Whether we like it or not, we are living in a digital world, and for businesses wanting to succeed and grow, a brand and reputation management-based digital marketing strategy is crucial to success. While there are many facets of an effective digital marketing strategy, reputation management is at the core of most of them. In the current age of immediacy and social media, people, clients, and potential investors have information at their fingertips. If your business does not give off a glowing digital first impression, it is game over.

There is so much competition and choice in the world of e-commerce that potential customers can make snap decisions on where to take their business based on online reputation, word of mouth, and customer reviews. So the answer to why do you need reputation management is a simple one: if you want to succeed and get a firm foothold in the digital marketplace, reputation is everything.

Online Reputation Management

When it comes to online reputation management (ORM), a business website and the buzz surrounding it will determine whether or not potential customers will stop and engage or move on to the next site. With the prevalence of e-commerce, online retailers and businesses have had to really up their game. From instant messaging with 24-hour customer support to free shipping, online retailers have to offer potential customers everything other businesses do, plus some extras to stand out. Online reputation management is a critical aspect of implementing an effective social media and digital marketing campaign. Let’s continue on to explore the reasons why.

Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is more than just the bottom line. People who have put their time, energy, and money into establishing a business want to know that their effort is worthwhile. Regardless of how much someone loves what they do or the services they provide, if they are not making money doing it and have no financial growth to look forward to, the business venture is simply not working and unlikely to continue.

Very few people give their patronage to a business without first researching its brand, services, and products. The majority of this research is done online. If your reputation management doesn’t involve knowing exactly what these potential customers are looking for, how can you possibly meet their needs and compete with others that do?

Unfortunately, many businesses fold because they did not initially understand what their target audience was looking for. The valuable insights provided by an effective reputation management strategy aim to give businesses this information at the beginning before it is too late. For a business to thrive, its target niche must be understood so that the business reputation can be tailored to suit the wants of needs of its target audience.

A Positive Reputation Builds Trust and Loyalty

No matter how you look at it, gaining the trust and loyalty of a substantial customer base is crucial to business success and growth. The internet is a platform that anyone can use, and if someone has a significant experience with a business, good or bad, that experience can be shared online and spread like wildfire. If someone shares a negative experience about your business, it can be difficult to recover from that. One of the main ways online shoppers decide which business to give their patronage to is by reading online customer reviews that anyone can leave. Having a reputation management strategy in place from the get-go can help businesses avoid ever facing the problem of negative exposure as it is a hard hole to tunnel out of.

First Impressions are Everything

Most likely, potential customers and investors are researching your business online before actually deciding to do business with you. The first impression they get from visiting a site or searching out customer reviews will be the deciding factor of whether or not to proceed with the chosen business or continue looking for another one. Regardless of how good a product or service is, if people never try it due to bad first impressions, no one will ever know. If you don’t want to face the pitfalls of being associated with a negative first impression, put some time and energy into reputation management to ensure you are always putting your best foot forward. Reputation management does not just work on reputation, but also on how to best promote that reputation across a wide variety of social mediums.

Changing and Fixing Negative Auto Complete Suggestions

Having an autocomplete suggestion that appears prominently and says the words “arrest”, “Scam”, “Lawsuit”, “Complaints”, or any other negative auto-suggestion can be seriously detrimental to your business. That’s why we’ve developed a service that lets you fix your unwanted Google Auto Complete suggestions. This service also works wonders with Bing.com, Youtube.com, and other search engines. So imagine being able to change the bad from the good and not worrying about people clicking on negative search suggestions that can be detrimental to your business. Yes, finding a solution to fix those branding issues is crucial to your bottom line and in some cases can be the difference between profitability or not.

Online Insights

While not everything a person reads online is true, we have all witnessed the reputation-destroying potential that online insights can carry. When large amounts of negative feedback, reviews, or information surround a business, service, product, or individual, it is very common for that business or individual to simply pull away from the limelight. In terms of business, this is economic death as retreating from the negativity also means removing the possibility of recovering.

Having a positive message to promote to the press and to the public with a strong campaign PR strategy is crucial whether in crisis mode or not. Corporate communications teams often work and hire reputation management agencies for assistance in handling campaigns that are more of a reputation management issue.

While inside information can help face some of these online speculators, often the spread is too wide and fast to contain. With the current state of social media, everyone is a proxy journalist with the capability to shed doubt on the integrity of a company or individual with the click of a few buttons. If you’ve heard it through the online grapevine, others have to, and in terms of negative insights, they can topple a brand with merciless speed and efficacy. Reputation management experts can catch a rumor while it is still a seed and mitigate its damage and reach before it is fully grown and out of control.

Recruiting a Strong Team

Any successful business has a strong team working behind the scenes. Individuals known as industry leaders will he head hunted, and for that reason, potential employees will research a company before committing their time and energy to become a member of the team. Knowing what your competitors, potential employees, and clients are saying about you is extremely important when it comes to attracting those individuals that will give you the strongest team. Not only is reputation management important for attracting customers, but also when it comes to recruiting the kind of individuals you want on your team to promote and build your brand.

If your business plan accounts for the importance of online reputation management, the sharing and availability of information that the internet provides can be a wonderful thing. Those who fail to see the importance of reputation management will likely learn the lesson harshly at the expense of their business. Online reputation management is a proactive strategy that can prevent reputation problems from occurring and can be an integral part of fostering a strong and credible brand within a target audience.