How To Manage Online Reputation Of Digital Marketing Clients

In a beautifully manicured garden, you may sometimes get a rare weed that can stifle the growth of your roses. Similarly, while conducting a perfect digital marketing campaign, it is possible to sometimes receive a few unfavourable online comments from disgruntled customers. If the proper action is not taken in time, such comments could go viral, lowering your online brand reputation, and affecting the future for your digital marketing strategy in a negative manner.

The best way to deal with negative publicity is to respond quickly. When a negative review or comment has been posted on a company's own community profile or website, it is important to post a quick response to it. This shows other customers that you are interested in the issues faced by the complaining customer, and wish to improve service. Your response may encourage others to post positive comments about your company, and dilute the appeal of the unfavourable review.

Online forums may not be a great channel for offering customer service to consumers, but they are a useful platform for companies conducting digital marketing campaigns to listen and respond to customer needs. Accordingly, companies can make changes to their products, pricing and customer service, so that the next time around, they will be able to get a load of positive comments from the same customers.

After Google changed its ranking algorithm to reduce the ranking of websites having unfavourable reviews, many digital marketing professionals removed business profile pages from social networking websites. Their basic argument was that if there are no avenues for customers to vent out their frustration, they will be no negative reviews that could lower digital marketing rankings.

However, this argument is faulty, because even if a company removes all their online communities, there will still be many independent websites on which customers can post their negative reviews and bad experiences. Hence, online communities are necessary, as they tell digital marketing professionals exactly where customer complaints can be found and responded to.

With their announcement of a changed algorithm that negatively influences websites with bad reviews, Google seems to be moving towards a more sentiment-driven algorithm. If today, businesses with bad reviews are languishing at the bottom of the search rankings, tomorrow, brands with great reviews may make it to the first page. In such a scenario, digital marketing specialists should work to ensure positive feedback from customers.

Google's changed algorithm may potentially result in some people using 'black hat' digital marketing tactics, such as deliberately posting unfavourable comments about a competitor's products or services. It remains to be seen how Google deals with this issue, in its quest to create a ranking algorithm that is 'impartial' to all online businesses.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency and can be contacted on 020 8891 2077 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.

Digital Consultancy

Analytics Online Brand Management Conversion & Usability Digital Strategy SEO Consultancy Training & Recruitment

Contact Us

Qudos Digital
70 London Road,
Twickenham, London TW1 3QS
Tel: 020 8891 2077
Fax: 0845 280 0338
Email: info@qudosdigital.co.uk