Introduction
Did you know 80% of new customer interactions with businesses begin online, so your online presence and what customers say about you matter a lot. While you cannot control the things customers say about your business directly, you can, to a good extent, manage and safeguard your reputation. So, what is online reputation management for small businesses exactly, what are its benefits, and how can you improve it? Keep reading to find out!
What is Online Reputation Management for Small Businesses?
Small business online reputation management involves monitoring, growing, and managing your business’s online presence by constantly keeping track of what your customers are saying about your business on different online platforms. The process involves replying to customer comments and feedback and ensuring all the information related to your business online is updated and correct. Keep on reading to find out more information on small business reputation management.
Benefits of Online Reputation Management for Small Businesses
For a small business, every penny spent is important, and so you may want to know what all benefits you can achieve by investing in reputation management. Have a look:
Increases search result ranking
Did you know for search engines like Google, reputation management is one of the most important ranking factors? And if you want to rank your small businesses right on top of the search results page, then reputation management is something that you just can’t ignore. By managing your online reputation, you can appear on top when a person looks up for a service offered by your business and can easily get new customers.
Builds credibility and trust
Having a presence online allows you to get reviews from customers and add information about your business, be it your address, pictures, location, etc. These two things help you in building credibility and trust among potential customers. So, for example, if a person looks for a “spa near me” and sees your business, its details, and customer reviews, it gets easy for them to trust you and try your services out.
Similarly, if you have a Collagen Protein Powder business and make your products available on trusted platforms like Amazon, among others, it significantly enhances your credibility. People tend to trust businesses that are easily accessible online.
Increases profits
You may have the best service or product, but at the end of the day, you need customers to walk through your door to make money. A good online reputation helps in bringing new customers to your business, which in turn helps in increasing your profits.
Improves customer relationships
Reputation management is not just a magnet to attract new customers, but it is also a tool to improve existing customer relationships. For example, let’s say a customer had a poor experience with you and leaves a negative review. You can tackle this situation by improving your service and also by addressing the concerns of the customer. This little thing can make your customer feel heard and might even persuade them to change their review.
Lessen the impact of negative feedback
Let’s face it, you will receive negative feedback every once in a while for your business. However, having a crisis management response plan in this case can help control the damage to a good extent and lessen the impact of negative feedback.
How to Boost Online Reputation for Small Businesses?
Automate review requests via channels like SMS, Email, etc.
The easiest way to boost the online reputation for small businesses is to automate the review request process. Even in this, to get the best results, you must automate review requests based on demographics. For example, if your target audience is above 50 years of age, then SMS might be the best review request channel. And if you target a younger audience then both email and SMS should be utilized.
Give customers the option to leave you feedback & improve
Always give your customers the option to leave you feedback. This has three benefits. One is it makes the customer feel heard and improves their experience. The second one is that it allows you to gain more and more reviews, which is very important to distinguish yourself online, and to rank better on search engines. Third is that it gives you room to implement your customer’s feedback and improve your services or product for the future.
Act on feedback with tasks/tickets
There are so many reviews pouring in every day, and it can get difficult to keep track of and respond to them all. But by no means you can ignore or forget online reviews, especially the negative ones. In this case, having a ticketing system offered by Emitrr that allows you to create tasks for your team based on feedback and priority could be a game changer. Using this feature, your team can prioritize reviews and reply to them before it is too late.
Give customers multiple channels to leave reviews
Let’s say a customer leaves a review for you on Google, and visits you again, should you miss the opportunity to get a review from this loyal customer on another review site? Not at all! Focus on getting reviews from customers on multiple review sites including:
Yelp
BBB
How can you get reviews on multiple channels from the same customer?
To get reviews on multiple channels from the same customer, you simply need software that identifies you have collected reviews from a customer for a specific site and should be able to automatically send them a review link for an alternate website the next time. Emitrr is one such software that is building this advanced capability and is a great option to consider if you are looking for reputation management software for small businesses.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Overlooking small review sites
Every person has a different preference for checking reviews online. While some may rely on Google reviews, others may prefer sites like Yelp, BBB, or even Facebook. People may also check multiple review sites to corroborate information, so, having a presence on just one platform is not enough. Small business owners who ignore being present on small review sites may miss out on many potential customers.
Engaging in arguments online with customers
You may feel defensive or upset while reading a negative review for your business. But no matter what, avoid getting into arguments with your customers online because whatever you put there can be seen by other customers as well. Instead, try to address the customer’s concern and take the matter offline by sharing your number or email.
Ignoring the power of local SEO for small businesses
According to a survey by RedLocalSEO “78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase.” So you not only need to have an online presence but also need to get it SEO optimized so that you do not lose out on customers who are looking for your service or product in your local area.
Underestimating the importance of personalized responses
Your customers want to be heard, especially when they have something important to say. Hence, whenever they leave a review, especially a negative one, make sure you address the issue with a personalized response. Copy-pasting the same reply may irk the customer even more, and that’s a risk that you should never take.
Why Responding is Important for Google?
Responding to customer reviews is not only important to show that you care, but is also important from Google’s perspective. As shared before, search engines tend to favor businesses with higher ratings and businesses who interact with their customers. This is why it is very important to respond to customers.
Use AI templates
If sending personalized responses to so many customers seems like a very time-consuming task, then you can use AI tools and templates and customize them just a little to save time and still make an impact.
How a Reputation Management System Can Help Boost Online Reputation for Small Businesses?
Reputation management involves collecting feedback, sending SMS review requests, keeping track of reviews, responding to reviews, and whatnot. Doing all this manually can take a lot of time, which is why you should consider using reputation management software for small businesses. Here’s how a reputation management software can help boost the online reputation of your small business:
Automate the process of collecting and responding to reviews
Using reputation management software, you can automate the process of sending review links to your customers automatically post their purchase from you. And the most effective way to do this is via SMS because SMS has an open rate of 98%. If you opt for software like Emitrr, that allows you to send automated review requests via SMS, then there is a high chance that the customer will open the message and leave the review for you.
Integrate with CRM to send automated review requests to customers
Reputation management software that integrates with CRM tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, etc., can identify and pull out customer information and send automated review requests via SMS to them. This handy feature can cut down so much manual work and help you in saving precious time.
Bring reviews from different platforms on a single place
It could be so complicated to keep track of and respond to all the reviews that you receive on different review sites such as Google, Yelp, etc. Thankfully, reputation management tools can help you track all reviews from different platforms in one place. So that you can easily view reviews on different sites, track them, filter them, and reply to them with ease.
Collect reviews smartly from the same customer on different platforms
A reputation management software can identify customers who have left reviews for your business on a certain review site before and send them a review link for a different review site the next time they give you a visit, and so on. This feature can give you the opportunity to collect positive reviews from loyal customers who keep coming back to you.
Monitor reviews effectively
Small business online reputation management software comes with features to send you notifications and alerts as soon as someone leaves a review. This cool feature allows you to monitor negative reviews effectively and deal with them to do some damage control.
Use review request templates
Lastly, these tools allow you to send personalized responses to your customers without needing to type the entire message from scratch. Such tools offer a number of review request templates that can be customized before sending them to your customers.
How to Improve Online Reputation For Small Businesses Using Emitrr?
To generate more reviews for your small business, you can use Emitrr’s text review request features. Here’s how:
1. Login in to your Emitrr dashboard and click on “send option.” Now navigate the “review request option” and click on it.
2. Next, enter the list of contact(s), you wish to send the review request to. (Labeled 1 in the image)
3. If you add more than one contact, then you will be prompted to either send a mass text or group text. (Labeled 2)
4. Now add the list/group (Labeled 3)
5. As soon as you add the list, the message box will automatically fill with a review template. You can either use it, customize it, or select some other template from the option appearing at the bottom of the text box. (Labeled 4)
6. Finally, schedule the message for later or hit send to deliver it immediately.
Features to Look For in an Online Reputation Management Platform
Here are the top features to look for when choosing an online reputation management platform:
- Integrations with CRM software: See if the reputation management solution you want integrates with your existing CRM software, so that you can bring in a new process, without interrupting your existing flow of business activities.
- Integration with review sites: Look for software that integrates with popular review sites such as Yelp, Google reviews, Facebook, Better Bureau Business, etc.
- Multi-review request channel: Send review requests via multi-channel such as SMS, email, etc.
- Manage Google My Business listings: Manage your Google My Business listings across different locations.
- Review request automation: Automate how and when to send review requests to your customers. Choose from templates or create messages on your own.
- Reporting and analytics: Segregate reports by time, location, stars, etc., and also get a detailed breakdown of how many reviews are requested.
- Review automation & cadence: Automate when and how you want to send review requests to your customers.
- Personalized dashboard: Receive reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other review sites and keep track of total reviews requested, received, review requests responded to, etc.
- Real-time review monitoring: With the help of real-time notifications, respond to reviews immediately and manage your online reputation with ease.
List of Top 5 Online Reputation Management Platforms
You can easily automate online reputation management with the help of a software. In case, you do not know where to begin, then here’s a list of online reputation management software that are worth checking out:
- Emitrr
- Birdeye
- Weave
- Podium
- Solutionreach
Why Emitrr is the Best Software for Improving Online Reputation for Small Business?
Send automated review requests to the customers via SMS
As mentioned before, SMS has an open rate of 98% and is the best channel to get reviews from loyal customers. Using Emitrr, you can send automated review requests to your customers via SMS right after they make a purchase from you.
Track & improve reviews from review sites such as Google, Yelp, FB, etc.
Emitrr allows you to track customer reviews from different review sites, such as Google reviews, Yelp, Facebook, etc., in a single place. Additionally, it gives you the option to filter out reviews based on the date, rating, review site, etc., and reply to them using manual or template replies.
Set up an automated review response system
Using Emitrr, you can even set up auto-responses to reviews based on whether they are negative or positive.
Get notified upon receiving reviews
Negative reviews can damage your small business’s reputation if not acted on time. Thankfully, Emitrr notifies you as soon as you receive a review so that you can act quickly and tackle reviews to maintain your online reputation. Emitrr also refrains negative reviews from going to the business pages, unlike any other software.
Filter & monitor reviews based on review source, rating and location
Use Emitrr to sort rating and filter out reviews based on review source, location, star rating, etc., to easily manage, track and reply to reviews.
Integrate with CRM to automate review requests
Emitrr can seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM tools, be it HubSpot, Salesforce, etc., to pull out customer information from your existing CRM database and use it to automate review requests.
Communicate with customers via two-way texting
Emitrr also offers a two-way texting feature using which you can take issues with your customers offline and converse with them easily.
Use review SMS templates to send requests instantly
Use pre-existing SMS templates to send out review requests to your customers manually. Customize them by using properties such as name, last name, etc.
More than just a reviews platform
With Emitrr, you don’t just get access to reviews and reputation management features but also access to features like mass texting, scheduling, VoIP, group texting, etc., so that all aspects of your business and customer communication can be taken care of.
FAQs On Online Reputation Management
Small business online reputation management is important for small businesses to maintain a consistent brand image, build trust and credibility among customers, and to attract more customers to their business.
On average, online reputation management for small businesses can cost anywhere between $150 – $10,000 a month, depending on whether you are using software or hiring a service. The former costs cheaper and is more suitable for small businesses, while the latter is more expensive and should be used by big businesses.
Encouraging customers to leave reviews, responding to negative comments, and investing in reputation management software like Emitrr are some of the best strategies for small business online reputation and brand management.
Conclusion
Reputation management is an important aspect of business growth, for not just large but small businesses. However, the most cost-effective way for small businesses to manage their online reputation is by implementing software like Emitrr. Book a demo call with Emitrr today and see how efficiently you can maintain your business’s online reputation.
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