Keep on reading to learn how to use and optimize Google Business Profile for multiple locations, generate free Google Reviews, use them in your marketing, and track your performance.

Contents:

• How to Set Up Google My Business for Multiple Locations
• 5 Proven Strategies to Get Free Google Reviews
• Leveraging Prominent Reviews in Your Marketing Materials
• How to Evaluate Your Google Business Profile Performance
• Final Thoughts

How to Set Up Google My Business for Multiple Locations

Step #1 – Create a Business Group

The first step to managing multiple locations under one Business Profile account is to create a business group. Business groups allow you to sort locations within your organization under a group, make updates, or share access to several profiles simultaneously.

To set up a business group and start adding locations:

• Sign in to your Google Business Profile Manager;
• Click Businesses at the top left side;
• If you have several companies under your profile, use the search bar to find the target organization. If you haven’t claimed any company, click the Add Business tab at the middle right of the screen and follow the prompts to do so;
• Select the Create group option and enter;
• Enter the name of your group and click Create;
• Next, select the business group you just created. Click Add location and follow the prompts to complete the process.

Step #2 – Update Information About Your Locations

Entering detailed, accurate information about your business improves your chances of appearing in relevant searches.

But for businesses with multiple locations, filling in information one at a time can be time-consuming. That’s where bulk uploading comes in.

The bulk uploading system allows you to update all business information for several locations at scale. To own a bulk verified account, you must have 10 or more locations. Once that’s in place, follow these simple steps to start bulk uploading.

Step #3 – Add High-Quality Photos for Each Location

Appealing visuals help shoppers to determine whether your business offers what they are searching for. Ideally, ‌add location-specific photos that showcase the offerings of each of your stores. If you have a bulk-verified Google Business Profile, you can upload several images at once through a spreadsheet.

Once you’ve uploaded the pictures, consider updating them at least once a month.

Step #4 – Start Leveraging Google Business Profile Posts

GBP posts allow you to communicate with potential buyers through your Google business listing and drive traffic with keyword-optimized posts. You can share the latest news, promote offers, publicize special events, and highlight products or services.

However, this feature doesn’t support bulk posting. You’d still need to make posts from each location, spending more time than you should. To scale the process, consider using social media scheduling tools to post to several locations all at once.

Step #5 – Set Up a Review Management Process

Online review management involves tracking, responding to, and encouraging customer reviews. For individual businesses, it is a straightforward process. But for multi-location organizations that rely on several platforms such as GBP reviews and Facebook, tracking all reviews manually is extremely difficult. The result? Missed reviews, costly marketing efforts, and poor customer service. That’s why you should invest in an online reputation management tool to streamline the process.

The ideal review management software—not only allows you to gather reviews efficiently—but also helps you ‌boost your SEO rankings through timely responses. For instance, PromoRepublic’s Inbox for Google My Business helps multi-location companies manage incoming communication from different channels in one place. You can respond to GBP reviews, Facebook comments, direct messages, and reviews from one platform, saving you more time and operational costs.

5 Proven Strategies to Get Free Google Reviews

1. Ask for Reviews

Do you think that asking for Google My Business reviews directly is futile? Think again. You might be surprised at the number of customers that’ll be willing to leave one. So, why not try? You can start by asking via emails after delivering a product or service. Or after helping a customer resolve an issue. Other places to ask for reviews include social media posts and private messages, in-app prompts, in-store, or SMS.

Here are some general-purpose templates for requesting free reviews:

Template #1

Subject line: How was your experience?

Dear [Customer name],

Thank you for choosing us to [handle a specific service]! We enjoyed serving you.

Could you take a moment to share your experience with us via the link below? Your feedback will help us improve our services for you and other customers like you.

[Insert Link]

Template #2

Hi [Customer name],

Happy with our services? Please help other customers find us by leaving us a Google review here [Insert link].

Thanks!

Template #3

Dear [Customer name],

Thanks for shopping with us! Now that you’ve received your [items], we hope they give you great pleasure as your patronage brought to us!

Did our services meet your expectations? Help us ‌continue providing you with the best service by leaving us a quick Google review.

[Insert Link]

2. Add Your GBP Links to Your Marketing Channels

Customers interact with your businesses through various mediums. Adding your Google profile link could help you get in front of your existing users and receive more free reviews.

Most times, your GBP listing link may include an endless string of odd characters. To create a cleaner look, use link shorteners to customize yours. And then, use them at strategic points of your marketing channels. This includes your website, email signature, and print materials.

3. Optimize Your GBP Listing

Google My Business optimization services help you improve your chances of appearing in relevant searches. When done right, Local SEO for multiple locations will help you rank at the top 3 listings of the search engine results page. These top listings are known as the Google 3-pack. They appear as maps results, featuring Google map reviews drawn from your GBP listing.

Here are some tactics you can use to improve your local rankings:

• Start by evaluating where your business stands among competition;
• Claim your listings in all locations;
• Enter accurate information such as business name, categories, services, business description, addresses, operational hours, etc.;
• Make quality posts;
• Encourage high-quality reviews and ratings;
• Garner locally relevant links and backlinks to boost visibility;
• Focus on building a social media presence.

4. Don’t Forget to Respond to Reviews

In brand reputation management, your response matters. It shows that you’re listening and also value their feedback.

Your response time matters as well—not just in positive reviews—but most importantly, in negative reviews where the customer is unsatisfied.

For speedy response, choose a review management software like PromoRepublic that allows you to manage all your business listings from one place. Also, create templates that’ll serve as a guide for responding to reviews.

Here are some templates that highlight how to respond to Google reviews.

Example of a positive review response:

Dear [Customer Name],

Thank you for taking the time to leave us an outstanding review!

We’re ecstatic to hear that our services helped you [the result the customer mentioned]. We appreciate your business and hope to see you again!

Thanks!
[Staff Name]

Example of a negative review response:

Dear [Customer Name]

Thank you for your feedback.

We are sorry to hear that your experience with us didn’t your expectations. Reviews like yours give us a chance to do better and we’d love to make this right if you give us another chance.

Please reach out to us at [contact details] with your concerns, challenges, or suggestions.

All the best,
[Staff name]

5. Meet Customers’ Expectations

Okay, this one might be obvious, but satisfied customers are your greatest ambassadors. When you go beyond and above for your buyers, they’ll be happy with your business. They will be more likely to leave you a free 5-star google review or higher ratings that’ll help you attract more buyers.

Leveraging Prominent Reviews in Your Marketing Materials

Once you have a stream of positive reviews, it’s time to amplify them. Promoting customer reviews serves two main purposes. For one, it establishes credibility for prospects. Today, 77% of consumers always read reviews when considering local businesses. Incorporating these assets in your local online marketing could help you stand out as a top choice.

But keep in mind that customers can spot false information from a mile away. Luckily, GBP does not allow anonymous google reviews which are prone to manipulation. So, you’d only need to set up ways to weed out fake google reviews.

Another benefit of using reviews in your marketing is that it may encourage reluctant customers to share theirs. This could help improve your rankings and brand reputation.

Here are some ways to leverage reviews in your marketing materials:

• Embed Google review widgets on your homepage;
• Share on social media;
• Include them in your landing pages and pricing packages;
• Highlight them in your case studies;
• Showcase them in your promotional videos;
• Include them in your email signature.

How to Evaluate Your Google Business Profile Performance

One way to analyze your performance is through Google’s service known as Insights. This tool provides you with data on how customers interact with your GBP listing. However, it has some critical limitations.

For one, it is prone to data glitches. For instance, some users commonly report missing Google profile activity and photo data. When this happens, you may lose key insights that could you optimize performance.

Also, It doesn’t pull in reviews from other platforms. If you are active on other review platforms like Yelp or Facebook, it becomes a challenge to have a bird’s-eye view on your overall online reputation. Thus, tracking reviews from these sources may take time and more resources.

So what’s a better option?

An online reputation management software. An efficient and reliable tool such as PromoRepublic, allows you to access advanced insights into your GBP performance. Not only can you manage Google business accounts, but you can also get Facebook reviews insights. A remarkable feature called Review Performance Analytics within our software takes it even a step further.

It helps you monitor customer satisfaction, the speed at which local teams or customer care approach online reviews, and how the volume of reviews changes over time.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to multi-location marketing, one of the best free tools to help save time and money is the Google Business Profile. Once you set it up, dig into the tactics mentioned to generate a steady stream of quality reviews. But that’s not where it ends. Don’t forget to leverage the top-quality reviews in your marketing channels. And most importantly, track your performance using a reputation management tool, such as PromoRepublic, that gives you an accurate insight into your GBP listing, Facebook, and others all in one place.

To check the value of our Review Performance Analytics first-hand, book a demo now with one of our marketing experts.

The post Google My Business for Multiple Locations: 5 Ideas for Getting Free Google Reviews appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Yelp Page Activation to Get the Most Out of Your Account

It will help if you re-evaluate how your business appears on Yelp before embarking on generating reviews. That said, you need to activate your Yelp page in order to get the most from your Yelp marketing strategy. Here is how you can do it:

Step #1 – Claim Your Yelp Business Profile

Business owners can claim a business on Yelp by undergoing the site’s verification process. Fulfilling this gives you access to a suite of free tools that can help enhance your business’s visibility on Yelp. Moreover, claimed businesses can respond to funny reviews on Yelp via a public comment or direct message, update photos, and enrich the page with a biography.

Step #2 – Make It Easy for Potential Customers to Find You

Consumers want to know the business location and when exactly to access your products and services. After claiming your business profile, complete it by filling out as much information as possible about your company to optimize the chances of someone finding your profile on Yelp. That said, add your company’s physical address, website URL, and a detailed description of the services you provide. It will also help if you give up-to-date business information, such as closures, operating hours, and mobile phone numbers.

Don’t forget to leverage relevant keywords to optimize your Yelp profile for more visibility on the Internet.

Step #3 – Leverage the Yelp Business App

Yelp Business App gives you the right tools at your disposal to engage customers on the go. With the convenience of all these tools on your phone, you can get data about your user views, customer leads, and other activity on your Yelp Business Page through real-time insights. Moreover, if you run paid ads on Yelp as part of your Yelp marketing strategy, you get insights into the total number of Ad clicks to complement your overall Yelp marketing strategies.

Step #4 – Consider Using Yelp Enhanced Business Profile Features

You can also leverage Yelp enhanced business features to increase the functionality of your page. These features include an additional CTA button for customers to engage with your business directly, an enhanced photo gallery for easy product updates, and Yelp deals for exclusive offers, such as discounts.

Once done with the above steps, your Yelp page is optimized to appear in the first-page search results. Now, it’s time to get as many 5-star reviews as possible to create a positive brand sentiment.

12 Proven Tactics That Will Give You the Best Yelp Reviews

According to Harvard Business School, a 1-star increase on Yelp could lead to a 5-9% increase in business revenue. But are Yelp reviews reliable? Yes, because they are your brand’s advocates. Happy customers will likely influence new ones to buy from your brand.

Below you can learn about 12 proven tactics that will help you get started with the first positive reviews on Yelp.

1. Get Initial Reviews From Your Network

First, you’ll need to get initial reviews within your existing network as a foundation. You can ask your friends, family, and staff members to give honest reviews on your Yelp profile. While doing this, be on the watch out for customers who often talk about your business and invite them to leave their reviews on the page as well.

After that, send out a mass email to your current customers informing them of the new business listing on Yelp business reviews. You’ll be surprised how many of your customers will be willing to give detailed reviews highlighting their experiences. Also, echo the same message in your periodical newsletters to encourage more happy customers to leave reviews.

2. Ask Customers to Check In to Your Business

It looks unprofessional to solicit positive reviews from your customers directly. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t remind customers to check into your business on the Yelp app. If a customer includes a photo with their check-in information, Yelp will automatically send them an email within a day or so requesting them to leave a review. And they’ll gladly do so if you gave them an awesome experience.

3. Embed Yelp Badge on Your Website

There is a very high likelihood that the majority of consumers will interact with your website first before proceeding to compare Google reviews vs Yelp. That said, displaying a Yelp badge on your website can help drive traffic to your Yelp business profile. Moreover, Yelp review badges allow you to showcase existing Yelp reviews on your website.

4. Leverage Social Media By Sharing Positive Reviews

While soliciting for reviews directly is unprofessional, it’s not a crime to share some of the positive reviews with your audience. Social media sounds like a good platform for sharing reviews, thanks to the high number of active users. Besides driving sales, this move can encourage other happy customers to review your business too. Remember, the higher the number of positive reviews, the more your business looks credible and trustworthy.

5. Use Yelp Branding In-Store

It will help if you also target your physical in-store customers in a bid to get more Yelp reviewers on the page. That said, order a free window cling for Yelp in-store branding. Ensure that this window cling sits on a noticeable area, preferably at the entry and exit points of your local store. Alternatively, you can hang the window cling alongside wall menus.

6. Try Follow-Up Text Messages

Text messaging is gaining traction as a way of following up on consumer experiences. Besides a higher response rate of about 45%, 90% of consumers will likely open your text messages within three minutes of receipt. You can include a Yelp profile link in your follow-up text messages to encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews.

7. Leverage Receipts

Receipts work nearly the same way as follow-up texts. Consumers often love to confirm prices and discount rates later on receipts after purchasing products or services. If it’s a digital receipt, you can embed a Yelp badge on it and encourage the consumer to leave a comment. Alternatively, you can just include a short CTA, to prompt customers to talk about their experiences on Yelp.

8. Offer an Incentive

Yelp deals include discounts and you can take advantage of this to offer direct incentives to your customers. For instance, you can create a check-in offer for Yelp customers who can claim it via the site. Moreover, Yelp incentives also come with other benefits, such as driving orders on days that are typically slower, such as weekdays.

9. Run an Ad

Running an ad on Yelp places your business among the top listings in search results. Typically, first-responding businesses with actively running ads always appear first in search results as opposed to businesses in the sponsored ad sections. This gives you an upper hand in a highly competitive industry, positioning your business for better visibility and more positive Yelp reviews.

10. Post Regular Updates

Think of Yelp as a social media platform that allows you to share business updates with a more specific target audience. This is because the site has a feature that allows you to post critical updates and stay in touch with your consumers. Some of these updates may include new menu offerings, upgraded services, or logistical changes. Regular updates show your customers that you are active on the Yelp page and encourage them to leave more reviews or trust the existing ones.

11. Monitor Your Account and Respond to Existing Reviews

Although it can be tricky responding to bad Yelp reviews, doing so shows your customers that you care. It also builds trust with new prospects and positively affects your online reputation, knowing that your business owns up to its shortcomings.
Moreover, it’s common and understandable to experience a couple of unhappy customers who will leave bad reviews on Yelp. That said, you need to respond to both positive and negative reviews because nearly 89% of consumers are waiting to read your business’ response to its reviews. In that case, it will help if you don’t exude any anger in your responses.

12. Consider Utilizing Review Management Software

As your business picks up, you’ll start getting many reviews from multiple sites, some of them fronted by independent consumers. This can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you have a culture of tracking and responding to every review. It even gets more daunting if you are a national brand serving multiple locations.

Fortunately, you can leverage review management software to ensure brand image and response consistency across all locations. For example, PromoRepublic allows you to manage all your customer reviews and communication for every location via one dashboard.

Additionally, the platform helps monitor customer satisfaction and speed at which local teams or customer care approach online reviews via in-depth analytics.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Yelp Marketing And Reviews

How to embed Yelp reviews on your website?

Unlike a screenshot or copy-pasted reviews, embedded Yelp business reviews feature up-to-date rating and review count. You can embed positive reviews on your website in the following steps:

• Choose your recommended review on Yelp official site;
• Click review options;
• Select embed review and copy the embedding code;
• Paste the code at the right section of your website.

How to respond to a bad Yelp Review?

Knowing how to respond to Yelp reviews, whether positive or bad is critical. When it comes to negative reviews, you need to be brief, apologetic, and shoot straight to the point. After that, encourage the customer to pursue their concerns offline before resuming online conversation resolving the matter.

Can business owners delete Yelp reviews?

Many business owners would want to know how to remove negative Yelp reviews that unnecessarily tarnish brand image. Well, it’s possible to initiate the process with Yelp, especially if the subject review violates Yelp review guidelines. However, it’s not a guarantee that Yelp will remove the reviews.

Should you buy positive Yelp reviews?

Buying positive Yelp reviews is purely an aesthetic choice for business owners. However, you can buy one or two if your business is in a position to pay for Yelp reviews. But keep in mind there are many risks associated with buying yelp reviews as Yelp is not keen on the idea of people trying to cheat their system. If Yelp’s algorithm suspects a review is not genuine, it automatically hides it so that potential customers will not likely see it. Hence, buying reviews can easily turn into a complete waste of your money. It will help if you offer the best services or know how to get a bad review off Yelp so that you don’t worry about buying in the first place.

Why are some Yelp reviews not recommended?

Some Yelp business reviews may not be recommended if the platform suspects they are fake, biased, or unhelpful. To illustrate, roughly 25% of all user reviews are not recommended by the algorithm. Some of them are filtered simply because the reviewer is inexperienced, while Yelp aims to provide in-depth, throughout opinions for its users. However, customers can still search the Yelp filtered review and browse through them.

The Bottom Line

Yelp enables people to search for local businesses based on customer ratings and reviews. Despite myths that Yelp markering is only for restaurants, it covers a broad range of industry sectors such as beauty and fitness, travel and hotel, health and medical, home services, and many more.

As a brick-and-mortar business owner, you can use Yelp to showcase your products and services and connect with customers and prospects in your local area. To do so, you need a comprehensive Yelp marketing strategy that includes a step-by-step plan for generating a consistent flow of positive reviews.

In this article, we’ve reviewed 12 proven tactics to help you get those 5-start reviews coming in. Be aware that responding to customer reviews is as critical as generating them and can create a dialogue and show customers you value their feedback. If you have many locations to manage, consider using an online reputation software or a local marketing platform, such as PromoRepublic, to effectively manage communication in different areas via one dashboard. To see how it works, book a demo now.

The post Yelp Marketing: 12 Best Practices to Generate 5-Star Yelp Business Reviews appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Keep on reading to find out why you need to start working on your online reputation, how to measure it, and 6 tips you should implement into your online reputation strategy as soon as you finish reading this blog post.

Contents:

• How Does The Post-Pandemic Customer Journey Start?
• How Online Reputation Management Works
• Why Should Online Reputation Management Become A Priority For Multi-Location Brands?
• How To Measure Your Online Reputation?
• 4 Online Reputation Management Strategies You Can Use
• Roadmap to Better Online Reputation Management in 6 Steps
• The Bottom Line

How Does The Post-Pandemic Customer Journey Start?

Covid-19 has transformed business forever. McKinsey states that the crisis has brought about a huge amount of digital adoption with 65% of customer interactions are now being digital in the US. Therefore, to stand out and scale, brands should build their strategies around this new digital environment. 

Image: 65% of customer interactions with brands are digital in the US.

At the same time, Google has become the new online business card. Before anybody starts doing business with you, they will have googled your name. The first information that appears on Google is what potential partners think you are. That’s why curating a positive online reputation is no longer optional. It’s key.

Image: The pandemic has driven consumers to reevaluate the purpose of the brick and mortar store.

On top of that, when evaluating businesses, consumers aren’t influenced only by the reviews others leave but also by how companies manage them. That means that the first online impression can make or break your brand in the customer’s eyes. An inaccurate address or unresponded negative reviews is all it takes to damage your company’s reputation. 

To illustrate, the power of online review management, when you respond to consumers on social media, they’re 21% more likely to purchase from you. Additionally, a business’s responses to negative reviews make 45% of consumers more likely to support it.

All things together impact the intangible but precious asset any company can possess – reputation.

How Online Reputation Management Works

An online reputation is made up of public opinions and subjective customer thoughts. In turn, online reputation management is a set of activities shaped to fix damaged reputations. Its main goals include minimizing customers’ negative feedback, monitoring search results for unknown dangers, and protecting against future incidents.

In previous decades, dissatisfied customers would have to publish their thoughts in a local newspaper. Today, every single customer has a digital megaphone at their disposal with the potential to influence crowds.

Although sometimes ratings and reviews aren’t genuine, they still affect organizations. Either way, you must learn to deal with sensitive and impatient customers who can get frustrated. Why? Global reputations can be boosted or blasted with just a few keystrokes. Getting a competitive edge and scaling your company these days requires focusing more precisely on your online reputation. 

Why Should Online Reputation Management Become A Priority For Multi-Location Brands?

As highlighted in the previous paragraphs, corporate websites no longer dominate the conversation. A company’s marketing team and sales reps aren’t the only ones doing the talking. Evidently, the balance of power has shifted.

Image: Deloitte Global Survey on Reputation Risk.

According to a Deloitte survey, customers are the most important stakeholders when it comes to managing reputation risk. Indeed, they are co-creating brands online via star ratings and reviews on search engines, social media, and review sites.

Other important stakeholders include regulators, senior executives, employees, and investors. But in a world of ubiquitous social media, managing customer expectations and perceptions is key.

So what are the other reasons for online reputation management to be so crucial for modern brands? 

#1 – Your online reputation affects your offline business

50% of consumers who conduct a local search visit a store within a day. People research your brand and read reviews before walking into your physical venue to experience the real thing. So if they notice inconsistencies or a prevalence of negative reviews online, they’ll most likely select another brand.

#2 – It improves online visibility

If the content found in search results is high quality and positive, it will generate more click-throughs. One way to achieve this is by “owning” or controlling the search results. These may include your website, social media profiles, review platforms, and PR content. By managing this flow of information, you’ll make the first step toward a solid first impression.

#3 – A strong online reputation builds higher trust

It’s great to mix and match regular engagement with your audience, user-generated content, and testimonials. This can be done in many ways since social media is easy to use and cost-effective. Post often—not just to promote your brand, but to engage with your audience. Respond to their questions and thank them for their support. Most importantly, create a dialogue to build a level of trust between you and your target audience.

#4 – Online reputation influences your revenue

With more consumers carrying out online research before making purchase decisions, online reputation affects sales directly. The biggest achievement companies experience from investing in monitoring their reputation online is a 25% growth in sales, Clutch reports.

#5 – Companies with good reputations attract better employees

Businesses may view their online reputation from a customer-acquisition standpoint. However, digital presence affects almost everything, including the perception of potential employees.

How To Measure Your Online Reputation?

A reputation score helps you understand how your business and locations stand relative to competitors and best-in-class benchmarks. This is the true measure of how your business is found, chosen, and experienced online.

Here are the components of your reputation score:

Factor 1: Reviews 

Who is looking at your online reviews? Nearly everyone. The truth is everyone from prospective customers to future employees and business partners look at online reviews before engaging with your business. 

A BrightLocal study shows that 87% of people read reviews, and 79% trust them as much as a personal recommendation. In fact, a recent Northwestern University study suggests that having at least five quality product reviews can increase the likelihood of purchase by 270%. As a result, brands are quickly realizing the impact of validated, independent reviews on their bottom line.

Factor 2: Star ratings 

Star ratings can help businesses earn trust from potential customers, improve local search rankings, and boost conversions. 48% of consumers won’t even look twice at a company with fewer than 4-stars.

Consumer reviews from different sites and services power star ratings on Google, and Google uses an algorithm and an average to determine how many stars are displayed. John Mueller recently confirmed that Google does not factor star ratings or customer reviews into web search rankings. However, Google is clear that star ratings influence local search results and rankings.

Local business owners have a handful of options for their businesses to appear on Google – via Google Maps, a Google My Business page, and more – all of which can show star ratings.

Factor 3: Search impressions

Customer reviews also influence local search rankings, resulting in increased clicks, visits, numbers of prospects, and sales. Every time potential customers use words such as best, top, great, and highest-rated, Google first shows them businesses with review ratings of 4.0 or higher in the results.

By giving users the power to select the highest-rated businesses in a given area, reviews have become a major ranking factor in local search. The higher the review score of your business location, the more likely it is to reach nearby consumers.

4 Online Reputation Management Strategies You Should Leverage

1. Focus on local SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a trick that will give your brand more online visibility. They say that the second page of Google search results is the best place to hide a dead body. Why?

75% to 90% of search traffic and clicks happen on the search engine’s first results page. Fewer than 1% of people read content from the second page of Google search results.

Those who look for a gym or a doctor in their area might visit Google and enter “gym near me” in the search bar. Google will respond with a list of gyms near the person who performed the search. By the way, if you take a look at data from the Google Trends chart, you’ll see that “near me” searches have taken off in recent years.

2. Stay consistent across your marketing channels

When your marketing efforts present a similar message with a matching voice, color palette, and visual style across all your marketing channels—online and offline—it enables people to recognize your brand and understand what you offer. 

Therefore, it’s vital for franchise companies to set brand guidelines, organize marketing assets, plan ahead, train franchisees, and have tools to measure results in one place.

3. Create valuable content 

Although regular blog posting or managing social media is essential, copy quality is much more essential. While developing your content marketing strategy in terms of reputation, evaluate how your brand values correspond to your target audience. Try to deliver expert niche content so that your customers convert to brand supporters rather than remaining followers.

4. Identify and use the power of influencers

Image: Influencers are driving the conversation—and sales.

The value of influencer marketing lies in the fact that 61% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations – more than the 38% who trust branded social media content. If you can identify, select, and collaborate with the influencers your target customers follow, you’ll raise brand awareness, generate traffic, and see positive impacts on your bottom line. 

Roadmap to Better Online Reputation Management in 6 Steps

Reputation risk will likely be increasingly critical in the years to come. This means companies must continue to improve their capabilities in this area. Leading organizations already treat reputation risk as a strategic issue – a trend that we expect will accelerate.

Protecting your company’s reputation and brand is a significant challenge – but it’s also a manageable one. Although no company can ever be 100% safe, you can clear a path for continued growth by incorporating online reputation risk into your marketing strategy and investing in the right tools.  

Step #1. Provide on-brand content

You should set up a shared digital environment for branded marketing assets like templates, logos, images, videos. By lightening your franchisees’ load with ready-to-use templates, you save them time for their own online local marketing initiatives.

Step #2. Select social media platforms

Different social media networks attract different demographics, follow different algorithms, and reach different areas. Selecting the most relevant channel will ensure your message targets the appropriate person and elicits the desired action.

Once you understand each platform’s different strong points, be sure not to duplicate messages across all the platforms. Even when sending the same message, make it fit the medium you are using. 

Step#3. Create a content plan

While it’s impossible to control your online brand reputation, you can manage it with content marketing. With a content plan, you own the story. Your blogs, videos, social media posts, and every other aspect of content marketing are within your power to dictate.

Make sure you have a content plan with set-up time and posting frequency. With a documented content plan, you will feel less pressure.

Step#4. Establish the style and tone of your messaging

How do you want to approach your audience? Seriously? Warmly? Professionally? Depending on the type of business, you can choose which tone will help engage your audience more. Choosing the wrong style could turn away potential audiences who may feel you are too serious for the type of business you run or too jokey to be taken seriously.

It helps if you also plan out how to handle negativity, criticism, and praise. The major challenge comes when businesses need to respond to hate and negativity. Make a conscious choice either to ignore or to respond with a lot of empathy and restraint.

Step #5. Plan online reviews management

• Respond fast

Whether they’re positive or negative, respond to reviews immediately, showing consumers that you appreciate their feedback. Nearly half of all customers (46%) expect companies to respond to direct messages within 4 hours.  At the same time, 12% expect a response within 15 minutes or less. Negative reviews are more time-sensitive, so a reaction to them should appear quickly to prevent other potential customers from reading the review or to keep the problem from escalating before you tackle it.

• Avoid emotions

Harsh feedback stings. It touches our self-esteem, and we have a hard time getting over it. Before reacting, take your time, absorb the feedback, and respond with politeness and professionalism. Never allow emotions to take a toll on you by making it personal or coming up with blame games or excuses.

• Request removal of the negative or misleading review

If the negative situation is resolved, you can discuss removing the negative review with the author. This can be done only after the reviewer has been satisfied. Do not coax or manipulate the person. They may end up escalating and complicating the issue.

• Don’t censor reviews

62% of users say they would stop using platforms where brands can censor their reviews. So, we don’t recommend either filtering or deleting reviews in an attempt to build trust with your customers.

• Ask for feedback

The best way to get more reviews is simply by asking for them. Asking for customer feedback instead of a review can be much less intimidating for the customer. It shows you care about their experience. If they are unhappy about their customer experience, you have the chance to resolve any issues first before they post a poor review. 

Step# 6. Invest in online reputation management software

Choose the right tech stack to reinforce your marketing efforts. The lack of automation can result in higher management costs, unnoticed problems, and inconsistencies. If you’re looking for the best reputation management tool out there – check PromoRepublic.

PromoRepublic is the leading insight-driven local marketing platform that helps national businesses win local customers. It can help you confidently manage marketing across locations to achieve consistent customer experience, visibility of results for corporate, and seamless adoption onsite.

When it comes to reputation management, PromoRepublic enables you and your marketing team to:

• Manage a consistent “near me” experience across a network of 130+ global-local search platforms like Google, Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, etc.;
• Oversee reviews, ratings, and Q&As from one dashboard;
• Instantly update data for any location in real-time to reach more consumers with correct information;
• Respond to direct messages;
• Reply to comments posted on major social media channels;
• Track your performance in Google My Business & Facebook Reviews for any given timeframe;

Image: PromoRepublic helps national brands easily manage consumer marketing across their locations.

The Bottom Line

The Covid pandemic turned the world digital almost overnight. This means customers and brands turned online, causing brands to invest in reputation management to compete in ratings, reviews, and search rankings. Creating strong brands with good reputations is an essential part of business growth in 2022. But you don’t have to do it alone!

Taking advantage of the available online reputation management tools can help a business track its level of visibility, reputation, and customers’ perceptions and respond timely.

If you are looking for a tool to establish an online presence, improve customer experience, and increase local sales, learn more about PromoRepublic’s local marketing platform for businesses with multiple locations. We’ll help you grow foot traffic, increase appointments, and up local sales.

The post How to Improve Online Reputation Management in 6 Simple Steps appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.