Online Reputation Management: 5 Tips for Successful ORM in SMEs
Your company can have the best website, high quality content, good design and still not be successful. What is the reason for this? Most likely the online reputation!
Nowadays the exchange of experience among consumers is more anonymous and uninhibited than ever before. Everyone can make its opinion known online and ever more people use digital platforms, in order to make air for their annoyance over a certain product or company. These reviews in turn influence the purchasing decisions of other customers. Companies now face the challenge of optimizing their online reputation in a targeted manner.
Here we show you what it is all about. And most importantly, how to build a successful online reputation management for your company.
Successful Online Reputation Management in SME companies
Especially in smaller companies it is important to build a positive image. So how do you achieve a successful online reputation management? Here are several tips that you can use to create a successful online presence and boost your online reputation.
1. Make yourself known
A particularly difficult point, which often has to be built up over the long term, is branding marketing. This consists not only of promoting a product or service, but also of seeing it in its entirety with certain typical environmental elements. You should not only point out this one offer. You should, for example, link it thematically in advertising and continue these connections. This creates a grandiose effect. If a person sees or hears your elements in a completely different context, the brain automatically creates a connection to your performance. This could be a certain jingle, for example, which increases the recognition value. This measure also boosts your reputation management.
2. Do not forget the content
Good content marketing is also important, albeit obvious. It prevents doubts about your performance. In the same way, high quality content convinces of your quality, safety, environmental friendliness or controversial aspects. High-quality and, if possible, holistic content ensures a good reputation.
3. Put yourself in the right light
Another point, which also falls into the area of marketing, is an effective strategy for PR actions. They focus much more directly on improving reputation. PR actions can be carried out and tackled in many different ways.
One measure is press relations. You can offer to write a professional article or a company history to the editorial offices. Media of this kind often have a much wider reach and address a broadly diversified audience. The more extensive and profound the content, the more positive the effect on the image. Moreover, besides conveying professionalism and radiating seriousness, you position yourself not as a company that “only” wants to spread advertising and sell something, but as a company that also passes on knowledge and is active in real life in the social sector — not only online in the digital media.
4. Offer the customers a free experience
To give interested parties an insight into the product or service, free samples or free downloads are particularly interesting. In this way, customers gain direct experience and can see for themselves whether it keeps all its promises. A customer who not only buys a product in the test phase with new start-ups, but remains convinced of it after the test phase, can become a long-term customer.
Intensive customer care is also often helpful in building a good reputation. This gives a closer personal connection and allows us to respond more individually to the wishes of the customer.
5. Analyse your online evaluations
However, if you want to optimize your online reputation in the long term and unerringly approach the ideal customer experience, it is not enough to simply initiate and respond to feedback. You have to look at the big picture to really learn from your customers’ experiences and opinions. By categorizing and structuring all evaluations accordingly, you can find out in which areas of the company are stuck or what strengths and weaknesses the individual locations have. You then have the opportunity to initiate concrete measures, such as increasing resources in the service team or training sales staff.
More importantly, a satisfied customer is less likely to leave a positive feedback than an unsatisfied customer is a negative one. Therefore it is wise to motivate satisfied customers to write a review. Firstly, this changes the relationship between positive and negative reviews. Secondly, it also has a positive effect on sales figures.
