Maximizing reputation marketing in 4 steps

On the way to purchase, a client passes "filters": reviews on the internet, negative sources of information, discussions, etc. If a toxic information environment surrounds the brand, the number of its potential customers is rapidly decreasing.

Traditional advertising and reputation marketing help to reach the same goals: to acquire and retain a customer.

The fact is: Nine out of ten prospects read reviews before making a purchase. At the same time, in the B2C segment, more than 90% will refuse to buy a product after reading several negative reviews. For B2B, this indicator is not that critical, but it also has a significant impact.

That's why it's crucial to control the contact points between the brand and customers. Or, in other words, management of the brand mentions on the internet.

What is reputation marketing management? That's constant work with the audience's opinions and the contexts that form the brand. Therefore, it is so important to know what customers and prospects write about the company.h

Monitoring brand mentions is impossible without analyzing negative reviews as that's what people pay attention to foremost. Then so should do business. YouScan analytics will help you find which sites contain more negative information, the reviewer's gender and age, etc. This data forms a portrait of a dissatisfied client. You can go even deeper and dive into aspects.

Aspects show the storing and weak point of your brand or product. The graph below shows that dissatisfaction with the service is systematic, which means that the reason is the process organization. Building an online reputation is ineffective unless the brand is going to fix its weaknesses.

Sentiment by source feature will help to find platforms with spikes of negative or positive mentions. Analyzing their reach, you will understand where to focus first.

SERM (search engine reputation management) is one of the main tools for reputation marketing as it helps to build a favorable brand reputation in Google, Bing, and other search engines. However, it is not enough to bring controlled sites to the top positions because people are skeptical about official messages. Customers trust other customers.

This is where user-generated content comes in handy.

Everlane is a great example. The brand says, "See how people wear our clothes." The main feature is that the brand uses real client's pictures instead of professional models. They are not always celebrities, per contra, often these are ordinary people.

British Columbia's Instagram account, which exclusively uses content from travelers' pages, is also a successful case. Why hire photographers when your guests do all the work for you?

YouScan will help you find the authors whose positive posts generate the most engagement. Let's highlight positive mentions and sort them by engagement.

The original picture with a review got 465 likes. But when it "moved" to the official Starbucks account, the number of likes reached 105K!

User-generated content is a godsend for reputation marketing. Brands can use it in ad campaigns and weekly social media compilations or encourage other customers to write positive reviews.

Try to thank customers for the content. Perhaps they will leave even more positive mentions.

Reputation management requires stopping negative trends. Even though you don't have to respond to every negative mention, it's vital to stay updated and prevent turning those mentions into trends or flash mobs against your company.

For example, a huge article revealing that Oatly, the Swedish vegan milk brand, used harmful ingredients instead of sugar, appeared on the internet. As a result, the company got more than 2K negative mentions that could harm the company's reputation as a healthy drink manufacturer.

When clicking on this trend, we can see hundreds of posts like this one, showing how customers were disappointed and refused to buy the product after reading the article.

To protect themselves, Oatly posts an official response and gets an article on The Insider by the dietitian claiming that the ingredients are safe for humans.

Aina, our smart assistant, will send email notifications about the most important events. Even when the trend is just beginning to gain strength, you will already be aware of it and will have time to prepare.

Visual insights automatically recognize objects, scenes, and actions on the image. Perhaps your clients will inspire you to create new visual solutions.

Collaborate with the customer service team. Assign mentions to someone who can help your customers. Besides, now when you know better what your clients are complaining about, it's time to use the information to your advantage. Not just to resolve pinpoint problems but to improve the whole business.

Reputation marketing is an ally of a smart brand, and YouScan is a multifunctional tool to manage this task. Request our free demo to keep your reputation clear.