A brand is all about its reputation, but if the brand’s name is tarnished, it starts affecting the business and sales. Once this is done, the quality or availability of the product doesn’t matter. The only thing that will matter is that your brand doesn’t have a good image. This is precisely the reason why brands should have control over their image.
With the growing popularity of social media, maintaining a solid online reputation is crucial for every business. An online presence can be in the form of social media accounts, websites, articles, etc. and they must be in control. But, many companies tend to ignore it as they don’t know where to start from. At first, it might not seem like a big deal, but in the long run if negative links pile up it might eventually lead to loss of clients and business.
Today, many companies are allocating resources to Online Reputation Management (ORM) – to maintain a healthy brand reputation. According to the Online Reputation Management statistics for 2021, 85% of the consumers trust online reviews, on an average consumers read 7 reviews before trusting any business and 3 out of 4 consumers trust a company if it has positive reviews.
When a brand steps into the online world, it may or may not focus on its brand reputation. But, over a period of time, a brand reputation is formed – be it favorable or unfavorable. In order to maintain a positive reputation, repairing the existing brand reputation is crucial for every business.
Here the goal is to fill the online space with enough positive information possible. This can be done by: review questionnaires, feedback forms, public relations strategies and many more. As negative reviews can have a long-lasting impact on the brand reputation, enhancing the brand reputation is an important factor.
Last but not least is to deal with the negative comments. Reviews have become a part of the consumers’ psyche, whether it’s a restaurant review or writing about the product. This is one of the important objectives that can either make or break the reputation game.
For every company, Online Reputation Management (ORM) service helps to build an online presence. Here are a few steps to follow to do it the right way:
Before building and managing, list down the important things so that you don’t miss out on any points. Some of the aspects could be:
Assess where your brand stands by checking the review sites, blog sites (like Quora), etc. and make a note wherever your brand name has come up. You could try to set google alerts to receive an email every time your brand gets mentioned over the web.
Draft a perfect strategy to achieve your goals with the data gathered. Let no one stop you from growing your business and building your reputation the right way.
Once you’ve understood where your online reputation stands and what it says about your brand, the next step is to manage it. To do so, follow these steps repeatedly:
In today’s world, truth finds its way out easily. Hence, make sure while responding to online reviews you are transparent about your processes. Apart from this, some other ways include: addressing criticism publicly, taking customer feedback, allowing employees to talk publicly about the brand or products, and creating one-to-one channels for communication.
The key to a good reputation is trust and credibility. It’s difficult to gain trust from the customers and will require a lot of focused effort from your end. Luckily, there are certain tools that can you here – from guest posts to personalized videos, you can do a lot to establish that trust.
Even a mild criticism can turn into a full-blown PR nightmare, if not dealt with care. Some brands go wrong because they get defensive quickly. Certain complaints and criticism should not only be resolved quickly but also engaged to help you improve as a company. This can help turn a tragedy into an opportunity to win loyal customers.
Every brand has to live with an online reputation and BrightBrain can help you stay on top of your online reputation. Our expertise includes Digital Advertising Campaigns, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Development and Online Branding. At BrightBrain, we implement the best Online Reputation Management (ORM) services to help our clients grow digitally.
If you’re looking for the best Online Reputation Management (ORM) services in India – contact us today!
Suhail Bajaj is the CEO of BrightBrain Marketing Technologies LLP that has now grown into a full-fledged digital marketing agency with 55+ employees and clients from 7+ countries – all under his supervision. Graduated with an MBA from the esteemed Cass Business School, he brilliantly puts his learnings into practice, helping brands meet their business goals and succeed in a digital-first world.
