TOC Playing – “Reputation Marketing”. Talk Of The Globe!
We all have heard of reputation management, right? This term has been around for a long time so you must be well versed with it by now. Well, today we will not gonna bore you with reputation management anymore. How about reputation marketing?
Aghhh!! You must be thinking, this is the same topic with a different name. How can reputation marketing be different from reputation management, right?
Well, reputation marketing is different from reputation management. There’s a thin line between the two that can only be seen when you observe it closely. So, are you ready to give it a closer look?
Cool af! Let’s get started,
What is Online Reputation Marketing?
The definition of online reputation marketing is better understood when we compare it with reputation management. The reason is obvious! It’s because you know the topic already so it’ll be easier to relate.
To put it simply, reputation marketing is about working proactively on using the reviews for the betterment of the brand. Generally, in reputation management, the primary objective is to push down the negative results and rank up the positive results to represent your brand in a decent way.
Whereas in reputation marketing, the primary objective is to leverage your brand reputation as a part of your marketing strategies to increase the conversation rate.
For example; during the recent pandemic when everyone got scared to order online foods, Dominos made a campaign to show their potential customers and existing customers how protectively they are making pizzas.
Therefore, it’s absolutely safe to order. And you will be amazed to know that during the time when the entire globe was undergoing a lockdown, Dominos significantly received orders like any other normal days. But this doesn’t end here! They leveraged the reviews on food ordering platforms to show others that people are talking positive. This is reputation marketing.
It’s about leveraging customer’s feedback, client testimonials, and any other proof that shows your authenticity and service quality, and reaching out to a larger customer base.
So, online reputation marketing amplifies and highlights the positive content about a brand through various digital marketing channels to boost their traffic and conversion. In short, it’s about promoting your good reputation rather than repairing your damaged reputation and maintaining it.
How Reputation Marketing Is Different From Reputation Management?
Well, unless we speak about the points in detail, the debate in your mind will go on endlessly. You must be still thinking that reputation management and reputation marketing are the same things. Right?
If you are not able to calm your mind and make it understand the significant differences between these two, we are here for help.
Let’s break the long in short.
- Reputation management uses positive content creation, SEO, PR to establish a positive reputation about your brand or for yourself. But, in reputation marketing, we use customer feedback, testimonials to promote them for the betterment of the brand.
- You already have a good reputation when you are leveraging your reputation as a marketing strategy. But, in reputation management, you might have a damaged reputation that needs repair.
- Reputation management is about making others perceive your brand as an authority, while in reputation marketing it means using your authority to drive new customers.
Reputation Marketing Solutions: How To Do Online Reputation Marketing?
Now, the most awaiting answer, how to do online reputation marketing effectively? We’re glad you finally asked this!
Well, there are some best approaches in reputation marketing that can help you drive better results and boost your sales. So, without any further ado, let’s get started,
Social Media Plays a Key Role
Do you know any other sort of digital channels more powerful than social media? There is even no point in thinking because there is not a single channel more powerful than social media. The way a brand uses its social media channels depicts a lot about their personality and core ethics.
For example; if you have seen Netflix’s social channels, they reply to each of their customers whether it’s about solving grievances, suggesting movies, or anything. It shows how deeply they are connected with their customers. It shows they genuinely care for them. And these simple strategies go a long way. Because you know, simple is always the best.
So, when it comes to reputation marketing, social media plays a crucial role. How you leverage customer’s feedback, how you solve their queries, how you represent your authority in front of your potential and existing customers tell it all.
The most common social media platforms to leverage for your business reputation or personal reputation are the following,
- Facebook,
- Yelp
Also, the important note here is that you should hire a responsible and expert individual to handle your social profiles and market your good reputation. There are companies who overlook the need for an expert in this position and later suffer.
However, when it comes to your individual reputation or your brand reputation, there is no single slipup that should be tolerated. Reputation marketing is about gaining more trust and increasing more sales, which can’t be accomplished when you ignore your customers.
Like let’s look at the following image,
This type of mistake can make or break your brand. So, social media should be handled responsibly.
Review Management Is Still Crucial
Whether it’s about reputation management or reputation marketing, review management is the common thing between the two. Review management is about handling negative reviews, earning positive reviews. So, we will break them into chunks for easy understanding,
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Handling Negative Reviews
If you are ignoring negative reviews, then people perceive your brand as a fraud. Even if you have done nothing wrong, your action will prove the opposite. So, it’s important to handle the negative reviews well. Whenever a customer is showing his grudges, you should resolve them as quickly as possible.
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Earning Positive Reviews
Earning positive reviews is equally important as handling negative reviews. A lot of companies think that they should earn it only on some major platforms like Google business reviews, Yelp, Facebook, Angies List, Tripadvisor. However, you should never forget to earn reviews on platforms like glassdoor.
It’s because when you have poor reviews on the platforms like Glassdoor, people won’t feel like joining your company. You will be amazed to know that a majority of an employee’s joining decision is impacted by glassdoor reviews. So, you should encourage your existing employee to leave positive feedback so that you can hire the best talents around the world.
Level-Up Review Marketing Tactics
Well, reputation marketing is about leveraging your positive impression for the betterment of your business. Right? So how can you leave review marketing!
Here are some tactics to level-up your game,
- Use Positive Reviews In Emails: If you are running an email campaign, you should use these reservoirs of positive reviews. This will amp up your marketing efforts as the reviews are genuine. But how you present them also plays a crucial role. You can use graphics as people are interested in visually appealing objects.
- Show Reviews On Website: Showing the client’s reviews on the website amp up your authenticity. People start gaining more trust in you by looking at the reviews of other customers who have already availed your services.
- Use Reviews On Social Media Post: Irrespective of the platform you use, you can always showcase the reviews as your social media posts. To make it look catchy, you can use a wide array of graphics to grab the eye-balls.
Have You Forgotten a Strategy?
Well, everything needs a strategy. Every step you take towards the betterment of your brand needs a strategic approach. Because you will otherwise be lost in the ocean.
So, as we talked about making reputation management strategies, you need a reputation marketing strategy in place to move forward. If you are unaware of the ways how to make it, let’s look at the steps,
- Understand Your Target Audience: This applies to everywhere. Whether we talk about reputation management, social media marketing, reputation marketing, you need to understand your target audience. Without it, you can’t take the next steps.
- Set Your Desired Goal: Every brand has its own goal. Be it boosting your sales, multiplying your conversions, or providing the right message to your customers. You should fix your goal first and experiment with different channels to analyze where you’re most effective. Because each platform has different audience groups and different purposes. So, you should be aware of these things.
- Be Consistent: Nothing is achievable when you are putting inconsistent efforts. Reputation marketing is a tedious process. If you want to drive the desired results from it, you should be persistent and consistent. These two are the keys. Set a desired amount of content that you are going to post on a weekly basis on multiple channels. And keep content in advance so that you never run out of content.
Educate Your Employees
Of course, you are not going to do the entire process alone, right? In fact, you can never achieve it alone. You need a group of people to support each and every activity. But more than this, the important part is to educate your employees about reputation marketing. Since it’s a new topic, people often remain unaware when the topic is still at its infancy.
Since your employee will be dealing with your customers, handling reviews, asking feedbacks, and managing your entire reputation to use it for the better, they need to have a stronghold on this subject. So, the primary focus is to make them educated about reputation marketing in the first place.
Conclusion
Your digital reputation plays a key role in your overall brand amplification. You can never influence a customer’s purchasing decision without gaining his trust. For example, if Dominos were not successful in making you believe that their pizza tastes the best, would you ever buy from them? Or you can look at this way that we never opt for other options when it comes to pizza at a reasonable price, isn’t it?
This is the power of marketing, or to be precise reputation marketing. This can make or break your business for a single slipup. If you want to yield the ultimate benefits of online reputation marketing, then the steps we discussed above must be followed.
Each of your customer’s reviews, testimonials, plays a crucial role in powering up your marketing campaign. Also, you should not ignore training your employees to deal with a situation well.
However, if you think all these are too tedious for you, an online reputation management company is for your help. You can contact us anytime from anywhere to make your reputation marketing stronger to yield the best results.