Wondering how a marketing agency can help manage your online reputation?
Look no further: We recently did just that for one of our childcare clients. Read on to learn about their unique challenge, and how and why we helped them in the way we did.
The Challenge
Online, this particular client — a local childcare provider — faced mass competition that was well-rated on Google.
While our client had an existing online reputation, they needed help improving their Google rating to better compete for prospects. After an initial investigation, we identified that a series of older, poorly rated reviews were hurting their current business efforts.
This presented an opportunity for us to reach out to improve their overall Google rating and online reputation by asking current happy customers to generate new, positive reviews.
Why They Chose Us
Here at Rose Marketing Solutions, we’re proud of our strong history of providing childcare centers with digital marketing services, particularly online reputation management.
Word of mouth between business owners is the primary way we get referrals. They see the success we’ve helped other companies achieve, and they connect with us in pursuit of that same success. That’s exactly how this client originally found us.
Our Work
This particular client started out by utilizing our social media and digital ad services. Our standard practice is to include periodic online reputation audits for our clients, regardless of their services with us.
We do this because online reputation affects many aspects of your digital marketing strategy, especially digital ad performance.
While conducting one of these online reputation audits, we noticed that this client had negative reviews from two and three years ago that were bringing their Google rating down to 4.1 overall.
Why is this an issue? Well, Google recently made a change to its “top-rated” filter. Previously, when someone searched for “childcare near me,” the top results were filtered by businesses rated 4.0 and above. Now, Google’s “top-rated” businesses include only those rated 4.5 and above. Businesses with a 4.4 and under simply don’t appear in search results.
Because our client’s rating was 4.1, we suggested that our Reputation Management and Review Generation service could help them improve their online presence, which would also improve their other digital marketing initiatives.
The Results
After working through our proven strategy over a six-month period, this client’s rating improved from 4.1 to 4.5, which brought them into the desired “top-rated” category on Google.
Beyond the importance of being found in a search, reputation management is a crucial part of any business strategy and offers many benefits when done well. At least 79% of people trust online reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend or family member. Your online reputation can make or break your business, so reputation management needs to be part of your business strategy.
Our decision to improve our client’s reputation over a six-month period was intentional; we didn’t do it all at once on purpose. Why? If a business gets many excellent Google reviews at once, there’s a good chance Google will flag the account and remove its ability to receive reviews at all.
Obviously, that would be disastrous. Slow and steady is the way to go.
Our Services
Review Generation
For this particular client, the first step in cleaning up their online reputation was review generation. We reached out to current, happy customers and asked them to take a few moments to leave a positive review. Our client was very consistent and timely in providing us with customer lists so we could start review generation email campaigns.
They also kept their Google Business pages updated with current information, including business hours, another important part of reputation management that’s often overlooked.
Reputation Management
While other companies often use bots to respond to reviews, we prefer a more personalized approach. When a client of ours receives a positive review, a real person from our office reads it promptly and crafts a unique reply.
When a negative review is posted, we don’t respond right away. We immediately alert our client, discuss the context of the situation, and help them craft an appropriate response.
How We Can Help You
This client is one of many who have been thrilled with our services and who continues to work with us. If you think we might be a good fit for your business needs, please let us know how we can help. We’ll be happy to chat about what we can do for you!