Barring a major scandal, brands like Coca-Cola and Amazon don't have to worry as much about daily reputation management, as their brands have been carefully tailored over decades and can be trusted to consistently deliver quality products.
However, when it comes to smaller businesses, a mere handful of unhappy customers can cause serious problems. Implementing effective reputation management strategies ensures you're being proactive about your brand's online presence.
Building up a positive brand image takes time, but with the right expertise and techniques in place, you'll be better positioned to delight customers, respond to feedback, and increase revenue.
Your company's online reputation is in the driver's seat for attracting new customers — and retaining current ones. Online reputation management services can help you stay in control of both. Ready to discover what quality reputation management can unlock for your business?
Let's take a look at how reputation management can:
Reputation management involves monitoring, engaging, and influencing how and what people think of your brand on review sites and search engines.
As more and more consumers turn to the web for recommendations on where to shop, reputation management has become an increasingly important tactic for businesses.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the reasons your small business should consider investing in reputation management strategies.
Sometimes, great products and pricing are not enough. You could still be losing prospective customers before they even get to your website.
Why?
Recent negative reviews cast a shadow of doubt on the quality of your services. People heavily depend on your company’s past experiences with customers to determine whether they want to work with you, and online reviews are the easiest way for them to judge the quality of your business without having been in person before.
Effective online reputation management services work to gently and proactively shape the conversation surrounding your business in a favorable light.
Partnering with a reputation management company can help your business show up on search engines where high-intent new prospective customers are looking for your products or services.
This isn’t to say that you’ll no longer have to worry about unhappy customers; bad reviews are just a reality of business. However, an experienced reputation management company can help you manage negative reviews in a professional manner that demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.
Ensuring customers that, even if they have a bad experience, they'll be treated with respect, shows that your business is genuinely concerned with the well-being of its customers.
A proactive, professional approach to responding to both negative and positive reviews contributes to a positive brand image and helps build consumer trust.
Your reputation management company can also help you proactively ask for reviews and streamline submitting feedback. This will inevitably generate new positive reviews, which will help minimize the effect of your unhappy customers and ensure prospective customers see that your business has a proven track record of customer satisfaction.
Before you even start to consider what prospective customers see when your business shows up in search engine results, you have to ensure your business does show up in search engine results.
According to a report by The Edelman Trust Barometer, 65% of consumers trust search engines the most when looking for news or information on a business. Developing a reputation management strategy with the help of experienced professionals ensures your business is front and center for the people seeking your services.
Listing information and searcher proximity play a major role in determining your search engine rankings. But, setting up your listing information is a one-and-done step that won't change in a material way over time, and you have no control over where prospective customers search for your business from.
Luckily, Moz found the second most important factor in determining local ranking: reviews. Google largely relies on customer feedback to prioritize how and where your business is listed on the page.
Partnering with a review management company can help you implement an effective outreach strategy that unearths more positive feedback and, in turn, increases the likelihood of your business showing up on the first page of Google.
On top of that, a reputation management company can help you respond to reviews, showing customers and prospects you are engaged and committed to great service.
Roughly 93% of consumers are impacted by online reviews when making their purchasing decisions. Additionally, 82% of consumers said the content of a review has convinced them to make a purchase.
With consumers placing such an emphasis on online reviews and rankings when determining who to trust with their business, it’s no wonder that many small businesses are putting more effort into implementing effective reputation management strategies.
Partnering with a reputation management firm minimizes the tedious tasks your internal team has to handle when thinking about improving your brand’s reputation. This includes responding to reviews, asking for customer feedback, and configuring SEO strategies. By calling on experienced reputation management professionals to ensure your brand’s reputation is working in your favor, you’ll be able to focus on business objectives that cannot be outsourced.
Through our thoughtful approach to reputation management and unique focus on conversational SEO, Widewail delivers a people-powered approach to reputation management services that enables you to better engage with your customers and ultimately grow your business. We strive to deliver customizable solutions tailored to your particular reputation management needs, which in turn allows us to show the world what makes your business better than the rest.
Next, we recommend you read The Local Business Reputation Management Playbook. Our start-to-finish playbook covers everything the business owner or marketing director needs to know to get a reputation management strategy in motion. At 55 pages, this is packed with great information. Download your copy.