Ways to Manage and improve the online reputation of your brand

Posted by Saffron Edge Inc on March 25th, 2020

There are always certain ups and downs when it comes to maintaining your brand’s online image. A little slip up cannot be the end. You can still make it up to the audience and yourself by several ways and measures that will help you in managing and improving your online reputation. 

These measures are not only helpful for big brands and repudiated companies. Even small companies or new brands with very less or no online reputation can use these measures to uplift their standards and reputation online. 

But before we get started, let's read into why building an online reputation is important!

• Through research, it has been shown that 59% of business executives think that Managing online reputation is important and they are taking measures to do so.

• 41% of highly repudiated companies and big brands have experienced decreased revenues due to a damaged online reputation. These statistics directly highlight the importance of maintaining the company’s online reputation.

Ways to Manage and Improve the online reputation of your brand:

• Ask your valuable customers to review you online:

Right now, your website or product might have some bad or no reviews that might hurt your online reputation. That happens and it’s obviously unavoidable as everyone cannot have a pleasant experience with your respected company. And the worst situation is when you don’t have lots of reviews and those negative reviews are standing out of the queue. In this situation, you surely need help from your happy customers and need to ask them to review you and your company online.

But the question arises is you simply can’t straightforwardly ask them to review you. So, what can be an alternate method?

Think tricky, use technology and give them some offers that can be availed by rating you online. For instance, you can offer a direct 20% discount on the billing,if your customer rates and reviews you online. Some big companies offer incentives to their customers when they review them online.

Hence, if you have a good number of positive reviews this will simply balance out the negative reviews on your brand or product. Additionally, a mixture of negative and positive reviews will make your brand look authenticated and real. If every review was positive it can make the customer think that all these are fake.

• Expand your boundaries:

Expanding your boundaries is very important to build up your online reputation. Let people know about your brand and this cannot be done only with few good reviews. You need to think about the places where people can find information about your products.

Different customers have different preferences and knowing those preferences becomes your chief duty. 

People nowadays are more active on social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.  Likewise, platforms like Google, Yelp, Trip Advisors, Yellow Pages, etc are doing pretty well in developing an online reputation of a brand. You can easily make an account on these sites and establish new business opportunities for your company.

• Photos are more impactful:

According to a survey 77% of consumers responded that they find pictures more impactful as compared to the reviews. These photographs help them to decide whether to buy or invest money in the product or not. Photos you add on your website are good but customer’s photos create a huge difference. These make your product much more real and authentic.

They are surely not taken with a professional camera but these photos are enough to create a great impact on customers and improve the reputation of the product and brand online.

Similarly, you can ask your customers to upload photographs of the products and grab some good offers and gifts.

• Avoid adding ads, they put you down!

Silly ads hurt your brand’s reputation!

Several ads, certain designs, and various elements turn people away from your business. Make sure to correct this as soon as possible. Start by removing all the silly ads wasting the time of your consumers.

Pop-ups and banners are the most disliked element on a website that lowers down the reputation of your online business. You might be adding ads to earn some extra revenue but do realize that a bit of money is not bigger than your company’s or business’s reputation.

• Don’t forget to respond to your consumer’s complaints:

The most difficult part of an online business is to handle the complaints and issues of the customers online. It's a bit obvious no one wants to hear unfavorable reviews but you should not take it negatively but use it as feedback to enhance the quality of your product. Whenever you read an unfavorable review or complaint make sure to defend yourself but your reply should not sound disrespectful or a point to start an argument. Ignoring such situations is not a choice as it will put a negative impact on other customers as well.

So, the best way to reply is:

Recognize the first rule of business that customers are never wrong even if they are wrong you have to treat them as king. So, rather than defending yourself or making yourself superior focus on helping them and making them happy. Start by thanking them for ordering your product and say their review is important for them and you will try to use it to better the quality. If needed you can offer them something as compensation for the bad experience they had with your company.

Conclusion:

It is never too late. If your business reputation is still not too low you can improve it. You just have to give importance to customers and make them review you well with help of some good words and photographs. If you follow these small tactics, you surely don’t have to face much obstacles in building up a good online reputation.