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The Impact of Online Reviews on Business Success: Understanding the Importance of Reputation Management

diksha
June 25, 2024
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In today’s digital world, maintaining a good online reputation is necessary for every business. Your online reputation influences customers’ purchasing decisions. A positive reputation is required to attract potential customers, increasing sales and engagement rates.

Customers trust other people’s online reviews more than advertisements. Reviews play an important role in shaping the reputation of your business. In this blog, we’ll learn the impact of online reviews on your business, understand the importance of reputation management, and much more!

What is online reputation management and What are its objectives?

Online reputation management is a process of maintaining and enhancing your online reputation. ORM aims to attract new potential customers, increase trust and credibility, maintain a positive reputation, improve customer experience, minimize the effect of negative reviews, etc. By maintaining a positive reputation over some time, build a strong online reputation for your business.

ORM involves responding to and managing negative feedback or reviews of your business on various online platforms. You must manage the online negative reviews on time before they harm or build an opinion about your business. It is difficult to change people’s perceptions in the long run, that’s why try to resolve negative reviews as fast as you can.

You must improve and maintain your online reputation on various online platforms. You must have a strategy to maintain a strong online reputation and responsive strategies for negative reviews. It involves tracking online mentions about your business and the discussion related to your business on social media. Engaging with your audience on review platforms and other platforms is important for maintaining a strong online reputation. Have a strategy to respond to criticism and always react on time.

How online reviews impact your business

Online reviews impact your business in multiple ways. Positive and negative reviews impact differently. A negative review can decrease your sales and engagement rate. It creates doubt regarding your business’s quality, performance, and customer service. At the same time, a positive review can create trust and credibility in your business. It leads to higher sales, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The reach of the reviews has also increased. In fact 79% of people say that they trust online reviews as much as the recommendations from their close ones. Also over these few years, more and more people are writing reviews online.

Reviews that are positive have a positive influence on people, according to a study 94% of people stated that positive reviews make them use a brand. An average Google My Business listing is viewed over 1,200 times per month, thus having a positive review on Google matters a lot. Star rating, Quantity, Recency, Quality, Emotion, and Authority of the reviews matter the most. 48% of people might not use a brand that has a rating of less than 4 stars. The quantity of reviews and timing of the reviews influence the purchasing decision of the potential customers. Google My Business, Yelp, Yahoo, Better Business Bureau, TrustPilot, etc are some of the popular review platforms. Interestingly during COVID-19, many people said that they will not use a product if the reviews say that it is not practicing covid 19 safety measures and standards. At the same time, some people wrote positive reviews for the local businesses so that their businesses progress.

Importance of reputation management

Online Reputation Management is very important for every business for the following reasons

Safeguards your brand: Online reputation management helps in identifying negative feedback. You can turn these negative reviews into positive reviews by professionally responding to them and resolving the issues. It helps in safeguarding the reputation of the brand from future criticism. You can use valuable feedback to improve your goods and services.
Increase Conversions: A positive reputation builds trust in potential customers, influencing them to make a purchase. Thus increasing the conversion rate. When potential customers see that others had a positive experience with your brand, they also tend to get influenced into using your brand.
Improve Visibility: Online reputation management improves your SEO and search engine ranking. It increases your visibility. It helps in attracting new customers to your website. Having a large number of positive reviews helps in improving your search engine rank.
Build Trust: By addressing and solving the negative reviews, you can build trust in your customers. They feel that their voice and opinions are important to you and you hear them. This encourages more and more customers to leave feedback and also establishes trust in your customers. This is important for small and medium enterprises as well as local businesses as it gives a boost to their businesses. It also helps in increasing customer loyalty.
Customer feedback: Online reputation management provides you with valuable feedback. By using this feedback you can improve your products and customer service.
Boost Local SEO: Improving your online reputation and having positive reviews signals to search engines that your business is relevant, genuine, and authoritative. It boosts your local SEO, increasing your sales.
Customer Relationship: ORM encourages customer loyalty. It helps in establishing trust between you and your customers. It improves customer experience and in return, they become loyal customers. They also work as social proof.

Examples of online reputation management

Here are some of the examples of online reputation management strategies executed by brands

Nike Support: The bigger your brand gets, the more work you have to do. They have to work in a lot of departments from content planning to conducting competitive research to handling emails and sales etc. There is hardly any time left for a day-to-day simple task. However, Nike came out with a unique solution. They understood that reviews matter a lot in improving your business. Hence they created a separate support handle for the brand named Nike Support. This account is dedicated to managing and responding to customer queries.

Joe Dough Sandwich Shop

They responded to a negative review with an element of humor in it. However, you can do so only when the complaint of the customer is not so serious. To analyze the situation before following this strategy as it can have negative effects as well. However, if suitable using an element of humor lightens the mood and the problem.

Bournvita

A recent clip by a social media influencer on the sugar content of the Bournvita went viral on social media with millions of views. The Mondelez India-owned health drink brand dismissed the charges of excessive sugar by claiming that the firm is unscientific and has distorted the facts. After receiving the legal warning from them the influencer deleted the video. Moreover, the social media page of this health drink brand made a post on its social media account highlighting that it conforms to the quality standards and norms of the nation. Also it has the trust of its customers for over the last seven decades.

Conclusion

We have learned how important it is to maintain a strong online reputation. It helps in increasing the sales, engagement rate, conversion rate, loyalty, and performance of your goods and services. To maintain an online reputation you must monitor and manage your online reviews across different platforms. Google My Business is an important online platform as it impacts both Google Search and Google Maps. It also boosts local SEO. Lumia 360’s review management system helps you manage Google My Business as well as monitor your other online reviews and mentions. Our review management system is designed in a way that ensures to increase your sales, and visibility and establish customer loyalty. Our software is most suitable for small and medium enterprises. To know more about our services email us at info@lumia360.com or call us at 514-668-5599.