Nowadays it is quite easy for searchers to find each and everything about the industry they are interested in. Google is not only offering the information in the form of rich snippets, knowledge graph and local business listing but also providing the customer reviews so, that the searchers can take quick and right decisions. This shows that your business can be affected by your online projection if you are not taking it seriously.
In the old times, it was just word of mouths and yellow pages listing that used to help the customers to choose the industry or company they wish to go for. But down the line since the time the user’s dependency has increased on the internet, it becomes crucial to maintain your business online reputation.
Maintaining your brand image online is not only tricky but you need to understand the key areas which can affect it. We are sharing here the 4 flags that you should look upon which can help you in saving the money flowing out of pocket to save your image online.
1.) Negative search results:
Search results act as the first impression for your business. Today’s customer believes on what they see, and take decision accordingly.
If you are a business person, maybe marketing guy or a secretary, and if you have shared your business card with your potential. Do you think they will associate with you based on how well the meeting has gone? Answers could be both Yes if it’s a recurring customer and No if it’s a new acquisition as he will defiantly reach out to Google to read more about you and your company. He would be more interested in knowing what people are saying about your business.
We know that Google is user-centric and now that Google has given the options to the users to rate business as per their experience than it becomes easy for the customers to write about you without being hesitant on the impact.
Research also shows that if you have one negative comment on the first page of SERP then there is a fare risk that you will lose 22% of business online and as the number increase the percentage will.
2.) Behind with Digital Content:
Today’s buyers are smart and do a lot of research on the product and services before purchase. So, it becomes quite challenging to bring them into your sales funnel merely by showcasing and talking about your business USPs.
Today if you’re not building your business with the right and user engaging content then you won’t be able to catch the hold of the customer.
Digital content is not limited to videos, but it’s a pool filled with options like blogging, podcast creation, info graphic, case studies, and white papers you can choose from depending on the need.
Educating your customers using all the mediums will help you in increasing your sales funnel with the variants opportunities.
3.) Ignoring Employee Support
As a company we want ourselves to be there in front of the customers time to time and to achieve that we shed a lot of money on marketing and advertising agencies. But we don’t realize that the best tool is right under our nose, and we don’t have to even shed a single penny for that, it is our employees. How?
I still remember my boss calling me once and asking me to promote our company event pages by liking and commenting on it through my social media mainly using Facebook and LinkedIn, and he repeated the same thing with every employee of the organization. Going this way he was able to reach more 1000 users likes on the company page and some great opportunities.
The research shows that the brand message shared by employees on social media receives 561% more reach and 8 times more user engagement as compared to the reach achieved by the marketing agencies.
It has also been found that the leads generated by employee’s engagement on social media convert 7 times frequently. So, employee advocacy cannot merely be leverage for building awareness about the brand but also filling the sales funnels and generating revenue for the business.
4.) Executives with Personal Brand:
During the research, it has been found that 95% of the industry and financial analyst says that they would be purchasing the stocks in the company based on the CEO reputation. What does it mean?
Your executive’s brands impact directly on your business reputation. An executive with a personal brand helps the company to stand out in the competition with the limitless options.
To summarize:
When you’re doing business, your brand image cannot just be affected by people who talk all good things about your brand but also with the people who are not happy, may be due to the competition or being the ex-employees. In anger these can go far on Yelp and Google and can write bad things about your business to tarnish your online reputation. Ex-employees use the platforms like Glassdoor and indeed to put out their frustrations which directly affect the employee’s recruitment and business reputation online.
84% of the customers trust online reviews which influence the buying decision and buying cycle for the business.
We at Dubai Website Design keep a close eye on the trends and techniques required to put the business back on track by suppressing the bad comments and reviews. Please read our article where we have spoken about the techniques that can help rebuild your brand image.