What is online reputation marketing? Is it important?

You’ve heard of reputation management, but how about reputation marketing? You might be thinking, “Oh great, another buzzword to throw into the marketing mix. How can reputation marketing differ from reputation management?” Really, though, this one’s important!

Online reputation marketing: the definition

You’re correct in thinking that reputation marketing is very similar to reputation management. However, the difference lies in how you think about your online reputation and how use your reviews to your advantage.

In a Forbes article, Steve Olenski, a CMO/CRO, explains online reputation marketing like this:

“In today’s environment, it’s no longer sufficient to think about reputation management like we think about crisis management. We need to think about our reputations as a constant, competitive advantage; a driver of growth and prosperity; and a strategic asset. We need to think about reputation marketing.”

Think of it this way: reputation management is playing defense, whereas reputation marketing is playing offense. Instead of simply managing your reviews as they come in, you’re using them as a part of your entire marketing strategy. You’re proactively working on getting great reviews all the time and using them to market yourself.

What you should know about online reputation marketing

Okay, playing offense is great. But what does that actually mean? Let’s dive in a bit further.

The role of social media

I don’t have to take the time to go over the increasing role social media plays in marketing and influencing consumer behavior these days. We’ve all seen just how much social media has grown over the past several years! There’s just no escaping it, especially when working on reputation marketing.

Really, any place people can leave comments about their experience with a business or brand can be called a social network. A social network, by definition, is “a dedicated website or other application which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images, etc.”.

The most popular social networks, though, are going to hold the most influence over your business reputation. These networks, including Google, Facebook, and Yelp, are highly visible in search and can mean the difference between someone choosing your product or service and skimming right over you.

If you haven’t claimed your social media profiles or don’t bother to manage them, you’re way behind.

Monitoring is key

Letting a bad (or even just an okay) review sneak past your notice isn’t acceptable anymore. Just a couple days of leaving a bad review up without a reply can be detrimental! Therefore, it’s important to respond to reviews as they come in. Especially with the aforementioned rise of social media, people expect a speedy reply – even when it’s to a review, not a message.

Catching reviews and other mentions of your business as they come in is doable in a couple different ways:

• Use Google Alerts to watch for mentions of your business across the web. Be warned, though, that this doesn’t always alert you to new reviews.
• Log into Google My Business and make sure you’re set to receive notifications whenever you get a new review.
• Do the same for Yelp – receive notifications for new reviews.
• Continue setting up notifications for all your most important review sites. These are different for each industry!
• To simplify the process, using an online reputation and review management service like Rize Reviews can bring all your monitoring into one dashboard, making it much easier!

Amplification = Marketing

Using your great reviews to your advantage is an important piece of your online reputation marketing campaign. Marketing your business with the words of others can be even more compelling than any of your other marketing campaigns. After all, BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2018 found that 80% of 18-34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s a huge number of people you can reach and influence with your reviews!

There are a couple fantastic ways to amplify your reviews. Here are a couple ideas to get you started!

1. Use reviews in your email campaigns. No matter what kinds of email campaigns you’re sending out, you can include reviews to amp up your marketing efforts by increasing your authenticity. Create graphics with them or design them into your email in whatever way you see fit.
2. Show your reviews on your website. Finding a fun way to incorporate reviews onto your website is a great idea. Hiding them away on a “testimonials” page is okay, but if you want them to do more work for you, feature some in other, more prominent locations.
3. Use them as social media posts. Great reviews make awesome graphics to use on your social media profiles!
4. Put them in your videos. Do you regularly create videos? Maybe you could show a review at the beginning or end.
5. Link to your major review sites everywhere. If your major review sites are chock full of great reviews, link to them everywhere you can. Add links to your website footer, on social media, in emails, etc.

Reputation marketing is an important part of any internet marketing campaign

Online reputation marketing is an important and necessary addition to any internet marketing campaign. Remember, it’s like switching from playing defense to playing offense. You have the upper hand if you’re taking advantage of reputation marketing!