Saturday, 29 January 2011

Marketing Companies Can Help You With Your Online Reputation Management

How's your company's online reputation? Do you even know? The results of a quick search could be startling for you. Marketing companies could specialise in this area, helping you manage and accelerate a positive online reputation.

Why is online reputation management important?
More people than ever look to the web to help them make decisions about everything from minor purchases to big ticket items. The internet provides consumers with a plethora of information to help them make decisions, such as: product specifications, user reviews, and information about where to get what they want. If your reputation isn't nurtured, one of two things will happen:

Nothing?
If you have zero reputation, people won't find you. Lack of a poor reputation is a good thing but in many cases, if they know about you and find nothing positive or negative, they'll keep looking. Many people want validation for their choice through reviews, testimonials, and an online presence that puts them at ease.

Of course no reputation is better than a poor reputation but if you're even moderately successful offline, you'll want to share that positive reputation online so that you can take advantage of it.

Lost Sales - £££
If you're not paying attention to your reputation and something negative is said about you, this could be even more damaging than something positive being said. Bad press can rise like wildfire in the search engine results for your name or your niche. You can't necessarily control the bad press but marketing companies could help you boost the good press so that it outweighs the bad press.

How Online Marketing Companies Help:
Online marketing companies can track what's being said, can optimise the good press, and help you encourage feedback from your clients. Feedback utilised online in the right way will help you show new prospects that existing and past customers are satisfied.

If something negative is said, your marketing consultancy firm could track it down quickly and do damage control, either by alerting you so that you can act on it or by optimizing proven reputation management tools so that the bad press doesn't necessarily stick out like a sore thumb.

Most companies experience at least a bit of bad press at some time or another. Smart companies learn from this and use it to help them improve weak points in their infrastructure. Marketing companies can help you gather intelligence, boost positive results, solicit testimonials, and spread good news virally so that those considering your products or services will see that you're an organisation worth doing business with.

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