Online Reputation Marketing Improves Local Rankings, Buyer Traffic & Sales

Online Reputation Marketing Improves Local Rankings, Buyer Traffic & Sales

In simple terms, Reputation Marketing is about establishing a great business reputation among your customers and then promoting that reputation in your marketing to grow your business.

Broadly, Reputation Marketing is the strategy of using your brand assets from your company’s reputation as advertising and promotional content in effective, creative ways.  

To Amplify trust, and credibility to win customer confidence to do business with you over your competitors.

Examples of assets for reputation marketing include customer reviews, testimonials, online ratings, community awards, social media mentions, and more.

So reputation marketing is about using reviews and testimonials as part of your marketing. You’re marketing your reputation, whether by including positive reviews in your advertisements or sharing testimonials on social media.

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Brand marketing is about publicizing your company’s identity and values. Your brand is how you tell the world what your company stands for. Your reputation is what your customers think your company stands for and how good of a job they think you do to live up to it.

Reputation management involves managing your reputation by decreasing negative reviews, responding to online feedback, and resolving customer complaints online.

Reputation marketing is more active than reputation management. It’s about getting positive mentions through reviews & social media and using those mentions in your marketing.

Reputation marketing differs from brand marketing and reputation management because you’re using what others say about you to promote your company.

Reputation Marketing vs. Reputation Management

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We’re seeing a shift in focus from reputation management to reputation marketing over the past few years. This is because reputation marketing has a higher impact for businesses.

Reputation management influences customer perception by avoiding and responding to negative reviews.

Dealing with negative reviews is still important. To effectively manage your reputation, it’s helpful to respond to dissatisfied customers promptly and tactfully

But reputation marketing is more proactive. It involves acquiring more positive mentions online and marketing those mentions across your website, on social media, on review platforms, and more.

The two main aspects that define reputation marketing are:

  1. Improve your reputation: Using reputation marketing first means improving your reputation. Get more positive reviews and ask customers to recommend you.
  2. Market your reputation: This is the big one. With lots of customer reviews, testimonials, and positive mentions on social media—you can use these assets in your marketing.  

This is why reputation marketing can have a strong impact on your business.  

You’re not playing “damage control” when your business gets a negative review. Instead, you’re using your reputation as a positive asset to drive sales.

Collecting Online Reviews Efficiently for SEO

Online reviews impact local search and SEO (search engine optimization), improving rankings on average by about 12%. Given the hundreds, if not thousands, of different factors search engines use to rank websites like yours, online reviews have a huge impact on your SEO.

Whenever you make those searches you’ll notice the Google Maps widget that shows up. If you have a Google Business Profile (aka. Google My Business), it’s ranked by multiple factors.

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Reputation Marketing SEO Factors Ranking for Local Businesses  

  1. Proximity: how close you are to the person searching.
  2. Relevancy: how relevant your products/services are to the person searching.
  3. Reputation: how many reviews you have, your average star rating, and how recent those reviews are (which also show relevancy).

But more reviews don’t just increase the amount of traffic to your website—they also increase the quality of that traffic. That’s because the person searching has already been convinced you’re a reputable provider before they even talk to you—all because of online-reputation marketing.

The Benefits of Facebook Reviews

How Getting More Reviews On Facebook Is Like Gaining A Referral For An Entire Network

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Facebook reviews (now called Recommendations) are an incredibly powerful and targeted way to get new business.

When someone leaves a review on your Facebook Business Page, depending on the review itself, some of that person’s friends may get a notification (or see it in their News Feed) saying that they recommend your business.  

It’s like word-of-mouth, only a thousand times more powerful because they’re not just telling one friend, they’re telling all of their friends that your business comes highly recommended.

This is a more targeted approach because if you serve very high-end clients, for example, then those clients’ friends are often likely to be of a similar demographic and income level as they are.

It’s also incredibly valuable when people make testimonials about your business in Facebook Groups.

The Benefits of Google Reviews

How Getting More Reviews On Google Will Improve SEO And Help You Outrank The Competition

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How would being the best-reviewed and top-ranked business in your area affect your web traffic and sales?

It would probably make a large impact, since getting reviews for your Google Business Profile can greatly improve your reach across SERPs (search engine results pages), Google Maps, and the Google “local snack-pack.”

Google Reviews And SEO: Increasing Visibility On Search Engines

Google reviews are a bit different than Facebook reviews. Google reviews are less targeted than Facebook reviews but will earn you more visibility. A review on Google will help your “discoverability” on the search engine, which will increase the amount of website traffic you get.  

This means you’ll get a higher volume of customers through Google reviews than through Facebook reviews.

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Contact Us if you want to utilize Reputation Marketing to grow your business and dominate your local market.

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