Why Holiday Reputation Management Matters
You can go through all the trouble to establish a strong holiday marketing strategy, but if your brand doesn’t have a solid online presence, your strategy won’t go far. More consumers will be using the Internet to shop online this holiday season, and they won’t hesitate to spend their time reading product reviews, sifting through testimonials and researching your brand. In fact, Econsultancy suggests that 61% of consumers read reviews online before deciding on a purchase.
Here are some of the most important pieces of information that people look for.
- Product reviews
- Quality and value of products
- Shipping costs
- Delivery times
- Return policies
- Customer service
To ensure that what people are reading about your business is positive, it’s important to manage your reputation for the holiday season. Let’s take a look at a few of the steps you can take to boost your reputation online.
Encourage Reviews
Take a look at your website and identify customer touch points where you can prompt a review. For instance, when a customer pays a bill or buys a product, create a flash screen that asks for a review. You can also ask for reviews in an email to customers who have made a purchase, or request feedback on social media.
Make sure that leaving reviews is easy for customers. People don’t like to do a lot of work. For example, provide a link in an email newsletter, or list a website on the bottom of a receipt.
Amp Up Your Customer Service
Part of managing your online reputation is making sure that you have staff in all the right places. This way, if there are any issues with the product or delivery, your customer service team can step in, apologize and offer a solution.
You should also have dedicated individuals keeping an eye on social media and review sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. Some people will go straight to social media to post their complaints, so you need to be armed and ready to deal with them.
Act in Real Time
It’s important that you respond to customers in a timely manner. If you leave them hanging, they may move on to one of your competitors. This is why it helps to monitor your social channels so that you can address issues immediately. When other people see how you handle your customers, they’ll learn to trust your brand as well.
These are just a few of the ways that you can manage your online presence. If you haven’t devised a strategy for reputation management, WSI Star Web can help. Give us a call today at 888-853-4449.