The eCommerce market is highly competitive and with more and more players entering this space, the competition is only getting more acute.
There are a bunch of strategies that businesses implement to stand out and get a competitive edge over their counterparts. One of the key ways to achieve that is by having a strong and positive online reputation. To enhance your brand image and reputation is Online Reputation Management (or ORM as people call it) is crucial.
As per an interesting stat, about 71% of people use search engines for discovery.
That is why having a credible and trustworthy site is more than necessary if you want people to stay and buy something from your eCommerce store.
ORM is related to influencing, controlling, enhancing the reputation of your business. In this guide, you will understand the importance and benefits of Online Reputation Management and how it has a positive influence on your business.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Before we go into why ORM is important, we should understand what it really means. When we talk about ORM, it involves planning and implementing a bunch of strategies that work towards influencing and enhancing the online reputation of a brand.
Online reputation is everything for an online business as it helps the business to boost their sales and build credibility over the internet. Without a good online reputation, no business can survive in the long run.
How Online Reputation Management Works?
Online Reputation Management(ORM) can heavily influence the buying decisions of the audience.
A Local Consumer Review Survey from BrightLocal revealed that about 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Managing online reviews is a part of ORM and because online reviews have such a strong impact on a consumer’s buying decision, ORM is vital for any business.
Importance and Benefits of Online Reputation Management
Builds Credibility
Modern consumers use search engines to get the list of the best sites from which they can buy products and services. For small businesses, having a credible site is more than important because people will only explore your site and buy from it if they trust it completely. This is where ORM comes into play as ORM practices involve making your site visually appealing, adding testimonials, physical addresses of your company.
There are a lot of ways by which you can make your site credible and trustworthy. ORM helps you build credibility by creating a better social media presence, establishing trust among visitors using testimonials, good design, and safe online protocols.
Improves Sales
One of the main benefits of Online Reputation Management(ORM) is it enhances your sales significantly. Think of it yourself: from which site would you buy a product? The one with a good online reputation or the one with no online reputation at all?
Most people will go with the former one as it is an easy decision. The modern consumer is smarter than you think. Most consumers do extensive research before they make a purchasing decision. In fact,
As per a stat, about 81% of people do online research before buying a product.
This means that the way you present your brand and the reputation of your brand matter a lot. If you have a good online reputation, people will not have any second thoughts before buying a product from your site.
Helps in Enhancing the Brand Image
While providing your customers with the best quality services and products is the best way to make a good brand image, there are a lot of ways you can enhance it. ORM is definitely one of the ways by which you can enhance your brand image.
When you implement the ORM strategies correctly, people will know more about your brand. The more people talk about your business, the better it will be for your brand image. Having a good brand image can contribute to more sales and increased credibility of the site. ORM strategies like social media promotions, online ads, etc. help in enhancing the brand image overall.
Brings Natural Traffic to Your Site
One of the main reasons why a lot of companies are taking their business online is to reach a wider audience. However, just reaching a wide audience is not enough. You have to build credibility and gain the trust of the visitors in order for them to shop from your online store.
To do that, you need to have a good brand reputation and that can be achieved by systematic implementation of online reputation management marketing techniques. Once you have a credible site, more people are going to visit your site and buy products from it.
Affordable Marketing
You can easily find thousands of cases of brands pouring enormous amounts of money into online marketing, but still not getting the desired results. This is because no matter how many paid media resources you own, your online reputation is what matters at the end of the day. People will not buy from your site if you have a bad reputation no matter how much ever you spend on online marketing activities.
On the other hand, ORM serves as a cost-free marketing tactic. If you just implement the correct ORM strategy, your site will automatically get positive recommendations from people. This way, you will get free and credible marketing from other people on the internet.
Provides Insights
Online Reputation Management tools not only help you to enhance the reputation of your business but also provide you with crucial insights. Using ORM tools, you can get data related to what people like the most about your site and which products they like and buy more. Using these insights, you can pinpoint the areas that need to be improved on your site.
Promotes Better Rankings in SERPs
Having a website to sell your products online is not enough to bring more traffic to your online store. Your site needs to rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) so that people click on it when they search for a product. Although there is a lot that goes into improving the ranking of a site, ORM also plays an important role in promoting your site for better ranking. Modern search engines use AI and other tools for rankings. They compare a site against a number of keywords and the reviews/news associated with the site. If the news and reviews are positive, your site stands better chances of ranking on top.
Gives You Competitive Edge
In an era where everything is so competitive on the internet, you can’t afford any sluggishness. If you have a site with a good reputation, it immediately stands out from the rest of the competition. ORM strategies help you achieve a competitive edge by promoting your site over different channels on the internet. When your site has a better outreach, more people are attracted to it which can enhance the brand reputation.
Closing Phrase
So that was all about the importance and benefits of online reputation management. ORM is more than a necessity if you want to build credibility for your site and boost your sales. You should aim to implement Online Reputation Management marketing at a professional level so that all the strategies that you implement give you the best results.
