Did you know that nearly 93% of customers take the time to read online reviews before making a purchase? Yes, it’s crucial to have a positive reputation to succeed. That’s why I have 6 powerful tips to help you become an expert at managing your brand’s reputation.
What is brand reputation management?
Brand reputation management is taking control of how people perceive and think about a brand. It involves monitoring what people say online and offline and ensuring the brand has a positive image.
By managing brand reputation well, businesses can protect their image, keep customers happy, and stay ahead of the competition.
Brand reputation management efforts include:
- Monitoring brand mentions, reviews, and feedback to stay informed about the public’s perception of your brand.
- Responding promptly and professionally to customer inquiries, comments, and concerns on social media, review sites, and other platforms.
- Encouraging positive reviews by providing exceptional products and services, as well as engaging with satisfied customers.
- Maintaining a consistent brand voice and message across all marketing channels and customer touchpoints.
- Addressing negative feedback and criticism in a proactive, empathetic, and solution-focused manner.
- Developing and implementing public relations strategies to maintain a positive brand image, including managing potential crises.
- Collaborating with influencers and industry experts to build a positive brand image.
- Continuously analyzing customer feedback and using the insights to improve products, services, and overall brand reputation.
The goal is to build customer trust, address problems or negative feedback, and handle crises effectively.
01- Monitor your brand’s Reputation Score
Reputation Score is a metric that reflects a brand’s overall reputation on the internet.
Tracking this metric gives you an idea of how well your brand reputation management strategy is working.
For example, the score goes up if people are excited about new content and like it. But if people don’t like it and post a lot of negative mentions, the score can go down temporarily.
Furthermore, any controversies related to the company or its executives can result in fluctuations in the Reputation Score.
02- Track online conversations and brand mentions
Brand reputation management starts with brand monitoring!
To be able to react to online mentions, your PR team has to be aware of everything that is being said about your company, product, or service online.
You can monitor mentions you’re interested in manually — type the name of your company into any search engine and examine the results one by one.
This approach to brand reputation management has one benefit — you don’t need to pay for any additional tools.
The list of disadvantages is a bit longer. For starters, manually searching for online mentions will take a lot of your time. You risk missing some crucial comments. That might spiral and hurt your brand reputation in the long run.
Moreover, many brand monitoring tools will offer additional analytics metrics that will help you measure the results of your marketing campaign, your hashtag reach, or sentiment around your brand.
03- Monitor customer reviews
According to research provided by Bright Logical, 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses (including 95% of people aged 18-34).
We live in a time of massive advertising, and it’s impossible to verify if these ads are describing products or services fairly or not. Due to much false advertising, people limited their trust to businesses promoting their products or services.
Nowadays, people much more trust online reviews written by other customers rather than regular ads. It happens because people are looking for real, honest, and unfiltered reviews and opinions made by real users and based on their experience with the brand.
91% of 18-34-year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
That’s why online reviews are crucial for your brand reputation – they are an excellent way to build a more significant social reach and establish trust, which converts potential customers into paying customers.
Feedback and business improvement
Another benefit you get from online reviews is feedback about your product. That’s why you should pay attention to what people are saying about you.
Even if a review is negative, you should read it carefully and try to draw conclusions. Negative surveys can help your business by showing you the weakest links of your product or service. Thanks to that, you can correct all the mistakes and improve your business according to your customers’ desires!
Monitoring reviews and upgrading your service will lead to growth in sales, will help you determine the priority of features development
What’s also essential – negative opinions may show you in a favorable light! It all depends on how you respond to them. If you admit that you’ve made a mistake, apologize and show that you drew conclusions from the review, people will accept it.
Show your human face, let people know that there is a real person on the other side of the screen. We are all human and making mistakes is a human thing. Your reaction is most important.
04- Respond promptly to customer concerns
First, you need to identify urgent customer concerns that require immediate attention.
You can do it by sorting important negative mentions. Also, keep an eye on overall brand sentiment. Sentiment analysis will inform you whether any negative trend appears.
After detecting the issue:
- Respond to the customer promptly.
- Let them know that you are working on finding a solution.
- Show empathy and understanding toward their frustration or dissatisfaction.
- Keep the customer informed throughout the resolution process.
- Once you have all the information, it’s important to give a clear and easy solution that addresses the person’s concerns.
- After successfully resolving the customer’s concern, follow up with them to ensure their satisfaction and check if they require any further assistance. This shows that you care about their feedback and want to make sure they’re satisfied in the long term.
05- Build positive brand reputation proactively
It’s crucial to maintain a positive brand image. Here are some great tips that will help you do that:
- Promote positive customer experiences
- Boost customer satisfaction
- Provide an excellent customer experience
- Build an engaged community
- Collaborate with influencers and industry experts
Is brand reputation management important?
To sum up, brand reputation management is crucial for growing a business. A positive brand reputation builds loyalty and increases customer confidence in your brand and product, which leads to an increase in sales.
In the multitude of daily duties, it can be easy to forget about the importance of brand reputation management, but if you want your business to grow, you need to keep your finger on the pulse.
Lack of brand reputation management can seriously harm your brand and cause damages, which will take a lot of time, money, and effort to repair.