“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.” — Ken Blanchard.

Every business must understand the importance of creating and maintaining a good reputation among its audience. A stellar reputation helps build trust with customers, which is vital for business growth. And online reputation management is one of the key tools to maintaining that reputation.

What Is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management (ORM) is a concept that involves creating and maintaining a positive public image of a brand or business in the digital world. Today, people spend a lot of their time on the internet, making it necessary for companies to monitor their online presence. They must ensure that their brand image is positive and consistent, with minimal negative feedback.

ORM maintains transparency, which is essential for customers to trust a brand. Businesses can use organic conversations to build healthy relationships with their clients.

How Does Online Reputation Management Work?

Maintaining a brand’s reputation can be overwhelming when so many channels are used to monitor and manage online brand reputation. These digital channels include social media platforms, search engines, product review websites, other websites, press coverage, etc. Thus, several PR tools and online reputation management strategies are used to maintain a brand-centric online reputation. The important goals to keep in mind with ORM are:

  1. Maintain a positive brand image with the audience.
  2. Look for negative remarks or comments about your brand, if any.
  3. Convert or override negative comments and feedback into positive ones.

Why Is Online Reputation Management Important?

ORM helps a brand or public figure by monitoring their online presence meticulously. A well-thought-through ORM strategy can provide the following advantages:

  1. It can help a business increase its sales.
  2. It helps create a positive brand image and improves brand credibility.
  3. It helps improve a brand’s visibility on different marketing channels on the internet by boosting customer engagement.
  4. It allows a business to generate intelligent insights that can help it increase its brand awareness.
  5. It helps a brand build trust with its customers.
  6. Good online management reputation results in increased web traffic.
  7. It also helps in getting more testimonials for your website.

Why Is ORM One of the Most In-Demand Services in 2022?

The global ORM services market size is projected to reach a multi-million figure by 2028 at an unprecedented CAGR during 2022–2028. (Source: Reportmines)

Times have changed, and the world is becoming increasingly digital. This has led to an increased demand for ORM in digital marketing. Every business or public figure with an online presence has to prioritize ORM if they care about brand visibility, influence, and authority. As such, ORM is currently one of the most in-demand services that digital agencies can offer to their clients.

One of the main reasons for this demand is the magnitude of losses that even a single instance of negative feedback can cause a brand or business. It is estimated that nearly 80% of buyers may change their minds about a purchase after reading just one negative review. In regard to the actual revenue lost, Convergys published an eye-opening study that breaks down the losses generated by unfavorable feedback.

A negative social media review can cost up to 30 customers or one in ten customers losing trust in a brand. The economic loss for this can range from $750 to $3,000 per customer for that one piece of feedback, depending on the product or service in concern. Now consider that lost customer’s personal network that also gets wind of the review. This is when the numbers start to multiply exponentially. What started off as a $750 loss in revenue can quickly balloon to a loss of $15,000 annually for every negative review.

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This can be a death toll for small businesses that rely on low to no-cost social media marketing. But the good news is that you can retain the same customers who come across the negative review by showing them how quickly and efficiently your brand deals with the situation. The right customer engagement can go a long way in saving your business’ online reputation.

Hence, if you run a digital agency, offering ORM services to your clients can present you with lucrative opportunities and multiply your revenues in 2022. However, some agencies might find it challenging to provide these services by themselves for a lack of necessary experience or connections. In such instances, it is best to partner with a white label ORM agency that allows other agencies to resell their services.

By levering the expertise of a reputed online reputation management agency, you can help your clients delete negative links online. This way, you can reap the rewards of this lucrative service while taking no risk in delivery and execution.