Are Bad Reviews Destroying Your Sales?

Online Reputation Management in Digital Marketing can elevate your business

Do you google a product before making a purchase? Do you check a restaurant’s reviews before booking a table? Or do you scroll through Amazon’s ratings before placing an order? According to Qualtrics, 93% of consumers’ purchasing decisions are influenced by online reviews (Kaemingk, 2019). Meanwhile, BrightLocal, a digital marketing company, found that, “91% of 18 to 34 years old trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations” (Murphy, 2019). Moreover, only half of people would consider buying from a business with fewer than 4 stars (Murphy, 2019). A positive online reputation is clearly vital for a company to generate sales, increase customer satisfaction, and repurchase willingness. Online Reputation Management (ORM) can play a critical role in helping businesses maintain their brand with a positive online presence. 

So what are key approaches to managing a positive reputation online? First, know your audience. Monitor how the company performs on digital platforms, what customers are saying, and how they think about your brand. Analyze and understand users’ perspectives and sentiments towards the brand (Howard, 2018). Furthermore, look deeper into consumers’ insights from their feedback, which can be a useful guide for making decisions and improving your brand image (“The 7 Most Effective Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation”, 2020).

Second, manage your social media presence well to build good customer relationships by actively engaging and responding with your audience. Your authenticity on online platforms can positively affect prospective customers and current customers’ impressions of your brand. Reviews on Google and Yelp are critical as well. Accordingly, you may strategically encourage your audience to share their experiences on social platforms (“The 7 Most Effective Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation”, 2020).

But what if you have already received negative reviews from consumers? “If three negative articles pop up in a search query, the potential for lost customers increases to 59.2%” says well-known SEO company, Moz (Moz, 2015). What can a company do to save its brand after receiving negative reviews? SEO helps. Using SEO techniques to raise a website/content’s search engine ranking by using appropriate keywords, publishing informative content regularly, creating relevant links within the text, etc (“Five Ways to Improve your Site’s Ranking”, n.d.) can increase organic views for the page and gradually place positive content on the front page of search results while pushing the negative article down. Using your social media platforms to promote and link to the positive article may further increase your searching ranking.

Nonetheless, being transparent is very important for a brand to build consumer trust; therefore, it is a key element in managing online reputations. SEO can help your negative comments get less attention, but it is not meant to bury the truth. Being genuine and honest in addressing negative voices from consumers is the first step. Admit any missteps and fix them, reply to consumers and address their concerns. By showing sincerity in your customer service, you may convert a detractor to a promoter or a negative experience into a positive one step by step (“The 7 Most Effective Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation”, 2020)

In conclusion, bad reviews may damage a business, but ORM does not mean hiding the blemishes of a brand and being inauthentic; it means strategically managing one’s online reputation, proactively engaging with the audience, and protecting the brand image. With successful ORM, a brand may seize opportunities to make a good impression on consumers, compel them to purchase, and ultimately elevate the business.

References

Kaemingk, D. (2020). Online reviews statistics to know in 2021. Qualtrics. Retrieved from https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/online-review-stats/

Murphy, R. (2019). Local Consumer Review Survey. BrightLocal. Retrieved from https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

Howard, S. (2018). What is the Role of ORM in Digital Marketing? Overit Blog. Retrieved from http://overit.com/blog/what-is-the-role-of-orm-in-digital-marketing

The 7 Most Effective Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation. (2020). Business.com. Retrieved from https://www.business.com/articles/manage-online-reputation/

Hinckley, D. (2015). New Study: Data Reveals 67% of Consumers are Influenced by Online Reviews. Moz. Retrieved rom https://moz.com/blog/new-data-reveals-67-of-consumers-are-influenced-by-online-reviews

Five Ways to Improve your Site’s Ranking (SEO). (n.d.). Michigan Technical University. Retrieved from https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/