by Stefanie Blackburn | Content Marketing, Customers, Reputation Management
Social proof is one of the most powerful tools you can use to market your business. Seeing the happiness and success of previous customers is a proven way to increase confidence, which ultimately leads to more people buying. According to eMarketer research, online reviews are by far the most trusted source of business information. In fact, 8 percent more people 18+ trust online reviews compared to their own friends, family and colleagues. But most businesses don’t have a proactive strategy for incorporating customer reviews in their marketing plan. If you’re one of them, we want to encourage you to change that! Your business can add credibility and complexity to its content when you regularly incorporate the positive feedback your customers leave. This practice has an added bonus of rewarding customers for their praise, strengthening your relationship with them and encouraging others to follow in their footsteps. Your content becomes richer, and your brand name becomes more credible. That’s a win for you and your customers! Here are a handful of proven strategies you can put into action to incorporate customer reviews into your marketing strategy: Share like a pro When incorporating testimonials and feedback on your web pages, it’s important to follow best practices that respect both the person leaving the review and the prospect that will ultimately see it in your marketing. Be sure to use the following best practices to share like a pro: Take a second to re-read the third-party reviews site’s policy on sharing reviews. They may have limitations on how you use them. Always ask the reviewer for permission. Nothing hurts worse than having...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Reputation Management
Millions of business owners all over the world struggle when it comes to generating a positive image of their company online. Despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to get momentum behind people expressing positive sentiment. But one simple strategy can change all that: ask for a review. Businesses that consistently ask people to review them after a transaction or service has been completed are far more likely to receive a higher volume of positive reviews. They also tend to get more detailed feedback from both happy and unhappy customers, which can inform strategic improvements. Developing a habit within yourself and among your employees to ask for reviews is therefore the most important thing you can do. Doing so won’t just make you look better online; it will also help you genuinely become better thanks to the feedback you earn. If you are a business owner or a marketer trying your best to improve your online reputation, you can use the following tactics to increase the rate of reviews you get. Recognize Why Positive Reviews Are So Important Yet So Hard to Get As with most best practices, understanding why asking for reviews is important helps a ton with motivating your follow-through. Firstly, people care about online peer reviews more than any other form of information on a product or service. According to eMarketer, 31% of people 18+ trust the information they receive from online reviews. That’s the highest-rated source, beating out the 23% of people who indicated they trust recommendations and feedback from friends, family and colleagues the most. Think about that: 8% more of the population...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Reputation Management
What is Reputation Marketing? Reputation marketing is a specialized version of brand marketing. Companies devote a great deal of time and resources to branding their business, with more attention devoted to digital branding than ever before. Reputation marketing refers to the real-time brand identity that businesses capture from online comments, reviews, complaints, and critiques that come from their customers. Word of mouth is more powerful than ever, only now it comes in the shape of blog comments, re-tweets, Facebook likes, and sharing/liking/following on every social media platform possible. Reputation marketing allows your business to take what consumers are already saying about your products or services, and leverage it for your own use, to increase your industry ratings and, ultimately, your revenue. 5 Keys to Reputation Marketing Success Given that reputation marketing stems from what other people are saying about your business, it’s tempting to sit back and relax. You can’t control what people will post or change the mind of every customer who has a bad review, so you can just leave them to say what they will, right? Wrong – reputation marketing isn’t just people’s ideas about your business that pop into their head for no reason. Reputation marketing is the active management of your customer’s comments and criticisms to create the brand image that you desire. Reputation marketing doesn’t need to be complicated, just stick with these core strategies to achieve reputation marketing success: 1. Create Systems for Collecting Feedback Rather than just trolling around to find out what people are saying about your product, go out there and capture that information yourself. Customers are eager to...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Content, Reputation Management
Tell a Narrative Conduct Consumer Research Before carrying out a great rebranding strategy, it is recommended to do a bit of customer research. Using analytics try and see what kind of clients you have currently and who you could bring in. Is it possible to draw in larger demographics than you have before? Maybe you already are bringing in new subsets of clients. Either way, understanding these clients will help you target your rebranding efforts towards them. Build a Brand Story People like stories, and this extends to the companies they do business with as well. Far too many budding entrepreneurs believe that simply having a superb product is enough. This is simply not the case. When making an attempt to rebrand a corporation, creating a brand story is a quick way to do so. While the Jared-Subway association is not great now, the original rebranding worked amazingly. Subway created a brand story, and their revenues went from $3 billion to $11 billion because of it. In truth, creating a brand story is sometimes all a business needs to rebrand itself. Look into Outside Help It is sometimes hard for local business owners and their team members to be objective during a rebranding. This is because they are too close to the brand, and there may be aspects they have become accustomed to that need to change. This issue can be overcome by simply hiring an expert for a consultation. This doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing. In fact, a couple of hours of a consultant’s advice can be invaluable. As is the case with most things in...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Reputation Management
How to Make the Most of Online Reviews Online reviews are here to stay. Sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, and Google My Business offer consumers an easy way to share information about their experiences with local and online businesses. While sites like these were once fairly small, their use has become commonplace. In fact, about 88% of all consumers say they check online reviews before patronizing a business. Not only that, they tend to assign a high degree of credibility to what they read, trusting online reviews from strangers more than they would personal reviews from family and friends. What that means is that no business owner can afford to ignore online reviews. The way you react and respond to reviews can have a huge impact on the growth and success of your business. Why you must respond to negative reviews Do you take negative reviews personally? Sometimes business owners think that they’re taking the high ground when they ignore negative reviews, but doing so can be very costly. You might not be able to quantify the effects of ignoring those reviews. Let’s face it, no customer is going to call you and announce that he’s decided to give his business to your competitor – he’ll never show up, and you’ll never know. However, you must assume that a single unanswered negative review has the potential to drive 30 customers away from your door. Few businesses can afford to lose customers like that. In case you think that I’m exaggerating, you should also know that studies show that “four out of five customers have changed a purchasing...
