How to Defend your Orange County Online Reputation from Negative Attacks
Audience nowadays are very active in their roles as customers, thus, a need for businesses to manage their business online especially since the buying tendencies of consumers are influenced mainly by the number of positive reviews they read about the company they want to buy from. In fact, Yelp has it that nearly 90% of Yelp users are making purchases from the businesses they found on Yelp in a span of a week with 51% of these Yelp users making a purchase decision after they have visited the business website. Such is the power of online reputation and the need to manage it.
Aside from its influence in the consumers’ buying decision, online reputation management also addresses public criticisms and feedback made by disgruntled and unsatisfied customers especially since 45% of consumers nowadays share their bad experiences of a company product or service through social media. Sadly to say, some of them were posted by fake customers, underhanded competitors or even the company’s ex-employees.
These bad reviews couldn’t be ignored as the presence of just one negative review will cost a business 30 customers. Another survey stated that 24% of consumers won’t purchase a product once they have read at least 2 bad reviews and 39% of them won’t make a purchase after they have read 3 negative or bad online reviews. Negative reviews that are not addressed are ultimately your competitors’ gain.
So how do we protect our Orange County businesses from bad reviews and defend our online reputation? Here’s a few tips your business need to note of:
• To prevent a negative criticism from escalating, address any bad reviews your company gets immediately. You can activate Google alerts to assist you in monitoring for new reviews ‘as it happens.’ As I mentioned earlier, the public these days are very vocal about their opinions and 58% of them are now sharing their customer experience of a product than they did 5 years ago. You can use private messaging to communicate with your reviewer and see to it that you use calm, professional and friendly responses when providing resolution to your bad reviewer’s issue or issues.
• Look at negative feedbacks as opportunities to improve your product or service instead of responding negatively about it too. From your negative reviewer’s standpoint, seeing you correcting the issues they have help rebuild their trust and wipes their bad experience off.
• As for fraudulent reviews that were posted on your business, post only one public polite comment and then ignore it completely.
Online reputation management is not just about reacting immediately though. It’s also knowing when and how to react to certain scenarios and taking a proactive yet positive approach in dealing with customers who are less than satisfied with your brand.
Never let bad or negative reviews ruin you. Drive Traffic Media will help your Orange County business attract good reviews that will streamline your sales and drive more happy customers your way. Call Us at 9498006990 today!
Sources:
Infographic, When Yelp Attacks!
Online Reputation Management: The Basics by Gyles Seward of Elementary Digital