Читать книгу 99 Marketing Mistakes - Kenyon Blunt - Страница 23

Mistake #17

Not Defending Your Online Reputation

Your online reputation is made up of everything about your business that’s online. According to Google, “Your online identity is determined not only by what you post but by what others post about you.” When that happens to be something terrible, you have one of two choices. You can ignore it and hope that it gets buried with more favorable ones, or you can contact the customer and try to do something about the problem.

It may have taken you twenty years to build a favorable reputation, but one lousy blog post could ruin it in a nanosecond. Consider this. 90 percent of consumers read reviews before visiting or buying from a business. And online reviews impact 70 percent of all purchase decisions. In short, reviews can either be your greatest asset or significant weakness.

When you move part of your marketing budget to reputation management, you can increase your ratings on sites like Yelp and Google, giving you a 20 percent boost in revenue.

How to Defend Your Online Reputation

Defending your reputation online is a long-term strategy that requires much attention. There are several actions you can take to boost your ratings; some work faster than others:

 Get more reviews. Actively seeking out customer reviews helps bring in more customers and outweighs the bad ones you may have. The best way to get reviews is to ask. Seek out your most loyal customers and ask them to leave a review on Google or Yelp. The most popular option is to email customers after a transaction with a link to the review sites.

 Respond to bad reviews. Customer reviews live on the internet forever, so you need to control the narrative by responding to critics. Fight the urge to say what you feel. Instead, tell them something like, “We are sorry you feel that way and will do everything we can to resolve this matter. If you contact me directly, I will do everything I can to find a solution.”

 Use Google. One of the most natural first steps is to Google your business name and see what people are saying about you. Next, set up Google Alerts to do this automatically. Finally, register your business with Google, Yelp, and LinkedIn. When you don’t register your accounts, it raises a red flag for potential customers.

 Monitor your reputation. You need to “listen” to your customers regularly. When you receive notification from Google, or other sites, that someone has mentioned you, it allows you to formulate a response.

 Produce positive content. When you produce content that is helpful to your customers and prospects, it establishes you as a local thought leader. You can’t control what customers write about you in a review, but you can control what you write and post with informative and relevant articles.

 Be active and engaging in social media. Try to participate in the sites most frequented by your customers. Many customers see social media as a primary source of customer support, so you’ll need to be ready to respond.