If you’re a business owner, chances are you’ve heard about online reputation management (ORM). But do you know what managing your online reputation entails?
Is it necessary in the first place?
We’re glad you bumped into this piece. We have the answers you’re looking for.
Online reputation management services are meant to help organizations improve or restore their good standing by monitoring, countering, weakening, or even eliminating any negative reviews found on the web.
They involve tracking every mention of your company’s name and taking steps to ensure you have control over your reputation. Why should you do this? Read on to find out.
Importance of Online Reputation Management Services
A recent study reveals that more than 97% of business owners believe that online reputation is critical.
You should, therefore, come up with a strategy to manage your online reputation. Most of your competitors are doing it, and you risk losing clients to them if you don’t protect the status of your company.
Reputation management services will improve your online brand image and provide valuable customer insight to help you improve your products or services and deliver on your promises.
Not convinced? Here are 10 more benefits of embracing online reputation management.
1. Building Trust
Do you know that 84% of online buyers trust online reviews as much as they believe personal recommendations? About 74% of them say that positive online reviews make them trust a business more.
If you’ve been struggling to build trust and credibility with your clients, there might be bad reviews about your brand on the internet.
Investing in reputation management services will enable you to replace the bad reviews with positive ones. This way, you’ll earn your clients’ trust and hold on to them for life.
2. Increasing Sales
Managing your online reputation can increase closed sales and turn your business into a sales machine.
How?
With reliable reputation management services, you’ll be able to monitor online reviews and address the negative ones almost immediately. The insights and constructive criticism from the unhappy clients will help you identify the problem and strive to meet their expectations.
This approach will make you the go-to provider in your niche and increase your sales dramatically.
3. You’ll Know What Your Competitors Are Doing
Reputation management services can help you stalk your competitors and understand their moves. Why is this important?
Well, you’ll adjust accordingly and stay a step ahead.
You’re also likely to find your competitors’ negative online reviews and act on them in a way that doesn’t damage your reputation.
4. Quick Response to Complaints
ORM service providers use sophisticated tools that enable you to identify and respond to complaints quickly and professionally. You can learn more from this company.
Responding to complaints in the right way will not only work to appease a disgruntled customer but also appeal to new clients and present your brand in a new light.
5. Easy Introduction of New Products
Negative articles, comments, reviews, and listings harm your online reputation and make it difficult or impossible to introduce new products or services to the market.
ORM services will help you respond to the negative reviews as soon as possible. As a result, only positive reviews and messages about your company will be trending online.
Managing online reputation creates a brand image that speaks of professionalism and quality. This makes it easy and inexpensive to introduce new products or even test them out on the market.
6. Minimizing Financial Losses from Bad Reputation
Guess how much your company would lose due to a bad reputation. Do you have any idea?
Well, according to a report by the Harvard Business Review, it would cost a company with bad reputation at least 10% more to hire a qualified professional.
Besides, you could lose four out of five of your potential clients if your company has a negative online story.
Let’s put that into perspective.
Assuming you serve five clients each day and earn about $200 from them, you’ll lose $160 in sales daily (after losing four of your clients). That adds up to about $58,400 in lost sales per year under the existing conditions.
Keep in mind that this is just a small-scale example. If you run a big company, a bad online reputation could cost millions, even billions annually if you don’t have a reliable online reputation management strategy.
With ORM services, you’ll be able to prevent bad online stories and, in turn, save your company lots of money.
7. Real Positive Reviews
Some businesses use fake positive reviews to fight negative reviews. This is not a good idea!
Why?
If your customers discover that you’re using fake positive reviews, they’ll have a negative perception of your brand. It’ll be difficult for them to trust your brand ever again even if you apologize.
Simply put, if you fake it, you’ll lose in the long run. If you want to fight negative online reviews and win, do so with real positive reviews.
Reputation management services will encourage people to leave positive reviews and provide directions on how to do that.
8. Improving Products and Customer Services
When managing your online reputation, you’re likely to identify significant patterns in customer feedback. If you pay attention to them, you’ll undoubtedly figure out what most of your customers need.
You can then use this insight to enrich your products and personalize your customer services.
9. Effective Marketing Campaigns
If you’ve been struggling to develop marketing campaigns that capture the attention of your clients, investing in online reputation management can make things easy.
These services will help you discover more about their target audience. As a result, you’ll craft and deliver relevant, personalized messages to them.
You’ll also come up with scalable, flexible, and unpredictable marketing strategies.
10. Improving SEO Strategy
Online reputation management strategy can also help to convince Google algorithms that your business is worth ranking among the top in the search results.
How?
ORM prevents or cleans up negative online content. It also encourages people to post positive reviews about your company. Besides, the feedback from your clients will help you offer valuable, exciting, and unique content to searchers.
Embrace Online Reputation Management
Nowadays, online reviews can make or break your business. Managing your online reputation will help you promote your brand and ensure only the positive reviews are trending online.
What should you do? Invest in online reputation management services today!
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