Online reputation management or ORM is an extension of CRM in Digital Marketing, which works on how your business is perceived online by customers by managing, monitoring, and constantly improving your brand image.
It essentially means looking for information that any potential customers, reporters, or partners might find about your business online and analyzing it to gauge if any negative opinions or feedback has been posted about your brand, people, or product/service.
Why is it important in Digital Marketing?
Because a happy customer is the testimony of the smooth functioning of your business, regardless of which sector and industry you’re in.
Today, with the internet making information accessible at the fingertips of people, products, and services get meticulously researched before being purchased. Brands are under constant scrutiny, getting compared with other brands, with the increase in awareness and accessibility.
This is why ORM is needed— to maintain a brand’s image and to ensure that the users have a good experience by being in the know constantly and making sure that they are genuinely happy with your product or service.
And in case they aren’t?
Online Reputation Management helps to execute damage control and takes care of unsatisfied clients. This is done by having a strong customer support team in place, following up with proper customer care, replying to all feedback, and comments, etc.
With 85% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and nearly 3 out of 4 consumers trusting a company more if it has positive reviews, it is apparent that having a sound ORM system in place can bring big boons to your business.
But let’s dig deeper so that you can fully comprehend why ORM is crucial to business today:
First and foremost, as stated earlier, it helps you monitor your online reputation and gives you insights about your brand, your product/services, the people considered the voice of your company and your industry. It empowers you with tools so that you can observe search engines, review sites, google places, discussion forums, blogs, news sites, social networks, etc, to pave the way for improvements.
ORM also helps in avoiding any potential loss of sales with its efficient implementation. The stats support this, as ORM has been studied to help avert losing a new lead or client by almost 40%.
Another way ORM services help facilitate better business is through the brand loyalty it generates with its effective strategies. This results in not only the customer trusting the brand and remaining loyal to it but also raises the possibility of the customer talking positively about the brand to their friends and family.
What’s more, this may snowball into increased conversions as well. Because when a customer is happy and satisfied, they are bound to choose your brand over the others, leading to more sales and business. A double win? Yep!
With the previously mentioned ORM benefits, your brand’s perception also soars, which makes your social media page or website be perceived more positively. It’s a self-sustaining cycle, that only grows as long as there is zero to minimum negative feedback on your pages.
And lastly, ORM also leads to improved brand visibility. This of course works in tandem with people having a good experience with your brand, which creates a buzz and gets your page ranking higher in the results of searches.
So now, time to get into different types of ORM:
- Online Review:
This is at the forefront of maintaining a positive image online. It’s achieved by encouraging users who had a good experience with your brand to share their feedback on your public business platforms.
- Social Media:
ORM in social media is needed for brands as consumers can generate negative comments, reviews, and unwanted tags on your business profile, which can seriously harm the reputation of a company, in turn, affect its growth. Think Kylie Jenner’s tweets about Snapchat.
- Search Engine Content:
By improving and determining how a certain brand looks on the internet, ORM has a positive impact on your rankings on the search engines and improves your ratings as well as your social media presence.
- Negative SEO:
While it’s important to be able to appear for positive searches, it is just as necessary for a company to manage negative SEO. It helps add a humane side to your business and can be used as an opportunity to showcase your dedication to good customer service.
- Public Relations:
This includes monitoring online press releases and news stories. Again, negative stories have to be managed in the same beat that the positive stories get self-published on your platforms (with authority).
- Reputation Marketing:
This promotes what the company stands for and makes good marketing for your brand. For example, Nike’s exclusive Twitter account for customer support helps distressed customers reach out to the brand timely, and get quick relief for their concerns.
As you can see, ORM plays a pivotal role in enhancing your business’s brand image and therein, your company’s long-term reputation. It is a worthy investment for scaling up your business to a new level. For expert ORM services in India, contact Matrix Bricks today.