In today’s media and online-focused marketplace, brand reputation plays a pivotal role in the consumer decision-making process.
Your organization’s online presence is often the first contact a potential customer or client makes with your organization.
Typically, this can be your website or perhaps a social media page. But there are plenty of other online areas someone in your target market might discover information about your organization. This includes review sites, other social media pages where your information might have been shared, local listings, and various online destinations.
What customers might discover about your brand will directly influence their decision to do business with your organization or instead opt for a competitor. Additionally, a positive brand reputation can increase consumer trust, improve client acquisition, and attract job seekers.
That’s why it’s crucial that your organization or a digital marketing agency make proactive efforts to build and improve your online presence in today’s digital age. Here are some of the ways to manage and improve your organization’s online brand reputation.
1. Broaden & Streamline Your Online Presence
Social Media Marketing
In 2018, an estimated 2.65 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 3.1 billion by 2021. That’s why digital marketing agencies focus so much on social media marketing these days. More and more consumers are using social media to not only find information about a particular organization but also to share that information with others.
This serves to increase brand recognition, which is another reason why your online brand reputation is so important. Many organizations utilize Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter as the main contenders for social media marketing and establishing a brand’s digital footprint. There are, of course, other platforms—you must ultimately determine which platforms can best be leveraged for optimal benefit.
Local Listings
Over 90% of adults use search engines to find information about an organization. Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing display local results at the top of search results pages. Making sure your local listings are available and up to date is imperative. Doing so ensures your organization is easily discoverable and further improves your online brand presence. Local directories that you should add your information to include:
- Google My Business
- Yelp
- Bing
- Yahoo!
Streamline Your Accounts
Avoid having duplicate local listings on the same directory, and stick with one social media account per platform. Having multiples will only confuse people and possibly drive away prospects. Streamlining your accounts also improves SEO, which in turn improves online searchability, leading to improved brand visibility. All this, in turn, serves to improve your brand reputation.
2. Create Content with Integrity
Content marketing is also vitally important if you wish to stay competitive. Producing informative, valuable, and engaging content serves to create a buzz within your industry, establish you as an expert in your field, and improve brand visibility. Brands that prioritize blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI.
Ultimately, the main goal of your content is to keep an audience interested in your brand. Each piece of content you create is an opportunity to showcase your brand and what it has to offer. If you don’t already have a blog, start with that.
Blogging
If you don’t have an in-house marketing team or a writer, starting a blog and producing regular content can seem like a daunting task. But a digital marketing agency like ours can easily create compelling, insightful, and visual content that resonates with your audience. When done correctly, blogging not only educates an audience but also provides an SEO boost for your website, helping active searchers easily find your brand.
Press Releases
Another great way to establish your brand and improve your online brand reputation is to distribute press releases. They are beneficial for SEO, but also let your audience know about noteworthy events such as new developments in your organization.
Email Marketing
One of the most cost-effective marketing channels that can deliver the strongest ROI is email marketing. Getting the nuances of email marketing just right can take some finesse, which is why many brands utilize a digital marketing agency to ensure a successful email marketing campaign.
You might also consider Podcasts to deliver engaging and thought-provoking content, or start a Youtube channel to showcase products, offer demos, or provide helpful how-to videos. In addition to being highly searchable when combined with quality SEO, all of these options further serve to improve your online brand reputation.
3. Ask Your Clients To Leave Meaningful Online Reviews
Online reviews can help with search engine rankings, increase click-through rates and impact a potential customer’s buying decisions. That’s why it’s imperative to ask clients/employees to leave reviews on the various sites that enable them.
Nearly 90% of consumers trust online reviews, and nearly 75% say positive reviews make them trust a brand more. But it’s important to have current reviews—nearly 80% of consumers don’t consider reviews older than 3 months to be relevant, and an average of 7 reviews are read before consumers feel they can trust a business.
You can utilize automation to ask clients and customers to leave a review. It might also be a good idea to provide an incentive, such as a discount on a future purchase or a chance to win a gift card. Providing incentives can significantly increase the chances of getting a review.
Tip: To further boost online conversions and leads, feature positive reviews on your brand’s website and landing pages.
4. Listen to What People Are Saying About Your Brand
You need to be proactive in researching what consumers and clients are saying about your brand, on both social media platforms and in online reviews. Doing so not only gives you great insight into how well your online brand reputation is doing, but also what you can do to maintain a positive image and further improve upon it.
5. Respond to Negative Reviews Promptly & Professionally
Reading reviews is only part of the job—responding to them in a professional and positive manner is also vitally important. Negative reviews especially must be handled promptly, courteously, and in a manner that successfully resolves whatever issues or complaints the reviewer had.
Doing so accomplishes two very important things:
- It shows the initial reviewer and anyone else reading the reviews that you care enough to hear and respond to a customer complaint.
- It also shows that you value their business and strive to improve customer relations by righting any wrongs that have occurred.
As other potential customers and clients read through the reviews and your responses, both of the above actions go a long way towards improving your online brand reputation and influencing others to do business with your organization.
Conclusion
To be a successful organization, you must always attempt to adapt and evolve to the changing wants and needs of your customers and the marketplace. Brands should implement a strategy that helps build customer trust and has a significant impact on the organization’s growth. You can chat with our premier digital marketing and web design agency team to learn how you can build up additional collateral to strengthen your online brand reputation even further.