promptly can often improve the customer experience. Outsourcing reviews can help when they do become overwhelming to manage.
Stay in touch with your customers and they will reward you with positive reviews. Keep your website updated with the latest SEO tips and tricks by signing up for our informative newsletter.
How important are customer reviews to a business? Nine out of ten customers claim they read online reviews prior to working with a business. With at least 88% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as a referral or personal recommendation, it is an essential component of your online marketing strategy.
Online reviews have an impact on your sales. However, obtaining reviews has always seemed to be a challenge for businesses. How do you know your most satisfied customers will leave reviews? What should you do in the event you receive a negative review?
Getting Started with Online Reviews
Understanding how reviews work is the place to start. Business owners need to take some time to familiarize themselves with Google My Business and other social platforms where customers leave reviews. Depending upon your industry, you may find yourself dealing with reviews on websites like:
Yelp
Facebook
Yellowpages
TripAdvisor
Manta
Amazon
Citysearch
Foursquare
Local Businesses and Online Reviews
Multiple studies show that 53% of customers will visit a business within 48 hours of performing a local search. In addition, 33% of customers surveyed by ReviewTrackers say they will not eat in a restaurant with less than 4 stars or multiple negative reviews.
Bad reviews will hurt your business and can drop your website ranking. In fact, one single negative review can drop sales by 5-8% or more!
Google My Business
Each month, Google averages about 158.3 million visitors. With such high exposure, it pays to spend some time optimizing your profile. It is free to claim your Google My Business profile and it does give your business a stronger local presence. Once you have verified your business listing, your website will start to appear in the search engine results and people can start leaving reviews.
Google My Business does provide an option for businesses to post updates and share information directly with the customers. If you do not have a website, or you feel your website is not that impressive, your Google My Business page will become one of the best free resources you have available to keep focused on attracting customers.
Asking for Customer Reviews
It is important to ask your customers for reviews. We utilize services that make it easier for customers to submit a review. We can customize a personalized email and SMS text message tool that will go directly to the customer, making it easier for them to leave a review.
Never be afraid to ask customers directly for a review. If they are in your store and having a great interaction, ask them to leave a review. Most customers are happy to leave a positive review when they have a good interaction with the business in person.
Handling a Negative Review
What happens when you have a negative review? The most important thing we can stress is to avoid attacking the reviewer. Before you even respond to the review, you need to make sure you know all the facts. One thing you can do is make sure you read the review, take the information into consideration and respond positively.
When you respond, the upset customer may update their review or might even remove it entirely. Potential customers will be able to see the response and notice that the business does care about customer satisfaction and is seeking to always improve.
Add Reviews to Your Website
Customers love testimonials as it gives them peace of mind. People want to know what type of experiences people have been experiencing with the business. Use a variety of clients to provide feedback in multiple industries and continue improving the conversion rates for your business.
Online reviews are vital to each industry. Failing to prioritize online reviews can be detrimental to your business. Reputation is everything in the modern Internet-driven world. Successful reviews may not happen immediately, but with the right tools and engagement strategy, you will be able to see a boost in your online reputation and website traffic!
