What are the first things that come to your mind when talking about establishing your online presence, promoting your product or service, and increasing your sales?
The typical answers are SEO, digital marketing strategies, and online paid advertising.
All of these are indeed effective ways to improve your visibility, drive traffic to your website, and generate sales. However, in these increasingly digital times, you have to remember that you will need more than these to effectively and easily generate new customers. You need to manage your online reputation as well.
Why Is Online Reputation Management Important?
You create all of these ads in the hopes of encouraging your customers to finally make a purchase or sign up for your services. However, other factors influence their decision as well as their perception of your brand.
One of those factors that you cannot afford to ignore is online reviews. Regardless of the industry you are in or the product or service you offer, you can be sure that your previous customers have left a review or two on online review sites. These reviews bear a lot of weight as they can influence the purchase decisions for 93% of consumers.
Furthermore, positive reviews can significantly improve your bottom line. 92% of B2B buyers are more confident to make a purchase after reading a trusted and positive review. On the contrary, negative reviews are found to drive 94% of consumers away.
Failing to manage the reviews left about your business, whether good or bad, can be sabotaging your potential to grow and scale.
How Do You Build And Maintain A Positive Image Online?
You must invest a significant amount of time, money, and effort into your online reputation management like how you would to your digital marketing efforts. Engaging campaigns and a bigger ad budget allocation will not be able to do much if you don’t address the nasty comments online plaguing your brand.
A great way to get started is to reach out to your most satisfied customers and encourage them to leave reviews. This isn’t something you have to worry about as studies show that more than half (68%) of consumers leave a review if asked. Their feedback will help you get started on building a positive image for your business.
The next thing to do is to actively respond to reviews. Replying to positive comments is not a problem, but what do you do with the negative ones?
It may not be the most pleasant thing in the world to do, but it’s something that you must do nevertheless. The smartest way to respond to negative comments is to be level headed and to offer a solution or a way to take the discussion offline.
Never try to reach out to them to delete it or engage them in a heated conversation for everyone to see. This may all come back to you in ways that will harm your business’ reputation even further.
Conclusion
Ensuring that your business stays competitive requires you to be on top of every situation. It’s great to handle all of your product development and marketing efforts well, but you must never forget your business’ online reputation.
Consumers of today rely on the Internet more than ever to learn more about your offerings. What they see on their search can significantly influence their perception of you. With this, you must manage your reputation to make it work for you—not against you!
Need to start working on your reputation management ? We can help! At Relentless Digital, we understand that your reputation is everything, so we work hard to help you cultivate a reputation for excellence across every corner of the web. Get in touch with us today for a free consultation to learn more about what we can do for you!
