Reputation Gameplan: How To Take Control Of Your Online Reputation

Transcription

1 Reputation Gameplan: How To Take Control Of Your Online Reputation In this Marketing Action Guide, we reveal our recommended Gameplan for how to ethically influence your online reputation. As you ll discover, you ll want to use a combination of offense and defense to ensure that your potential customers see positive results when researching your company online.

2 Table of Contents Why Is Your Online Reputation Important?... 3 Can You Really Control Your Reputation?... 4 The Best Defense is a Great Offense... 6 Make Your Reputation a Priority... 7 Control Google s First Page... 8 Get Consistent Positive Reviews You Still Need to Play Defense Monitor Respond Identify Additional Resources... 18

3 WHY IS YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION IMPORTANT? Online customer reviews are on the rise. Customers are reviewing businesses on directories like Yelp, SeamlessWeb, and Google+ Local. Plus, customers and even prospects are writing about their experiences on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Some of these posts and reviews are glowingly positive, while others are harmfully negative. And some are warranted based on real experiences, while others are unjustified rants from disgruntled or outright crazy people. So unfortunately, this means you can no longer ignore your online reputation. If you serve and interact with customers who have access to the internet (that s just about everyone nowadays), then you need to monitor and respond to what is being said about your business online. At some point, people are going to mention your business, your brand, your products, and/or your services online and you need to know what they are saying. The fact is, most prospects will Google you before picking up the phone to call you or come into your store. Your online presence will either be their first impression of you or they ll be doing a quick background check. Either way, it s going to affect their decision to contact you or do business with you. What happens when a prospect searches for your business? Do you know what pops up in the search results? What if they search for [your business name] + reviews? Or what about [your product/service name] + scam? Try a few of these searches in Google and see if a prospect would be impressed or hesitant after viewing the results. You may be shocked to see what some people write about you online. For example, a prospect for one of my private clients posed a question on Yahoo Answers that said, Is [company name] s [product name] a scam? and this question is on the FIRST page of

4 Google! Clearly prospective customers will be drawn to this question and will read the answers before contacting the business. Now my client s product is not a scam, but it doesn t matter. The word scam is on the first page of Google when prospects search for my client s business and that is affecting sales every single day. (And, as a result, I am advising my client on taking many of the actions laid out in this report.) Plus, now that Google is highlighting reviews and five star ratings in the search results it s almost impossible to miss customer reviews. When I personally search for a nearby restaurant or service provider, I can t help but select businesses that have more favorable reviews. It s human nature to look at other people s feedback to make the process of choosing a business much easier. Robert Cialdini explains in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, that all humans use social signals to make faster decisions. For example, if you walk by two restaurants and one is full of diners, while the other is empty, then which one will you immediately believe has higher quality food? Obviously the one with more people, and this same process happens online millions of times every day. Prospects intuitively believe businesses with more reviews and more comments will provide better products or services. CAN YOU REALLY CONTROL YOUR REPUTATION? By now, I think you understand how critically important your online reputation is for your business. But you may believe there s nothing you can do about it. How can you possibly force customers to give you positive reviews or stop them from posting negative comments? Besides, Google controls what shows up in the search results, so why even bother? There s nothing you as a business owner can do about it -- right?

5 This is a common belief among business owners, but it s not 100% true. While you can t force positive reviews and you can t completely stop negative reviews, you can significantly influence this behavior. It all starts within your business, which you do control. We ll talk more about this in a minute. And while it s true Google does control the search results, there are some tricks to make sure only the webpages you want will show up for your business name, your products, and/or your services. Again, we ll cover these tactics later in this guide. Online reputation management can be broken down into two strategies: 1. Offense 2. Defense Offensive strategies are the proactive activities you can do both within your business and online to influence your online reputation. And defensive strategies are the reactive activities. Both offense and defense are critical to manage your online reputation, and ensure prospects do not get turned off by negative reviews or comments.

6 THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GREAT OFFENSE In sports, there s a saying, the best defense is a great offense, and the same is true with online reputation management. If you are proactive and launch an aggressive offensive attack, then you ll greatly reduce your need to be reactive, or play defense. Here are the three offensive strategies I recommend for every business: 1. Make Your Reputation a Priority 2. Control Google s First Page 3. Get Consistent Positive Reviews

7 MAKE YOUR REPUTATION A PRIORITY We touched on this earlier in the guide. The first step to managing your online reputation is to make your reputation a priority within your business. You control how you treat prospects and customers, and everything online is a reaction from those mostly offline experiences (i.e. over the phone or in-person at your store). Think about what kind of online reputation you would like to have. How do you want your customers to think about your company after doing business with you? How should a prospect feel the first time call she calls you or comes into your office? Take some time to write down some words that you would like to hear when a prospect or customer describes your business. For example, responsive or easy to reach or friendly may be a top priority for you. Or maybe on-time delivery, or pain free procedures, or hassle free service are more important for you. The exact words will be specific to your type of business and how your business is positioned in the marketplace. The next step is to put systems in place to ensure every prospect and every customer has the experience you want them to have. Here are some examples of systems you may want to create in your business:

8 Create scripts for in-bound and out-bound phone calls Create scripts for in-store or in-office conversations with prospects Create a process for delivering the final product or service to the customer to maximize satisfaction. Create a follow-up process to survey customers after you delivered your product or service to gauge satisfaction. As you can see, the goal here is to take a close look at your business and see how you can positively influence the customer experience. Without this first critical step, you can t expect to have a solid online reputation. It all starts from within your business, which again, you completely control. CONTROL GOOGLE S FIRST PAGE

9 The next step in your offensive strategy is to control Google s first page when prospects search for your business name, your products, and/or your services. As you can see from the image above, when prospects search for Main Street ROI, then they see websites WE own or WE created. This was not an accident. We used what we call the Piggyback SEO technique to get other websites ranked on the first page of Google for our business name. That way prospects will only see webpages that present our business in a favorable way. And there aren t any scam words popping up and negatively influencing our prospects and customers. Plus, since we can edit all of these webpages, we can include links to our main website. That way, there s a very good chance no matter which search result the prospect clicks on, she ll eventually end up on our main website, In most cases, this is really easy to do. First, create social media profiles with your brand name and those will typically rank on the first page of Google. Then, issue press releases with your brand name in the title of the press release, and those will usually rank on the first page as well. This is called the Piggyback SEO technique because you are piggybacking on the other websites ability to rank high in Google (i.e. Facebook, YouTube, PRWeb, Webwire, etc.).

10 GET CONSISTENT POSITIVE REVIEWS The third offensive strategy is to get positive online reviews on a consistent basis. As long as the majority of your reviews and comments online are positive, then prospects will feel confident the one or two negative reviews are either fake or from unreasonable customers. It s important to proactively request reviews month after month, so your positive reviews outweigh any negative reviews. This is also critical if you are a local business, because people will be looking at reviews on Google+ Local as well as sites like Yelp, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local. If you already completed our Google+ Local video training course, The Local SEO Formula, then you know consistent positive reviews on your Google+ Local business listing will help you rank higher in Google s local results. Quantity and quality of reviews is one of the biggest factors in Google s ranking algorithm for local businesses. So how exactly do you get positive reviews online?

11 Well again, it all starts within your business -- by providing high-quality products and services. And if you provide high-quality products and services, then you ll naturally get some reviews without soliciting at all. However, to get lots of reviews on a consistent basis, you will need to ask for them. The vast majority of your customers will not take time out of their busy schedules to give you an online review without a little nudge. I recommend you ask (or survey) EVERY customer about their experience doing business with you. You can do this in-person, over the phone, or via . Then if you determine they re happy with you, ask them to post a review for your business online. Try to ask when you know your customer is likely to be the most happy with your business. That will significantly increase the number of positive reviews you get online. Also, when you ask for an online review, it s critical to make it as simple as possible for your customer to post a review online. Send your customer straight to the page where you want them to give you a review. For example, send them to your Google+ Local page and don t make them find it themselves. is one of the easiest ways to do this because you can include a link to your review page right in the . Or give them a physical printed card like the one above that includes a link to your review page as well as a QR code that mobile phone users can use. For more information about how to create a card like the one above, go to members area and read the Marketing Action Guide called, How to Get Tons of Happy Customer Reviews. And finally, you must follow up after you ask for the review. Even if customers want to give you a review, they may just forget. I ve done this myself. I ve been really happy with some businesses to the point where I will go out of my way to

12 write a positive review online. However, if I don t do it right away, then I usually forget, and it never happens. And that s exactly what s going to happen with your customers if you do not follow up with them. Use a friendly reminder or phone call to get them to take action more quickly and submit a positive review for you. YOU STILL NEED TO PLAY DEFENSE Even with the best offensive tactics, you will inevitably still need to play some defense to protect your online reputation. Let s assume you provide high-quality products and services and you already have a solid reputation from all of your proactive online reputation management tactics. As you grow you ll eventually get some disgruntled (or outright crazy) customers. And there will be a time when you get some complaints and bad reviews online. There s just no way around that fact. No business is immune unless your customers don t have access to the internet.

13 As I said earlier, a negative review is OK if you have a lot of other positive reviews. But you must respond to the negative review. And that s why you need to play some defense. The three defensive strategies are easy to remember by the acronym, MRI: 1. Monitor 2. Respond 3. Inspect Monitor The only way to know if people are commenting or posting reviews about your business is to monitor your online reputation. I recommend four tools for monitoring: First, you can simply Google your name and review the websites that show up on the first page. This is the most basic method to track your reputation and it s something you

14 should check on a monthly basis to make sure there are no negative websites popping up. Remember, if you see something negative, then your prospects and customers will certainly see it as well. Second, go to to set up Google Alerts for your business name, your products and services, and even your personal name. Google will then send you an whenever someone mentions you on a webpage. For example, we have Google Alerts for main street roi and mainstreetroi so I know immediately every time a new webpage mentions our business name. This is a great way to passively monitor your reputation because Google does all the hard work of finding the phrases you want to track. Third, go to and run some searches to see if anyone is talking about you on Twitter. Google alerts will notify you about new webpages, but you ll miss out on any tweets that mention your name. So I recommend you use Twinitor on a weekly or monthly basis to see who is talking about you and what exactly is being said. Fourth, go to and run some searches to see if you can find any more people talking about you on other social media websites. For example, when I searched mainstreetroi last month I discovered a video posted by my friend Mark Cenicola of BannerView.com. I had no idea Mark created a video that mentioned his partnership with our company, Main Street ROI. The video doesn t show up on the first page of Google, was not sent via Google Alerts because there was no text mentioning our name, and it wasn t tweeted about. Therefore, I would never have found this video unless I used a tool like SocialMention.com, which has the ability to find relevant videos in addition to text webpages.

15 Respond Once you have your monitoring system set up, then it s only a matter of time before you find some people talking about your business. When that happens, it s critical to respond as quickly as possible. Sometimes complaints are merely misunderstandings. So if you respond promptly to clarify the issue, then the person who made the post may edit it or remove it altogether. Speed is critical here because it shows you care about customer service. You can respond off the record via phone or , or you can respond directly to the post by making a comment on the website. I typically recommend both. Keep in mind that a response on the website will be read by future prospects so you want to make sure you write clearly so everything you say is interpreted correctly. Then if possible, follow up via phone or to resolve the problem and ensure no future comments will be posted online.

16 Never get defensive or argue with the person posting the negative review. That will only make things worse. Instead, try to offer whatever you can to make it up to the prospect or customer. For example, if the customer was not satisfied, then offer to replace the product or redo the service if that s reasonable. Remember, your goal by responding publicly is to give any future prospects confidence you actually care about customer satisfaction. If you let a negative comment sit there with no response, then you give the impression you simply don t care. That will almost certainly hurt future sales. Identify After you respond, then the final step is to identify the root cause of the problem. It s possible the negative review or comment was completely unwarranted and in that case

17 there s nothing to do at this stage. However, if you re dealing with chronic complaints and reputation problems, then I recommend you deal with the problem at the source. For example, answer these questions: Is there a gap between your customers expectations and your delivery? Are there certain products or services that are letting people down? Are there specific types of customers who are continually dissatisfied? Are there individual employees who are causing customer problems? Try to identify the root cause of the negative reviews, and take whatever action is necessary to prevent future unfavorable posts. For example, one of our clients was dealing with chronic usability complaints for one of their products they delivered electronically. They continually received poor reviews that stated the product was too difficult to use. After some inspection, we determined the file format was actually the root problem. Our client was sending a Zip file and most of their customers simply were not familiar with how to open that file format. Therefore, our client changed the delivery file format and they were able to drastically reduce usability complaints for their product. In some cases, identifying the root cause may not be easy, and it may require some big changes. It may be uncomfortable to dig into the root causes of customer complaints. But it s well worth it in the long-run to have happy customers. One happy customer can provide multiple referrals and repeat purchases well into the future. Alternatively, one unhappy customer will not only provide zero referrals and zero repeat business, but they may actually go out of their way to tell people to avoid your business. So clearly, it s worth the time investment to find the root cause and fix whatever may be causing your reputation problems!

18 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES For more information about how to get online customer reviews, go to: (Note: you must be logged in as a member to view the Marketing Action Guides) To learn our complete step by step system to rank #1 in Google s local results, go to: