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5 steps to elevating your brand’s social reputation
by Zack Hamilton
Driven by consumer demand for online shopping and the era of Great Brand Exploration, retailers are continuing to invest in their digital stores. When exploring a new brand, consumers are engaging with online resources such as Google in order to understand the brand’s reputation. Are they trustworthy? Are their products high-quality? How’s their customer service?
Here are 4 reasons why brands need a holistic understanding of their online reputation, especially on Google:
1. Credibility
Nearly 7 in 10 consumers say an online review is equally as important as a personal recommendation. Through social media and search engines, potential customers have access to your brand and how it is reviewed by its existing customers. These reviews increase or decrease the credibility of the product or service in the potential customer’s mind before they make a purchase decision.
2. Trust
From a recent study, nearly 77% of respondents read online reviews before purchasing something online. They also claimed that positive online reviews influence their purchasing decisions over negative online reviews. This shows that social media reviews are a big deal in today’s fast-growing digital world, and reading online reviews is a central part of the decision-making process for customers.
3. Store Traffic Driver
Online reviews are even more important for local search and discoverability. Local search plays a huge part in driving traffic to locations – so huge, in fact, that 67.7% of users’ searches result in visiting a local business.
4. Purchaser Driver
A whopping 94% of online shoppers reported that a negative review has convinced them to avoid visiting a business.
No matter your industry, maintaining a positive online reputation gives you several key advantages, which is why it’s becoming a key pivotal role in connecting with your customers and driving website traffic.
By understanding what your reviews are saying about you, Chatter will help you optimize your customer experience to help create a positive online footprint right where potential customers are looking.
5 keys to unlocking brand reputation through online reviews:
1. Understand
A whopping 94% of online shoppers reported that a negative review has convinced them to avoid visiting a business.
No matter your industry, maintaining a positive online reputation gives you several key advantages, which is why it’s becoming a key pivotal role in connecting with your customers and driving website traffic.
By understanding what your reviews are saying about you, Chatter will help you optimize your customer experience to help create a positive online footprint right where potential customers are looking.
2. Compete
Brands should compare their strengths and weaknesses to their competitors. This practice enables a brand to craft targeted marketing messages that position them competitively at the local level.
3. Compare
Extend your competitive analysis by determining how your brand’s ratings and sentiment analysis rank versus other brands.
4. Engage
Closing the loop with customers via 2-way messaging enables brands to resolve customer issues and recover the relationship. Brands must have a solution to engage with customers in real time.
5. Boost
The velocity and number of Google reviews are critically important to a brand’s SERP (search engine results page). Currently, brands are requesting feedback regarding their shopping experience via surveys as well as a Google review. Brands should invest in a solution that enables their customers to promote their feedback directly to the brand’s local online reviews pages.
When it comes to online retail, reviews are the equivalent of a world-of-mouth recommendation. They deliver trust, peace of mind, and even boost SEO. For brands, they are also a window into what shoppers are saying – and therefore the key to making targeted CX improvements. If you don’t know what customers are saying about you online, you’re missing out on precious insights.
Chatter’s free online review analysis is designed to shed light on your digital reputation. We crawl the web for customer reviews, then deliver a report that highlights your greatest strengths, weaknesses, and compares you to a competitor of your choice.
Want to know where you stand? Get your free brand reputation analysis.