After years of building your business, what is your top priority today? You’ve missed important life moments and worked tirelessly to create a successful company. Now what? You notice your new customers are diminishing and you aren’t receiving as many phone calls.
While you’re still providing the same great customer service and have loyal customers, your business is struggling. Recently, you learn that someone posted negative reviews about your company online. Now, your reputation is in limbo, because of someone’s bad experience. What can you do?
Today, what people say about your business online is everything. No matter the service, whether it’s a heart surgeon or carpet cleaner, reputation is crucial for success. Recently, a Nielson survey said 70% of global customers said they trust online reviews of strangers when making purchasing decisions.
The majority of customers want the most pertinent information. They want to see something that will give them confidence in your product or service. There are 5 steps you can use to increase your brand reputation:
- Range – Don’t rely just on Goolge+ or Yelp reviews. Check all facets of social media to see what people are saying about your company.
- Real – Encourage your customers to write online reviews. Some companies write their own reviews, which are positive and glowing. This is not only unethical, but you could also get caught.
- Recent – Also, make sure the reviews are recent. Both positive and recent reviews show up higher in search engine rankings that older and negative ones.
- Quantity – In reality, 20, 4-star average reviews are better than one 5-star review. Don’t stress about quality, but rather quantity.
- Quality – This may seem evident, but the better quality or positive your reviews, the better.
As we have stated, reviews are vital for online reputation management. However, you cannot stop there. Businesses need to utilize SEO (search engine optimization) to its fullest potential. Your company’s website should have a mobile-friendly version with easily accessible features as well.
Ultimately, your dedication and attention to your online brand reputation will yield profits from new customers. Positive reviews create “pricing power.” Now, you’ll be able to point your customers to the reviews when explaining costs. Don’t let your years of hard work suffer because of a bad review, develop a system and let your success continue!