As a local trade business, your digital footprint can significantly impact your ability to acquire new customers. Just one or two customer complaints can send potential clients to the competition. Learning how to improve your online reputation is vital for building your brand perception, a loyal customer base, and business success.
In this guide, our SEO experts from Relentless Digital discuss what your HVAC company needs to know about digital reputation management. For help addressing negative feedback or building your company’s presence, get in touch with our HVAC SEO crew today.
Why Your Online Reputation Matters As a Local Trade Business
What people think about your brand influences business success and revenue. When potential customers Google queries like “best HVAC contractor near me” or “plumbing repairs in Chicago,” you can bet they’ll take time to evaluate customer reviews before choosing a contractor they feel comfortable with. Some clients will even hop on social media platforms to verify a company’s legitimacy before scheduling service.
Research shows that 95% of customers check online reviews before pulling the trigger on a product or service purchase. Because of this high rate, you must prioritize your image to gain their trust from the get-go.
When people search for home repair services, you want your company’s digital channels to display as much positive feedback as possible, proving that you’re the right choice for their needs. Excellent recognition can build trust and help customers feel confident in choosing your trade services.
What Shapes Your Online Reputation?
Numerous channels shape your prestige. Beyond customer opinions surfacing on search engine results pages, potential clients might evaluate your social media presence, the press you receive from other websites, and more.
A positive online standing depends on:
- Receiving positive reviews on all major review sites
- Cultivating a strong brand image across social media channels
- Garnering strong press in search engine results
- Being the focus of beaming news articles
- Developing positive relationships with other industry players
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management involves shaping your brand image across digital platforms to ensure that potential and new customers experience the right impression when they interact with your business. Doing so might involve proactively managing bad reviews, encouraging positive notes, addressing customer concerns, building out your social media accounts, and actively engaging in public relations to ensure you build trust and develop that positive experience customers are looking for.
Key Benefits of Creating a Positive Online Reputation
Learning how to improve your company’s position across digital spaces offers numerous benefits for your trade business. With a solid reputation, you will enjoy:
Heightened Client Trust
As a consumer yourself, you know how much the opinions of other, real customers matter. Likewise, ample feedback from happy customers leaving wonderful comments on social media goes a long way toward making clients more inclined to choose your business over the competition. Heightened client trust can lead to increased business, more revenue, and overall success for your local services.
SEO Perks
When customers leave reviews and publish positive content about your business, they also help your website rank higher in organic search engine results. Google prioritizes websites with high average star ratings and plenty of reviewers. This builds premier brand esteem, helping you see more results from your SEO efforts. You will also increase visibility on your Google Business Profile listing, ensuring your target audience easily finds your contact information when looking for local services.
A Competitive Edge
When customers compare two similar businesses, what they’re looking for is character. If one features a wide array of positive content and press while the other has a few negative, mean comments and concerning notes from customers on social media, they’re likely to choose the option with satisfied customers in the hopes of becoming one themselves. With premier digital esteem, clients will see that your company prioritizes customer satisfaction, allowing you to enjoy a heightened competitive edge against similar local services.
Premier Brand Recognition
Online reputation management involves building your presence across numerous channels. Building out social media profiles and feedback on review sites is a sound way to develop strong brand recognition. Local customers will start recognizing your company’s name and its positive prominence within the industry, keeping you at the top of their minds the next time they need home services.
How To Improve: Online Reputation Repair Tips and Tricks
Whether you want to improve your name in digital spaces or build a positive esteem from scratch, you need a comprehensive strategy. We’ve established that many factors affect your organization’s image, so building your credibility goes far beyond deleting a few negative, concerning comments. Here’s how to improve your digital reputation:
1. Conduct a Thorough Reputation Audit
You need a solid understanding of how people are currently talking about your business. This involves performing a comprehensive audit of your brand mentions across all channels. Essentially, you must evaluate where your business name appears, the type of feedback you’re receiving, or the lack thereof.
Take advantage of various management tools to perform such an audit or search your business name on Google and social media channels to see what type of press pops up. These valuable insights can help you discover things like negative comments on social media that you might not have been aware of or review sites that don’t mention your company because you haven’t created the appropriate listings.
Be sure to track down specific metrics for trackable analysis later on. For example, you might want to take note of the number of reviews you have on various platforms and the average scores on each directory.
2. Develop Your Online Reputation Management Strategy
Once you have a solid grasp of what people currently think about your company, it’s time to develop a strategy to improve it. Your strategy will likely include leveraging various management tools for easier upkeep as you employ our strategies.
Management tools can alert you anytime someone comments on your social media accounts, leaves a review for your business, or mentions your company’s name online, allowing you to respond promptly. You may also use these tools to encourage satisfied customers to share their experiences for others to see.
We recommend defining your management strategy and selecting a tool that best suits your needs. For example, Semrush offers complete social media monitoring and review collection via email outreach.
3. Encourage Clients To Leave Positive Reviews
Negative reviews are inevitable for all businesses. It’s how you respond to them that sets you apart.
While it may seem frustrating, these poor marks are often impossible to delete, and even when you can, doing so can harm your site’s performance in the long run. You want to build trust with your audience, so you shouldn’t shield them from the negative press you receive.
Instead, ask your satisfied clients to leave positive comments so that your good press can outweigh the bad. Doing so can quickly bury negative thoughts and help your website rank higher in search engines.
Encourage company advocacy by sending email campaigns or follow-up text messages. Be sure to make the process as simple as possible so customers can simply click a link and add their feedback after receiving service. You might also consider incentivizing customers to leave reviews by offering discounts on future services or similar perks.
4. Respond to Negative Reviews Promptly
Whenever you receive negative press, respond to it as soon as possible. This proves that your trade business takes customer interactions seriously and is committed to nipping issues in the bud. By writing professional, kind, and genuine responses to poor reviews, you will regain trust and ensure you don’t lose potential customers because of one person’s feedback.
When responding to bad press, your main goal should not be to delete a reviewer’s negative feedback. Rather, you will want to encourage them to update their review by explaining how you resolved their issue, ultimately turning the poor interaction into a positive one. Whatever you do, don’t elevate the conversation into an argument or invalidate their feelings. Instead, address their concerns and keep the response straightforward.
We recommend asking them to call or email your company to discuss the matter offline. If you have the customer’s contact details, get in touch with them on your own to talk about the review. As you discuss the matter further, ask the customer what your company can do better, turning the negative interaction into a positive one by working things out on a human level.
5. Keep Track of All Brand Mentions on Social Media Platforms and Third-Party Websites
As you’re learning how to improve your online reputation, tracking your brand mentions across social media platforms and all digital channels is essential for staying ahead of any negative or positive news. While you can use the tactics above to respond to a few negative comments, you’ll need a stronger strategy if you find yourself at the center of a full-blown public relations drama.
If negative press about your HVAC company spreads on social media, you need to act quickly, but you must also respond carefully to avoid making matters worse. We recommend developing a public relations strategy in advance so you’re prepared for these types of situations.
For example, if one of your contractors is accused of misbehavior, do you release a public statement, make an apology, or stay quiet?
A great way to protect your company’s name on social media is by building a strong name in advance that people can trust. In doing so, a few negative rumors will not tear down your credibility. You may do so by publishing social proof, engaging with the community, sharing positive comments, and developing a strong following.
6. Encourage Employees To Advocate for Your Brand
Your employees should be your strongest advocates. While you don’t need to force your team members to be walking billboards, encourage them to talk about the company in a positive light whenever possible.
For example, if family or friends mention to one of your contractors that their air conditioner just broke, your technician should recommend your company. You might also encourage team members to occasionally share company content on their personal social media accounts to further spread the company’s positive image to a wider audience. If your team members hear anyone saying negative things about the company, they should dispute the information and stand up for the brand.
Achieving this level of commitment from lower-level employees isn’t easy. You can encourage employee advocacy with incentives to keep your team committed.
For example, you might start a referral program where any employee who refers the company to friends or family can receive a gift card or a bonus. You could also consider encouraging employees to collect more reviews from clients after service. Maybe the technician who collects the most in a set period could win a prize.
7. Refine Your Organic SEO Efforts
If your team receives negative press from third-party review sites, news articles, social media posts, or other sources, these items will likely appear in a Google search anytime someone looks up your company name. Unfortunately, you cannot delete this information from the internet, but you can bury it with content you’d rather have your audience find.
Organic SEO efforts help you gain control over that coveted first Google results page. For example, you could start an informative blog that publishes how-to articles on fixing minor HVAC system issues. With the right tactics, these positive, engaging articles can rank above any negative press, ensuring your services look superior to prospective clients.
As you refine your organic SEO efforts, we recommend:
- Researching and targeting local, relevant keywords
- Streamlining the navigation of your website
- Running a site audit and removing all errors that turn up
- Ensuring that all pages load fast
- Optimizing your website for mobile
- Publishing relevant content on a routine basis
- Using targeted and compelling title tags and meta descriptions
- Requesting backlinks from highly authoritative websites
- Optimizing your local citations on relevant directories like Google Business Profile
8. Gather Feedback and Address Recurring Issues
Negative feedback can sometimes be random and unfair. Other times, it can point to systematic issues your team needs to address. If multiple customers mention the same problem in their comments, you need to fix it so you can deliver a better customer experience and prevent complaints altogether.
For example, if you’re noticing multiple clients complaining about technicians arriving late for their scheduled appointments, you might need to optimize your scheduling system or hire more employees. Following up on problems, listening to concerns, and owning up when you know your company can do better proves that you’re committed to delivering top-notch service.
9. Consider Investing in an Online Reputation Management Service
All the tips we’ve discussed thus far require ample manual time, even when using review management tools. You still must check the mentioned alerts, respond to reviews, and actively request feedback from customers.
If you don’t have the time to add these tasks to your busy schedule, consider outsourcing to a management service. They’ll keep a keen eye on your company’s digital image while monitoring across platforms for mentions and conducting outreach on your behalf to gather positive comments.
Do You Need Help Building Your Business’s Online Reputation?
Now, you know how to enhance your brand’s online reputation for optimal reach. If you need help managing your image across digital channels or acquiring positive feedback from customers, reach out to Relentless Digital to speak with our crew of specialty HVAC SEO experts.
