Online customer reviews are on the rise. Customers are reviewing businesses on directories like Yelp, and Google+ Local. In addition, customers and even prospects are writing about their experiences on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Some of these posts and reviews are glowingly positive, while others are very negative, which could seriously damage a business.
While some of the reviews are warranted, based on real experiences, others are unjustified rants from disgruntled or outright crazy people…and even competitors seeking to destroy the competition.
Unfortunately, this means you can no longer ignore your online reputation. If you serve and interact with customers who have access to the internet (that’s just about everyone nowadays), then you need to monitor and respond to what is being said about your business online.
At some point, people are going to mention your business, your brand, your products, and/or your services online and you need to know what they are saying.
The fact is, most potential customers will “Google” you and your business before picking up the phone to call you or come into your store. Your online presence will either be their first impression of you or they’ll be doing a quick background check. Either way, it’s going to affect their decision to contact you or do business with you so you can’t afford to ignore it.
What happens when a prospect searches for your business?
Do you know what pops up in the search results? What if they search for “[your business name] + reviews”?
Or what about “[your product/service name] + scam”? Try a few of these searches in Google and see if a prospect would be impressed or hesitant after viewing the results. You may be shocked to see what some people write about you online.
Plus, now that Google is highlighting reviews and five star ratings in the search results it’s almost impossible to miss customer reviews. When I personally search for a nearby restaurant or service provider, I can’t help but select businesses that have more favorable reviews. It’s human nature to look at other people’s feedback to make the process of choosing a business much easier.
Research has shown that all humans use social signals to make faster decisions. For example, if you walk by two restaurants and one is full of diners, while the other is empty, then which one will you immediately believe has higher quality food? Obviously the one with more people, and this same process happens online millions of times every day. Potential customers intuitively believe businesses with more reviews and more comments will provide better products or services.
Can You Really Control Your Reputation?
Hopefully you now understand how critically important your online reputation is for your business.
However you may believe there’s nothing you can do about it. How can you possibly force customers to give you positive reviews or stop them from posting negative comments? Besides, Google controls what shows up in the search results, so why even bother? There’s nothing you as a business owner can do about it – right?
If this is how you feel, we understand because it is a common belief among business owners, but it’s not 100% true. While you can’t force positive reviews and you can’t completely stop negative reviews, you can significantly influence this behavior and how it affects your business. It all starts within your business, which you do control. We’ll talk more about this in a minute.
And while it’s true Google does control the search results, there are some tricks to make sure only the webpages you want will show up for your business name, your products, and/or your services. Again, we’ll cover these tactics later in this guide.
Online reputation management can be broken down into two strategies:
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[dt_list_item image=””]Offense[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Defense[/dt_list_item]
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Offensive strategies are the proactive activities you can do both within your business and online to influence your online reputation. And defensive strategies are the reactive activities.
Both offense and defence are critical to manage your online reputation, and ensure potential customers do not get turned off by negative reviews or comments.
The Best Defense Is Offense
In sports, there’s a saying, “the best defense is a great offense,” and the same is true with online reputation management. If you are proactive and launch an aggressive offensive attack, then you’ll greatly reduce your need to be reactive, or play defense.
Here are the three offensive strategies I recommend for every business:
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[dt_list_item image=””]Make Your Reputation a Priority[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Control Google’s First Page[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Get Consistent Positive Reviews[/dt_list_item]
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Make Your Reputation A Priority
We touched on this earlier in the guide. The first step to managing your online reputation is to make your reputation a priority within your online business.
You control how you treat prospects and customers, and everything online is a reaction from those mostly “offline” experiences (i.e. over the phone or in-person at your store).
Think about what kind of online reputation you would like to have: How do you want your customers to think about your company after doing business with you? How should a prospect feel the first time call she calls you or comes into your office?
Take some time to write down some words that you would like to hear when a prospect or customer describes your business. For example, “responsive” or “easy to reach” or “friendly” may be a top priority for you. Or maybe on-time delivery, or pain free procedures, or hassle free service, are more important for you. The exact words will be specific to your type of business and how your business is positioned in the marketplace.
The next step is to put systems in place to ensure every prospect and every customer has the experience you want them to have. Here are some examples of systems you may want to create in your business:
Your Business Marketing Action Guide:
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[dt_list_item image=””]Create scripts for in-bound and out-bound phone calls[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Create scripts for in-store or in-office conversations with prospects[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Create a process for delivering the final product or service to the customer to maximize satisfaction.[/dt_list_item]
[dt_list_item image=””]Create a follow-up process to survey customers after you delivered your product or service to gauge satisfaction.[/dt_list_item]
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As you can see, the goal here is to take a close look at your business and see how you can positively influence the customer experience. Without this first critical step, you can’t expect to have a solid online reputation. It all starts from within your business, which again, you completely control.
Control Google’s First Page
The next step in your offensive strategy is to control Google’s first page when prospects search for your business name, your products, and/or your services. When prospects search your company name online, you want them to see websites you own or pages and content that you created.
With correct search optimization you will be able to better control as closely as possible all of the content relating to your company name. That way potential customers will only see webpages that present your business in a favorable way. There won’t be any bad comments popping up and negatively influencing your prospects and customers.
Another advantage is the fact that you can edit all of these webpages, and can include links to your main website. That way, there’s a very good chance no matter which search result the prospect clicks on, they will eventually end up on your main website.
In most cases, this is relatively easy to do. First, create social media profiles with your brand name and those will typically rank on the first page of Google. Then, issue press releases with your brand name in the title of the press release, and those will usually rank on the first page as well. This is called the “Piggyback SEO” technique because you are piggybacking on the other websites’ ability to rank high in Google (i.e. Facebook, YouTube, PRWeb, Webwire, etc.).
Get Consistent Positive Reviews
The third offensive strategy is to get positive online reviews on a consistent basis. As long as the majority of your reviews and comments online are positive, then prospects will feel confident the one or two negative reviews are either fake or from unreasonable customers or your competition. It’s important to proactively request reviews month after month, so your positive reviews outweigh any negative reviews.
This is also critical if you are a local business, because people will be looking at reviews on Google+ Local as well as sites like Yelp, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local.
So how exactly do you get positive reviews online?
Well again, it all starts within your business — by providing high-quality products and services. And if you provide high-quality products and se