The Ultimate Guide to Reputation Marketing Services for Business Owners
And How To Get More Trusting Leads
There's a clear trend in the online world. Reviews matter.
Online Reputation Marketing is about one thing: Making sure your reviews are seen so that they bring in more trusting leads.
And when you have that lead, don't underestimate your reputation marketing efforts ability to sway a decision. Increase conversion rates.
We've got you covered with two easy done-for-you reputation marketing services for local businesses. Review Reveals and Review Stories.
And don't risk negative ones sneaking in unnoticed either. That's where Reputation Management services come in.
Reputation Marketing: The Easiest Way to Get More Trusting Leads?
Leverage All The Hard Work You've Already Put In
It used to be enough to get customer reviews and do a bit of reputation management. Now that many businesses are getting wise to that it's time to take the next marketing strategy. To actively market your reputation.
- Do you feel like your business doesn't get the attention it deserves? It's true, it can be hard for small and local businesses to cut through the noise.
- Do you want to increase the visibility of your company in a crowded marketplace?
If so, then reputation marketing is for you. Businesses can enhance their online presence and generate more sales. We're going to go through exactly how to do it, but first – why bother?
Social Proof And Reputation Marketing Services
While talking about online reputation management services we're going to cover what you get from social proof. From the biggy to a surprising side benefit…
Discover what reputation marketing is, including the latest innovation that multiplies the results by reusing the hard work you've already invested as a small business owner…
Exactly how to go about reputation marketing, and where to focus…
Including the very best moment to ask for a review (it might surprise you)…
How you repurpose positive comments on review websites as lead generation content on social media – doubling the effect in a stroke.
And I won't pretend, doing this right takes time, so we'll look at ways to streamline it.
What you get out of reputation marketing
Social proof: reviews on social media and public sites
It goes back to the earliest of times, standing around the fire with our tribe, agreeing that Alex is a fine hunter and buff with it.
Social proof is the psychological principle that says that we do things because others are doing them. The principle is also applied to ideas, products and habits – the more we see others engaging with a certain idea or product, the more likely it is for us to engage in those activities too.
For businesses, social proof can work wonders; studies have shown that customers make purchasing decisions in a number of ways, one of which is in response to the actions of others.
The most important thing for you to remember about social proof is that it's not just about those who buy from you – there are hundreds or thousands more out there, and they're all watching what your reviewers say too.
91% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-proof/)
Which is more that the 82% of Americans who use word of mouth by asking for referrals and recommendations from family and friends.
Reduce buyers' remorse
Many of us second-guess ourselves after making a purchase and so might return it.
Along with describing your product or service accurately and delivering what you promise, seeing tens or hundreds have positive experiences goes a long way to reducing this!
Get to Know Your Tribe
Reviews will tell you what people think about you and your products. from this respect bad reviews are good reviews too, because they tell you what your tribe wants you to fix.
Pro tip: If there are books about your product or service look them up on Amazon and look at the reviews to find out what people care about.
Trust matters
It's hard to overstate the effect of trust on sales.
Trust is a major factor in the buying decision for most people and can be one of the toughest things to earn.
So if you already have negative reviews it's important that they are properly managed so as not to detract from the positive ones.
What do we mean by properly managed? Ethically, you might want to start by fixing the problem for the complainer. Do this and you're likely to convert them to a raving fan.
And by far the best way is to acknowledge their issue publicly and take the next steps offline. Post back yourself when it's fixed or better yet have them change their review.
Keep in mind that while you are helping the complainer, you are writing online to your prospects!
Crisis management? No, the second way to manage bad reviews is by generating many more good ones!
And the best way to generate good reviews is to create the best experience possible. That means you need to be consumer-centric and think about how every interaction could go well for your customers.
And bad reviews feed into that – they'll tell you what you need to fix.
Higher Prices mean an instant profit boost
We all know that every penny in a higher price goes straight to the bottom line.
And more profit means that you can have more money (duh!) or spend less time selling and more time building your business or enjoying your life
The good news is that reviews and referrals increase the perceived value of your product or service, making it more worth the higher price.
Lower cost of acquisition
If reviews make it more likely that people buy, then it follows that whatever you have spent getting them to buy, goes further.
And if you're advertising online then certainly Facebook and Google will see peoples satisfaction and reward you directly with lower ad costs.
Why is that? Facebook and Google make their money from selling eyeballs! And for that they have to attract people. So you cna be sure that they will rank you highly when they know that people love your product.
So that's exponential benefits: more people click through, they are more likely to buy, you get lower ad costs, and even the people who leave reviews feel better about their purchase.
Search Engine Optimization
There's a war for eyeballs between the search engines and they have an uncanny ability to sniff out what people want and give it to them – getting real website traffic helps too. https://mattgtarrant.com/real-website-traffic/
https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
Moz say that SEO Review Signals (Review quantity, review velocity, review diversity, etc.) make up 6.47% of the ranking factors of your webpage and 15.44% for your Google Business page.
If you have a Google My Business page – that is a pin on the map – you can checkout how you're doing with this free audit.
The Surprising Benefit
We've all had people who aren't quite satisfied with the product they purchased. Sometimes it's because the seller misrepresented the item, sometimes it was just not what they wanted or needed but mostly it's just human nature.
You get a chemical high – really that's why “shopping therapy” works – when you buy. And the comedown afterward. Which leads to dissatisfaction and returns.
Here's a tip: This means the very best time to ask for a review or referral is at the moment of sale.
Of course, you'd like to ethically steer the satisfied buyers to public review sites and steer the people who need more care to let you know in private and we'll come to that later.
Use Reputation Re-marketing to Dominate Your Competition
Big brands do “brand awareness”. Coke is everywhere. McDonald's too. It's harder for us smaller businesses, yet easier too.
Big companies thrive by spending a lot of money on brand content and hiring an army of marketers, video makers, celebrities, whatever it takes to keep in front of people.
The good news (probably): big brands are not your competition. The guy round the corner is. So even if your marketing team is… you, you have a good chance.
It reminds me of the tale about the guy in the woods wearing running shoes. Not to outrun the angry mother bear but to stay in front of his companion.
Even that is hard sometimes. And yet the good news is that you don't need an army of marketers or video makers come up with ideas and get your story in front of people.
You don't need a massive marketing funnel.
Your reviewers write content for you (its the ideal form of content creation!) and when you take this and remarket it you have an endless sources of the best material there is that you can use on social media, your website, YouTube, everywhere.
Increase Customer Lifetime Value
We touched on this earlier – another ancient psychological imperative – commitment.
A review is a very public commitment to you and as Cialdini says about commitment : “Once we have made a public declaration, our sense of ownership and obligation to follow through with the action increases.”
So the immediate benefit is that your reviews are more likely to consume your product or service and so get its benefit and so become more satisfied.
They are also more likely to buy from you again! Either more of the same or another product from you. So be sure to follow up with your reviewers.
Pro tip: scan for new reviews, use it as an excuse to contact the reviewer, and whilst thanking them, see if you can help them with something else you offer!
Exponential growth
So more reviews lead to more trusting leads and more satisfied buyers and… more reviews.
This is the absolute definition of exponential growth!
And if you want to kick start it them look no further than the section on reputation remarketing coming up!
The bottom line to online reputation management!
https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/online-reviews/
The Spiegel Research Center – Northwestern University found:
Online views matter for everyone in any kind of business. Showing ratings and reviews on your product website will increase customer trust and raise conversions by up to 270% for low ticket products and 380% for higher priced items.
It's not easy to avoid negative reviews online, but they can be a good thing because they establish credibility and authenticity.
Do you, like 82% of us, seek out negative reviews? Spiegel's case studies show that conversions peak when the average is in the 4.2 to 4.7 range, and then decreases from 4.7 to 5.0 .
While Speigel's research indicates that the bulk of the conversion lift happens with as few as 5 reviews they fail to take recency into account. Brightlocal's research shows 48% ignore reviews over 14 days old.
What is Reputation Marketing?
Reputation marketing is a long view process that benefits business owners over time. (We have some quick wins for you coming up!)
There's three parts to reputation marketing:
- Reputation Building
- Reputation Management
- And the money magnet: Reputation Marketing.
To build the online reputation of your organization, to boost your brand, small business owners need a process to ask customers for reviews – preferably on websites with brand equity like Google My Business, Yelp and TrustPilot.
Because it's really odd! While we like giving good reviews, your staff probably have a fear of asking for them.
So make sure they know what's expected of them, make sure you make it easy for them to ask, and above all make sure it's easy for the client to leave one on a public review site.
Pro tip: your process should include a way to steer happy consumers to public review sites and unhappy ones to vent privately.
To manage your reputation you watch the public review sites for new reviews and reply to them. Make your good reviews feel good by thanking them and get the bad reviews to contact you privately so you can resolve their issue.
Never argue or try to win an argument when replying to a bad review. Your marketing efforts will blossom when take the problem out of the public eye and fix it so well the consumer goes back and publically praises you.
Pro tip: The main purpose of replying to every review is to speak to the multitudes reading them – to show them how much you care.
An often overlooked part of online reputation management is to take the feedback into your organization and do more of what's working and less of what's annoying your tribe!
The third part of review marketing – the sexy part – the part that brings in new business – is review remarketing.
This is syndicating the reviews you already have and the new ones you're going to get… every where.
This multiplies the effect of all that word of mouth.
Reviews are ideal fodder for both content marketing and social media marketing. If you don't do anything else copy the text onto your website, Facebook page and tweet them.
It's effective public relations to show off your 5 star rating everywhere!
Much better is to use the text in a picture because these get more attention, even better is to turn it into a video (and post it on YouTube too!) and best of all is to reveal reviews to your website visitors just as they are deciding to leave or stay on your website.
If that sounds like a lot of work we have a short-cut for you coming up.
Is there a shortcut to getting more trusting leads?
Online reputation marketing is no easy task- it takes time, patience and effort but we get there eventually if you stay committed. You can't expect overnight results or sell a false impression of an amazing company with no effort.
Few small businesses pay it much attention until they get a nasty review and then they have to deal with it on a reactive basis which can be difficult. (get our guide to handling trolls and complaints)
It's better to get in first!
Pro tip: Reviews from those asked for a one are more positive!
You're probably half way there already. If you have any online reputation at all or testimonials you can jump to getting more business with reputation remarketing.
Pro tip: if you don't start syndicating your reviews they only get seen on the website they were left on. Wouldn't it be better if they were everywhere?
So here's what you can do yourself to get started….
Take control of what's already happening
1) Find out where buyers are leaving reviews. (This report for local businesses will grab your reviews from 19 of the most popular).
2) Create a process for you or a trusted, level headed staff member to reply to reviews. Good and especially bad.
3) Use the bad reviews to evolve your product and the service that goes with it.
Be proactive and generate more reviews
1) Errr. look, your customer service and customer experience must be at least satisfactory!
2) Create a process to ask for reviews. The best time to ask is at the point of sale when buyers still have the endorphin high from the sale.
3) Steer satisfied customers to public review sites and less satisfied ones to your internal turnaround process. Then, because we love companies that fix problems, ask them for a review on a public site.
Generate more business with reputation remarketing
1) As soon as the review goes up is the moment to get in touch with the reviewer and sell them something else!
2) Syndicate the review everywhere you can: your website, your social sites, your Google business page, YouTube. If you haven't timecut and paste the text.
Better yet drop the text on a nice picture because social sites love pictures.
Even better turn the text into a video.
And maybe best of all, reveal the review together with the authority badge of the site it was left on, maybe the picture of the reviewer, just when visitors are deciding to stay on or bounce off your website.
If you want to dip a toe in the water and improve your brand image and:
- You have a local business with a pin on the Google map you can have a trial of Review Reveals
- If you're not on Google maps you can have a trial with Review Stories.
Review Reveals takes you 5-star Google reviews and reveals them on your website at the perfect moment to keep visitors reading.
Review Stories allows us to place your selected reviewers stories exactly where you want visitors to see them – often by your call to action – and display them as short video when visitors ask to see more.
Either of these done-for-you reputation marketing services will boost your profile and brand will boost your reputation no end!
Search engines and ad platforms will love the extra time people spend on your site reading your blog posts and articles. They will reward you with more and cheaper clicks.
Prospects will see you care and learn to trust you. Imagine having sales calls with prospects who already want to buy!
The data are clear: Reviews matter and it's important for small businesses that want substantial conversion rates to have plenty of reviews. Fair or not, reputation marketing has now become the new SEO!
Full disclaimer: one line of our business to offer internet marketing services and a reputation management service on steroids – because management isn't where the money is – reputation remarketing is what will bring in new custom.
And that's why you might like to checkout our trials of Review Reveals for local businesses and Review Stories for everyone else.
Some of the best ways for small businesses to get new customers are through word-of-mouth and testimonials. If you don't already have reviews or testimonials, go out and get them! It's not as difficult as you might think.
If you need help getting reviews, then I am here for you. I am an online reputation marketing specialist with an agency that specializes in helping established businesses earn more business using reputation remarketing. You see, it's not enough just to boost your search engine rankings these days; you need to be able to generate more leads at the same time. My services will help earn money from your reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do online reputation management services work?
Online reputation management services and software work, but nothing is ever 100% guaranteed. Making good business decisions and treating customers right so attracting positive reviews is the best way. Then remarket your reputation to make the most of your 5-star reviews.
What are reputation management services?
Basis reputation management services watch out for negative comments and allow you to respond quickly. Advanced reputation management services encourage people to leave positive reviews and remarket your reviews for social proof and so easier sales.
How much does reputation management cost?
Basic Reputation Monitoring Services range from roughly $500 per month (at the low end of the spectrum) to $3,000 per month and up. Actively improving your reputation is often an upgrade. The cost of reputation monitoring naturally varies based on the quality of service and time spent but more on how much the seller has invested in automation!