Reputation Marketing: 7 Tactics to Manage and Protect Your Brand

The online reputation of your corporate brand affects your company’s revenues and market value, as well as your ability to recruit and retain top talent.
With strategic brand reputation management tactics, you can easily improve your reputation on the web.

Reputation Marketing: Why is it important to manage it?

Consumers no longer interact with brands in the same way as before. Before rating sites, social networks and Google, Internet users had to rely on companies’ vertical communications and advertising. Now, with the social internet, they rely on Google searches and opinion platforms to find out more about a company’s reputation.
In a competitive context, managing the e-reputation of companies and brands has become an indispensable priority. On social media, online forums, blogs, news sites, search engines and other Internet sources, it is important that brands and companies are visible and positioned as resources, solutions and industry leaders for their customers.
• 25% of a company’s market value comes from its reputation.
• Four negative search results can cost you 70% of your potential business.
• 41% of companies reported a loss of revenue due to a reputation-related event.
An executive’s online reputation also has an important role to play. Their image is often associated with that of the company, with the most charismatic executives carrying their companies and positively influencing their images.

Here is what you should avoid!

Here are some common mistakes that companies can make when trying to manage or restore their reputation.

• Developing a false reputation: false positive opinions, fakes communities… There’s no point in trying to move too fast.
• Transparency rather than lies: always react with transparency rather than trying to lie or hide the facts.
• Don’t deal with negative reviews: not reacting to negative opinions is the worst thing you can do. Use these negative opinions to show your reactivity and rectify your mistakes.
• Do not follow your reputation on Google: 3 negative results can dissuade a potential customer.

Top 9 tactics to manage a brand’s reputation positively

1. Develop content marketing

By studying your audiences and creating the Buyers Personas that correspond to your customers, you will be able to create great content -articles, videos- that answers their questions and proposes subjects that interest them.

2. Personalize your customer relations

By establishing personalized contacts, you allow customers to feel valued and this helps you to build special relationships with them. This generates brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and enhances your reputation management efforts.

3. Respond to negative and positive reviews

The online reputation of E-commerce and business is paramount to building trust.
When a customer is dissatisfied and posts a negative comment about your brand on social networks, it is imperative that you respond as quickly as possible.
It is important to set up monitoring tools on social networks and review sites to respond quickly to customers who express dissatisfaction.

4. Pay attention to customer satisfaction

A happy customer-user, client- is a returning customer who talks about your products and services and becomes an ambassador for your brand and company.
Take care of your customers to build loyalty. It is “very easy” to maintain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Customer satisfaction is not only the key to business growth, but also has a direct impact on your brand reputation.

5. Develop engagement on social networks

Social networks are used by a majority of the population. By developing your presence there, you can benefit from the prescriptive power of the social web and use your customers and fan communities to share your publications and recommend them. Be attentive to your brand and company mentions via a monitoring tool. The community manager will be able to respond and stimulate interactions to develop your branding.

6. Develop your community and ambassadors

By taking care of your customers through a social media presence via community management, by responding to their requests, by thanking them for their positive opinions, by addressing their problems in an efficient way… you will transform some of them into ambassadors and influencers of your company.
They will be able to talk about you, make positive reviews of your products or services and talk about you to those around them. Social recommendations and word-of-mouth are extraordinary levers for developing your turnover.

7. Stimulate customer reviews and testimonials

Consumers and potential customers place much more trust in product or service recommendations from friends and relatives than in traditional advertising.
By stimulating opportunities for your customers to recommend your company, you create a virtuous circle of new customer acquisition and improve your overall reputation.

8. Stimulate your teams

Satisfied and engaged employees perform better, have higher morale and care more about the success of your business, and will do their best to meet the needs of their customers, thus increasing customer satisfaction.
Fulfilled teams will speak positively about your company, which will stimulate recruitment and enhance your brand image.

9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Sustainable SEO strategies put your services, products and website first on Google, on the queries typed in by your potential customers looking for resources and solutions to their problems.
For brand and corporate reputation management, SEO is based on strategic keywords and useful content that generates traffic to your website, increases sales and enhances your image. De-referencing also allows the cleaning of negative links on Google. Specific actions can also be carried out on Google Suggest.