Ready to improve your online reputation marketing?
Online audiences rely on review and referral now more than ever, with 88% of customers referring to reviews when it comes to choosing a business and trusting those with good reviews significantly more. A good online reputation marketing campaign can help with this.
In fact, what people say about your business online has become the single most important deciding factor that potential clients consider before making a purchase or booking a service.
No matter what marketing or SEO bells and whistles you’re throwing into your business, they will be rendered useless if you’re drowning in bad reviews.
You can get ahead of the curve by being proactive about your online reputation marketing with these 9 actionable steps toward a better reputation and a better business.
1. Address negative reviews and comments
Responding quickly and kindly doesn’t go unnoticed.
Letting people know that you care about your customers and actively address their concerns can do wonders for your online reputation.
2. Monitor what people are saying
How do you make sure you catch negative reviews as soon as they happen? Set up google alerts, stay active on all of your social platforms, and pay attention to your social media friends and followers.
3. Make your business known through social media marketing
With an ever increasing value on authenticity, transparency, and word of mouth referrals, it’s important not to underestimate the power of building presence and relationships through social media marketing.
But be warned, never try to saturate every platform. Pick one or two and work hard to be consistent, engaging, and transparent.
4. Perfect your inbound marketing
Through social media, online content, and SEO you can make sure that incoming clients are more frequent and more positive.
Provide links, promotions, and most importantly, value to your potential clients.
5. Own your local SEO
Google’s first page is your business card. Make sure your business is the first thing they see!
The first page of google should be covered in your business pages, your social media profiles, and, ideally, positive reviews.
6. Encourage reviews and make it easy
Have a place to review on your site, on Facebook, and have links to your yelp page easily accessible.
It’s a numbers game and your goal is to have a higher ratio of positive reviews.
7. Ask for reviews
The more recent the reviews the better. You want to make sure that you have an incoming stream of reviews and testimonials.
Make sure to prompt clients and customers through either their invoices, personalized e-mails, or through a high traffic page on your website.
8. Make sure your offline product or service is worth a good review
You cannot build a good reputation with bad service.
Work hard to build a good relationship with your clients, meet their needs, and provide quality service that they will want to review and refer friends to.
9. Ask for help if necessary
If you find yourself needing to break free of an overwhelmingly bad reputation, there are plenty of services available online to help you get a fresh start for your business.
To wrap up, you might think of online reputation marketing as crisis aversion but think again. It’s better to start being proactive about your brand or business reputation right now.
A 5-star reputation comes with massive leverage in terms of lead generation, industry authority, and pricing power. Now get to work!
