Stop Putting Off Reputation Management. It’s Your Turn To Tell the Whole Story

Shape Your Brand With the Help Of an Advertising Agency

To run a business, you need thick skin. From dealing with dissatisfied customers to handling personnel issues, challenges are a part of the game. Not everyone is going to love you, even as you strive to provide excellent service.

However, that doesn’t mean that permanent online reviews or news stories don’t hurt. It’s tough to see this content taking up space and potentially leading customers astray.

To address these situations, you need reputation management from a specialized agency.

What Is Reputation Management?

Reputation management is the process of monitoring and improving how your business is perceived online. Tactics include responding to reviews, flagging complaints, promoting positive feedback, and continuing to build strong brand awareness and customer relationships.

When Is Reputation Management Necessary?

Reputation management becomes a critical part of your business strategy for three main reasons:

• Bad or unfair reviews are showing up in places like your Google Business Profile.
• You’re in an industry where customers habitually compare businesses.
• Your business is facing negative media coverage.
• You feel that you need a greater, customer-facing presence.

In each of these cases, you can benefit from a marketing company that provides reputation management services.

What Does a Reputation Management Advertising Agency Do?

An advertising agency that offers reputation management as a service should provide services that monitor, influence, and protect your brand through various tactics. Although “dealing with bad reviews” is a part of these services, an excellent reputation management agency has many more strategies and capabilities at its disposal.

These include:

• Proactive storytelling: Helping you shape a positive brand perception through content on your website, social media, and ads.
• Monitoring: Using automated tools, an agency can help you watch for bad reviews, negative press, and misinformation.
• Response management: Crafting engaged, thoughtful content that delivers the right message in response to reviews.
• Flagging: Identifying reviews that do not meet the review platform’s standards, so they can be removed.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Creating positive or neutral content that ranks higher in search results than undesirable content.
• Engagement strategies: Asking customers to provide reviews in a way that feels less like solicitation and more like an invitation.
• Continued brand marketing: Storytelling across channels that continually reinforces your business’s unique story and value.

How Should I Respond To Reviews?

If you decide to respond to reviews without a digital advertising agency’s help, consider following some best practices that won’t turn a bad review into a worse situation.

Let’s look at two illustrative examples:

Example One

Review: “One star! This was one of the worst experiences of my life. Nothing satisfied me about this business!” – John, Leawood

Response: “Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear about your experience, John. We hope to make this situation right, as we value each of our clients. Please give us a call.”

Example Two

Review: “One star! Awful service from start to finish.” – Penny, Olathe

Response: “Thank you for your feedback. We always want our clients to feel satisfied throughout their experience. We’ve checked our records, Penny, and don’t have any information about having worked with you on a project. We’d love to learn more about your experience. Please give us a call so we can learn more about your perspective.”

What’s Working in These Responses

These hypothetical responses do a number of things well. They don’t fight back, and they don’t make excuses. Instead, they:

• Use the person’s name, if available.
• Thank them for their review.
• Explain your business’s mission or values.
• Cast doubt on the relationship (if applicable).
• Suggest making amends.
• Ask to learn more.

With responses like these, you can successfully manage challenging reviews. However, an advertising agency will be able to offer all the benefits associated with a full-scope reputation management strategy.

What Are the Benefits Of Reputation Management?

By investing in a reputation management strategy from an advertising agency, you can build trust with customers, demonstrate your responsiveness, and show that you are willing to engage with satisfied and dissatisfied customers. You also get to enhance your brand reputation and visibility with marketing services that tell your story. If you’ve experienced negative media coverage, you can balance these stories with content that highlights you from a positive perspective.

You deserve a chance to present your business as fairly as possible, so that one or two stinging comments — or an unfortunate event — don’t threaten to overwhelm your hard work.

Where Do I Find a Reputation Management Advertising Agency?

Vetting an advertising agency that delivers a full range of reputation management services requires some research. Poor performance from your chosen marketing team can weaken your reputation if their strategies are subpar.

Look for these qualities when choosing your online advertising agency:

• Comprehensive services that go beyond merely responding to reviews.
• Tools for automated monitoring of review platforms.
• Deep storytelling experience to ensure responses and other marketing content represent your brand well.
• Knowledge about how to authentically engage customers and solicit feedback.
• Skill with SEO and other marketing channels to keep your reputation strong.

Your reputation is one of your biggest strengths, and once it’s weakened, it’s very hard to gain back. However, you can stay proactive, tell your own story, and demonstrate your commitment to all customers — even the ones you wish hadn’t written a review at all.