Benefits and Impacts Of Online Reputation Management
Feeling curious about what your audience thinks of your brand? Want to know about it?
Online Reputation Management is all about it!
The invention of the internet has allowed people to access any kind of info anytime from anywhere and about anything. People spend most of their time surfing on the internet, sharing their thoughts and opinions on any subject. On the bigger picture, every business, regardless of their size, needs to maintain a positive brand reputation online.
A positive online reputation is more likely to persuade your customers to make a purchase with you, whereas a damaged reputation will more likely than not turn them away. Online Reputation Management will ensure that your brand stays in the good light, and your audience recognizes your brand in a good way. If a brand has a bad reputation, it is best if they hire an agency for reputation management or do it in-house with a strategy to suppress or completely remove the harmful content or reviews.
In this blog, we will be discussing what online reputation management is, how it impacts your business, and what its benefits are.
How Does Online Reputation Management Impact Your Business?
Your brand’s online reputation decides how your audience discerns your brand when they search or bump into it on the internet. Furthermore, online reputation management impacts what information people will find about you online.
For example, there are a few techniques or strategies that will help you push down the harmful and damaging content on the SERPs by ranking your desirable or positive content above it. This is essential because the top five listings receive almost 70% of the total clicks on Google search results.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is not just limited to managing content in search engines; instead, it also involves managing negative brand reviews and influencing your happy customers to write positive feedback or reviews.
Were you aware of the fact that more than 80% of customers rely on online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations? Moreover, approximately 50% of customers require at least a 4-star rating before purchasing from a brand.
So, as per the above-stated information, you must have now realized the impact online reputation management has on your business and how it cannot be underestimated. Let us discuss some of the more benefits of ORM in brief.
Benefits Of Online Reputation Management
- Building trust with your audience
This goes without saying, brands with a good reputation online will be trusted more than those with a bad or mixed reputation. It is so because people are likely to read the reviews before deciding to buy from your brand, and if there are too many negative reviews, they will probably turn away. This further implies that if more customers show their trust in your company, more customers are likely to go with it too.
One of the most effective ways to build trust with your audience is to make sure that all the negative reviews are being handled properly and that all the queries should be answered. Customers love it when brands respond to them as it makes them feel important enough to be acknowledged by the company itself.
- Growing your business
A good reputation and positive online reviews will appeal to more customers, meaning the business will have more sales and eventually, more customers. This is a chain process. The more customers you have, the better reviews you get, the more customers you will attract, and the more your business will grow!
- Low risk of more reputation damage
A bad reputation when left undealt with can furthermore cause even more decline in a brand’s online reputation sometimes. This is because when people see that a brand has negative reviews and overall bad reputation, they will share this information with others who will do the same further. So, to minimize the damage and expenses caused by the tampered reputation of your brand, you need to consider online reputation management as soon as possible!
- Opportunity to appear on the first page of Google search results
Google is undoubtedly the top platform for any business to appear. It favors brands with positive content and reputation and displays them on its first page of local search results. This can be really beneficial to the brands as the majority of the audience doesn’t even look past the first search result page, which means more probability of sales.
The majority of the customers judge a brand based on what the Google search results say about them. Therefore, you need to make sure that your online reputation management strategy focuses and puts forward the strengths of your business to look appealing on the first page of any search engine. Appearing on the first page of SERPs will help you obtain trust and loyalty from your audience.
In conclusion, brands that successfully leverage Google algorithms will be rewarded with higher traffic, boosted sales, better reviews, and feedback, and will be regarded as experts in their field.
- Recruiting the best employees
Brands should aim at offering the best services to their customers, which is only possible if they have the best employees to do so. Having a positive online reputation can help you attract the best employees who are as important as attracting customers. The best employees would definitely look forward to working with an established business that shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Perhaps your good reputation and values will make them believe in your brand and help you recruit them.
It would be best if you take care of your employees too because the best employees will definitely want to consult your current or old employees before joining your company regarding their experience there. A good reputation is what a potential employee will be looking for to make them trust that your company is worth working for.
By now, you must have got a clearer picture in your head of the role that Online Reputation Management will play in building your brand. You can establish a strong foothold in the market, expand your customer base, increase customer retention rates, and boost your sales. So, what are you waiting for? Get ready to take your business to new heights with ORM.
Let us know how it works out for your business or share your experience in case you have implemented it already. We hope this information comes handy for you.