The monitoring and control of the public’s impression of your brand is brand reputation management, which is essential to creating and expanding a successful company. More consumers will trust and support a brand if its reputation is good.

A solid brand reputation strategy will assist your company in managing its reputation, enhancing transparency, winning over customers, and respecting any possible crises. Reputation management is essential to continuously monitor and manage reputation because a brand’s reputation might vary over time.

Due to the fact that people are more likely to purchase your goods or services if they have a favorable perception of your brand, a solid reputation boosts customer confidence, fosters loyalty, and boosts sales. Building brand experiences on the requirements, interests, beliefs, and views of the customer can influence how customers view a company.

Why Online Reputation Management Is Important

What does brand reputation management online entail? It’s a marketing technique and strategy aimed at managing and defending your internet reputation. Marketing and management of ORM are more crucial than ever. More customers and companies tend to trust a brand that has a solid reputation.

The top ten reasons for the significance of online reputation management are as follows:

1. Boosts Sales and Increases Profits

According to a Harvard Business School working paper, every star rating that a business gets (like on Yelp or other review aggregation sites) can increase revenue by as much as 9 percent. Ninety-seven percent of consumers say online reviews definitely influence their purchase decisions. This stresses the financial importance of online reputation management.

Businesses that have products with lots of excellent reviews attract more customers. This answers why reputation management is important in today’s digital-heavy world.

Reviews about your company and products spread faster than the old word on the street. This is why you should invest in ORM marketing. Too many negative reviews can reduce sales and return on investment (ROI). Work with an online reputation management agency if you need help building or repairing your online reputation.

Businesses with very good online reputations don’t have to spend more on advertising than those with bad reputations. That’s another reason why reputation management is important.

2. Impacts Your SEO Efforts

If your business can’t generate enough interest among customers, then expect your site’s visibility to go down as well. Sure, you may have done your part when it comes to on-page SEO, but that is only one part of the equation. One of the benefits of reputation management is that it increases brand awareness.

Fifteen percent of the ranking factors in Google’s Local Pack come from online reviews. This stresses the importance of reputation management. Google places a huge value on user-generated content (UGC). One of the effective strategies that you can use is to generate more user reviews on Google and other review websites.

Ask any online reputation management service provider, and they will tell you that UGC should be integrated with your Google Business Profile (GMP). By doing this, you improve your click-through rate (CTR) and increase your brand’s trustworthiness. Eventually, your local rankings go up.

3. Supports Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is a vital part of search engine marketing as well as ORM. Brand reputation management requires each business to formulate an effective social media strategy. The goal is to make your brand more customer-focused and accessible to leads and current customers.

Studies show your customer churn could increase by as much as 15 percent simply because you didn’t actively engage your customers. When your visitor engagement is low, people will see your brand as just another business only looking to sell something.

Read Also: Why is Consistency Important in Branding?

Forty-six percent of businesses today use social media for online reputation management in digital marketing. Others use review sites, news websites and blogs.

4. Creates Instant Social Proof

Another importance of reputation management is that it instantly creates social proof for your brand. UGC isn’t only important for search engines; it’s something people also use to measure trustworthiness. When people see one or two stars on a review about your business, it keeps them from investigating further.

However, if you earn three to five stars, it can effortlessly convert a casual onlooker into your next customer. This demonstrates the value of online reputation management in digital marketing. ORM allows you to social proof your site. Highlighting client logos, displaying customer reviews and linking to different review platforms help.

5. Improves Products, Services and Customer Experience

Another importance of online reputation management is it allows you to analyze customer feedback. This feedback is a big help in product development. You can better address customer needs and customize your products to solve their pain points. When people know you’re listening, it improves customer experience.

6. Attracts a More Talented Workforce

Why is reputation management important? ORM builds your brand’s credibility, resulting in a lot of trust with the general public. Your high reputation also becomes a magnet for people who align with your core values. More talented professionals will want to work with you. Remember that 69 percent of job hopefuls tend to reject offers from companies with bad reputations.

7. Increases Customer Loyalty and Turns Them Into Brand Advocates

Businesses can improve customer loyalty by staying on top of reviews and social media comments. Promptly addressing complaints creates opportunities to establish excellent rapport with customers.

Social media monitoring helps you understand customer sentiments and provide valuable solutions. Improving customer loyalty turns clients into brand advocates who spread the word about your business. Still asking yourself, “Why is reputation management important?” This is one good reason to do it. There’s no way to keep track of everything happening on the web, which is why taking advantage of software solutions and the best online reputation management services is key.

8. Improves Conversion Rates

Using the best online reputation management solutions increases trust in your brand. This includes conflict resolution and getting more positive brand reviews. When your brand reputation is solid and trust is high, you get increased conversion rates. Studies show that getting more positive reviews can increase your conversion rate by as high as 270 percent.

9. Manages Unknown Website Listings

Using ORM software, you can better identify, claim, and manage unknown website listings. There are hundreds of online directories, such as Yelp, for instance. Unfortunately, some of these listings and backlinks have a negative impact on your site. Getting the best online reputation management service will allow you to find them as soon as possible.

10. Provides More Control over Your Online Presence

Your online business presence is everywhere. You control the content on your website and social media pages. But you don’t have 100 percent control over other portals like Reddit, Quora and review sites. With excellent brand reputation management, you can regain control of how your brand name is used online.

Strategies to Build a Positive Brand Reputation 

By deciding where to concentrate your efforts, a proactive social media management approach will boost your brand’s reputation online.

Responding swiftly and effectively to negative feedback

Brand management best practices include responding to and resolving customer issues rapidly to increase customer satisfaction and nurture a positive brand reputation. Efficient customer service brands offer multiple support channels (social media, phone, email, or even chatbot) for customers to be able to easily reach out on their preferred and most comfortable channels.

Empowering employees to be brand ambassadors

There is nothing better than employees advocating for their own workplace. Employee engagement programs help boost employee satisfaction and well-being. Happy employees are most inclined to become brand advocates, as satisfied employees work harder, have better morale, and care more about the success of their employer’s business. 

Positive workplaces also help with recruiting, as potential employees are most likely to trust word-of-mouth information from satisfied former or current employees, rather than regular brand recruiting methods or advertisements.

Use social listening 

Backed with AI technology, social listening services are undeniable tools to track, analyze, and optimize brand, industry, and competitor mentions across all social media platforms. Your brand can leverage social media listening to get alerted every time someone mentions your brand (positively or negatively) on social media. This tool enables you to stay ahead, react, and reduce the spread of negative mentions, as negative sentiment tends to spread more quickly than positive ones.

Conducting regular audits and assessments

Brands with a strong reputation take the time to sweep the web for online conversations to learn about what people are saying about their brand. Regular audits are a great way to monitor all social media platforms, customer reviews, search engines, and review sites with relevant keywords to understand customer perception and strengthen your brand reputation management strategy.

Brand reputation management can be challenging with so many different elements to consider. Here are a few examples of best practices on how your brand can use brand reputation management to its advantage.

• Add customer reviews and success stories to your social media platform, website, or even ads: Show how you value your customers, their opinions, and feedback.
• Removing negative online articles about your brand: Reduce the negative impact on your brand reputation.
• Use influencer marketing: Improve positive brand awareness and build trust.
• Take ownership of customer disappointment: Acknowledge that you did not meet client expectations, invite customers to share their information to discuss the issue further, and offer solutions to resolve the issue.
• Quick response time to all comments and reviews: This is an opportunity to defuse situations when customers are upset and make sure they do not sit with their dissatisfaction for long.
• Express gratitude to loyal customers: Show how you value your customers and don’t take their business for granted.
• Actively ask for and respond to reviews: Respond to online customer reviews, listen to their feedback, and implement them.

Online Reputation Management Pitfalls And How to Avoid Them

It’s difficult to exaggerate how important reputation management is. Because of this, proper online reputation management is even more crucial. Even well-intentioned marketers can make a lot of mistakes. Let’s examine some of the more prevalent ones and how to fix them.

1. Not requesting feedback

Some brands are content to ignore customer reviews. Others tend to ignore customer feedback. Some go a step further and even discourage feedback.

This harms a company’s brand. Without customer feedback, after all, you can’t hear what people are saying about the brand. In many cases, customers will offer plenty of insight into what they love about the brand. They’ll also share what they wish would change.

Listening to that kind of feedback can help brands improve their products and business practices. It’s another reason you should make sure you engage with all negative reviews. A reviewer could offer some great ideas for what a client could do better. You should encourage reviews as a result.

Using the right tools, like reputation management software, is key to managing feedback effectively. A tool like Customer Voice can help you gather customers’ insights, so your clients can serve them better and keep their trust. A review management service can further help you track and respond to reviews.

2. Forgetting to set goals for reputation management

Think about what your client wants to achieve with reputation management services. Do they want to increase market share or boost the company’s valuation? Maybe they want to increase conversions and sales.

Any of these goals is possible with a better online reputation. Setting a goal, though, helps steer your reputation management team’s activities. In short, having a goal helps them devise a better strategy.

With a goal in mind, it’s also easier to see if your reputation management activities are working the way you expect them to.

3. Ignoring reviews (both positive and negative)

It can be tempting to simply ignore reviews, especially if the company is getting a lot of them (and, if ORM is working, that should be the case!). As any reputation management pro knows, you ignore reviews at your own risk. That goes for both the negative and the positive ones.

It can be tempting not to engage with bad reviews. After all, this was someone’s opinion, and they had a bad experience. They’re allowed to express frustration, right? You might worry about making the situation worse by responding in an inappropriate way.

Ignoring an upset or frustrated customer is poor practice, just like it would be in a physical store. Instead of ignoring a negative review, your team needs to engage with it. A negative review is a golden chance to make things right for the customer. It’s also a chance to restore their trust in the brand.

It doesn’t hurt that almost half of customers say they’re inclined to buy from a brand that engages with bad reviews. These people see the team out there addressing the reviewers’ concerns. That can often convince them that the brand delivers great customer service.

Final Words

If you have enough time and the correct tools, you can build a brand that people will adore and keep promoting. Your brand will be more successful in the long run if it has a positive reputation since it will be more likely to draw new and repeat customers.