5 Reasons Reputation Management is Critical for Your Business
What is Online Reputation Management?
If you haven’t heard of the practice of reputation management, it’s an important consideration for your online business. Any organization that conducts business should be concerned about their online reputation. Online reviews, ratings, and comments can affect your future business opportunities by shaping the perception of your brand in the eyes of potential customers.
Reputation management is the practice of building positive customer experiences online through business ratings sites like Google Business Profiles, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, and more. This is done primarily by creating a proactive presence on these sites, and being hyper-responsive to customer comments, ratings, and complaints. Companies can manage their presence manually, or use a professional third party service to aggregate and control their business ratings accounts in one place.
Approaches to Reputation Management
The primary way business reputations are quantified is through ratings websites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Glassdoor, and many more. Google Business Profiles, Yelp, and others collect ratings, reviews, and feedback from customers that can be shared and viewed by other potential customers online. Many of these services—Google Business Profiles, in particular—are free to sign up for and allow you to build a strong relationship with customers by responding to comments and concerns.
However, the number of online business ratings websites can be daunting to manage manually and individually. That’s why there are a number of professional service providers that can aggregate all of your reviews and customer interactions in one dashboard. Instead of checking each website individually for comments and questions, services like GearUp put all of your business rating accounts in one place, giving you one dashboard to manage your online reputation.
5 Critical Reputation Management Facts
But why is online reputation management important in the first place? Let’s look at five reasons it is critical for your business to have an online reputation management program.
Your Reputation is Priceless
Everyone who runs a business understands this. It often takes years to build a solid reputation with your customers and the general public. But it only takes one mistake, or a negative review to bring your reputation down. If negative ratings and reviews are left unresolved, they can cause significant damage to your business reputation. According to a 2021 article by eCommerce company Oberlo, more than half (53.3%) of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within seven days. Failing to respond to negative reviews can reflect poorly on your business and affect future opportunities with customers.
Anyone Can Comment About Your Business Online
There are dozens of apps that enable customers (or anyone, really) to leave ratings and reviews about your business. And anyone can read the ratings and reviews. With that kind of exposure, it’s critical to stay on top of what the public is saying about your business. Depending on the size of your organization and online footprint, however, it can be daunting to be responsive to customers across multiple websites. That’s why there are solution providers that can aggregate your ratings and reviews across multiple platforms to make the process more manageable. We’ll explore this later on in this article.
Customers Overwhelmingly Make Decisions Based on Ratings and Reviews
According to a 2020 article by customer experience firm Qualitrics, 93% of customers read online reviews before making purchase decisions. Customers nearly always look at recommendations and reviews for guidance on whether or not to trust a company. According to the Orberlo article cited earlier, shoppers look at an average of four reviews prior to making a purchase decision. And more than 8 in 10 potential customers look at online reviews for local businesses before considering a purchase.
According to an article by customer satisfaction firm Dixa, 86% of potential customers will hesitate to do business with a company if it has negative reviews. It’s critical to stay on top of reviews—especially negative reviews—and resolve them as quickly as possible.
Interactions with Customers Can Create Opportunities for Improvement
Again, according to the article from Oberlo, customers often comment and post about their customer experiences by a rate of 47% or more. Again, citing Dixa, 95% of customers who have negative experiences leave comments and ratings. As businesses interact with customers by responding to comments—especially the negative ones—they can discover new ways to improve their products and services and head off future problems.
According to Oberlo, customers are also influenced by company responses to reviews—especially negative reviews. Nearly all potential customers (about 97%) who read reviews from other customers also read company responses. That gives organizations an opportunity to show the public how they interact with customers and build trust.
Positive Ratings and Reviews Can Be Used As Marketing Tools
Your best customers can become product champions for you. Product testimonials and endorsements are effective ways to reinforce trust in your brand. If you have a strong customer who wants to be a brand champion, ask to publish their experiences in your marketing materials. Additionally, ratings from well known organizations like Google Business Profiles, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, and others can be placed on your website to build credibility and trust.
Getting Started with Reputation Management
Getting started with reputation management is as easy as claiming your business profiles on common rating websites like Google Business Profiles, Yelp, and others. For aerospace companies we recommend at least claiming your profile on Google. We don’t think Yelp is necessary however , be aware that sometimes your customer will establish a profile on your behalf as part of a bad review.
Google Business Profiles
According to Oberlo, Google is the most widely used online review platform—about 59% of consumers use Google to read reviews on businesses. Google business profiles appear in search results when searching for particular companies. If a business is claimed and managed by the company, the results will display the company’s overall rating and number of reviews.
Google displays all known businesses by default, but in order to manage your business listing and provide business details, you need to claim your business. Getting started with Google Business Profiles is easy, and is simply a matter of claiming or entering your business. Visit https://www.google.com/business to get started with Google Business Profiles.
Niche Players in Aviation
There are also niche ratings and reviews platforms in the aerospace industry. These companies focus on organizations that offer MRO services, fuel, repair, refurbishment, and other services related to owning and operating aircraft. TallyHo!, is one such app platform that helps aircraft owners and operators find the best aircraft services near them.
Other websites and apps that have citations about your business and in some cases reviews in the aerospace industry include:
MRO Insider - Maintenance, repair, and overhaul services
Flightbridge - Private aviation flight planning
Foreflight - Flight planning software
Airnav - General aviation information and services
Acukwik - General aviation information, including fuel, FBO, and maintenance
Rocketroute - Flight planning software
Advanced Reputation Management
Managing all of these sources of ratings and reviews can be a daunting task. There are dozens of platforms that gather ratings and reviews on businesses, and it can be difficult to manage responses and reviews if you have a large customer base. Fortunately, there are tools that you can use to aggregate all of your review services into one dashboard. These services make it easy to see if there are issues on any of your connected platforms, and respond to problems when they arise.
Next Steps
AeroParts Now wants to help keep our industry relevant as the next generation aviators enter the job market and become your customers. Digital natives that have never seen the Yellow Pages in printed form use ratings found on websites as the source of truth regarding your reputation. In our series of upcoming blog posts we will dig deeper into how you establish your business on Google and manage your reputation. We will continue to highlight ways to help you grow your business online and offline.
