Consider this scenario: An individual is looking to purchase a new cooler for an upcoming family vacation. While they could ask their friends and family members for a recommendation, the first place they’re likely going to look is online. A quick search of “best coolers” will bring up a thousand results.
Depending on their needs and wishes, they may be able to narrow it down to a few options before looking further into each brand. By scouring websites, customer reviews, and social media, they’ll purchase the one that they think is the best for their vacation.
This simple user journey example happens millions of times per day. Consumers are looking for a product or service so they go online to look up where they can get it.
To stay reputable, it’s essential to keep your brand front and center while ensuring it stays in a positive light. Here are a few ways your business can maintain a sterling reputation online in today’s digital-first world.
1. Boost Your Online Visibility
Your business’ success depends on if your customers can find you. E-commerce retail sites rely on SEO strategies and social media advertising to direct leads.
For brick-and-mortar businesses, however, it’s important to excel in these digital marketing strategies in addition to local listings.
When a visitor is geographically nearby or searching for a particular service in your area, you want your business to have an even greater online visibility. This can be done with the help of local business listings.
These listings are online profiles containing information about your business, such as the company name, address, phone number, and website link. This listing can be found on search engine pages such as Google, social media sites, and other apps.
For instance, a listing for your company may appear on Google My Business, Facebook, and Uber Eats. Having this listing information up-to-date and consistent is critical.
It can be confusing to potential customers if your hours of operation or address are different on your website compared to another listing.
New tools are available today to help monitor and manage all of your online local listings. These tools can ensure your business stands out from competitors, rising to the top of search pages. They can also assist by ensuring the information out there is comprehensive and consistent. Many can also inform you which listings are driving the most traffic to your site.
2. Monitor Your Online Presence
In addition to having greater online visibility, you also want to see what others are saying about your business. Monitoring your online presence requires reading industry-specific forums, press releases, and news articles.
This will educate you on what other competitors are doing as well as how you’re being perceived by the movers and shakers in your niche area.
Of course, while the business forums are important, what is equally, if not more important, is how your customers are speaking about you online.
If you have a review section on your website, it’s important to oversee it and respond to comments regularly. Whether positive or negative, you want to show up as a responsive brand.
Also, keep a close eye on crowd-sourced review sites. With more than 80 million people visiting Yelp each month, you can assume that potential customers are looking at your business before making a purchase.
Leveraging tools like Google Alerts can be beneficial in monitoring your brand’s digital footprint and reputation. You’ll receive email alerts for keywords that you’ve set up regarding your brand.
Other platforms including Hootsuite and Sprout Social can be utilized to take a deeper dive into when your brand is mentioned on social platforms and by whom. People’s opinions carry a lot of weight in the decision-making process so the closer you can monitor the reviews, the better.
3. Build a Customer Review Strategy
Related to monitoring your online presence, is building a review strategy. Put simply, the amount of reviews you have matters.
More reviews can increase site traffic and improve a business’s SEO. If you’re a local business, you’ll be relying on search engine sites like Google for customers to discover you.
Google’s local 3-pack — or how Google displays the top three results of a local business for each search query — mostly relies on the number of reviews.
While strength in numbers withstands here, you also want to be cognizant of having more positive than negative reviews.
If someone has an exceptional experience or compliments your customer service during checkout, ask if they wouldn’t mind writing a review on Google. You can also ask your social media following or email subscribers to write one.
Let them know the power of reviews and how they will help the business grow in the long term.
This will need to be a consistent practice for you. Older reviews are viewed as outdated and sometimes untrustworthy. If you’re struggling to get reviews, you may give your product or service to a handful of people in exchange for a review. You can also incentivize reviews by offering coupons for future purchases or earlier access to a sale.
Takeaways
Crafting and cultivating your business’s online presence means you’re in control of your reputation. This is important for success as consumers make swift purchasing decisions based on reviews, comments, and news headlines. Lean on tools and platforms that can assist you in managing your online reputation while also looking out for your audience’s needs and wants.
