According to a recent report, a whopping 94% of consumers will avoid interacting with your business if you have negative reviews.
Monitoring and addressing reviews from your customers is an important part of corporate reputation management. What else is included?
We’re here to explain.
We’ll share all you need to know about corporate reputation management, including how to build an effective corporate reputation management strategy to develop and maintain a strong brand image.
Table of Contents
- What Is Corporate Reputation Management?
- Corporate Reputation Management vs. PR
- Examples Of Corporate Reputation Management [Positive & Negative]
- How To Measure Your Corporate Reputation
- How To Build A Corporate Reputation Management Strategy
- Corporate Reputation Management Checklist
- Key Takeaways On Corporate Reputation Management
What Is Corporate Reputation Management?
Corporate reputation management is a set of actions intended to maintain a strong and positive image for your brand, prevent reputation damage, or repair your reputation if it has been negatively impacted.
Corporate reputation management activities monitor every part of your corporate reputation, including:
- Products or services
- Business operations
- Customer focus
- Brand culture
- Working environment
- Online presence
- Performance
- Leadership
- Ethical behavior
Corporate social responsibility, including community and environmental responsibility, philanthropy and volunteerism
Corporate reputation management is a long-term process that requires expertise, resources and time.
For digital brands, this type of management requires online reputation management, which includes monitoring brand mentions across all digital platforms and channels.
For brick-and-mortar brands, this includes monitoring and managing brand mentions across the press, TV and radio.
Corporate Reputation Management vs. PR
Though related and working hand in hand, corporate reputation management differs from public relations.
Corporate reputation management focuses on how your brand image is reflected in print and social media, including ratings and reviews. More general in nature, PR focuses on securing publications and exposure for your brand, and helping with crisis communications, when needed.
The Importance Of Corporate Reputation Management
Why is this type of management so important for a brand?
Effective corporate reputation management:
- Enhances customer loyalty
- Increases sales
- Strengthens industry presence
- Increases company market value
- Improves employee retention
- Secures a positive partner image for suppliers and vendors
- Reveals new opportunities for strategic partnerships
Efficient corporate reputation management increases your company’s market value, strengthens your industry presence, enhances customer loyalty and improves employee retention
Examples Of Corporate Reputation Management [Positive & Negative]
Here are two examples illustrating how brands addressed complaints from clients.
United Airlines
In 2008, the Canadian musician Dave Carroll traveled to Nebraska by United Airlines for a one-week tour. As a result of improper baggage handling, his $3,500 Taylor guitar was seriously damaged.
Nine months of emails and calls asking United Airlines for assistance brought no results. Though not denying the incident was their fault, the airline refused to compensate the musician for the damage.
Carroll decided to approach the issue in a different way, creating a song based on the story and posting it on YouTube in 2009. Within one day, the video generated 150,000 views. Within three days, the number of views was at half a million.
The result for United Airlines?
A 10% loss in market value, which cost $180 million for its shareholders.
Lesson learned: Never ignore your customers’ problems. Monitor reviews and complaints, and respond to them as soon as possible.
Tesla
In 2017, a Tesla customer complained on Twitter of coming across “a terrible experience with a very pushy sales guy from Tesla’s Stanford shop while shopping for model X.”
Tesla’s CEO, the billionaire Elon Musk, was fast to address the frustration of this single customer personally, informing him Tesla’s employees were promptly reminded that what really matters is that “people look forward to their next visit.”
The result for Tesla?
An avalanche of approval for Musk’s responsiveness and hundreds of comments from customers about the positive experience they had at Tesla stores.
Lesson learned: Listen to your audiences and show dedication to your work. Reply to any concerns customers might have when interacting with your brand to turn them into your brand ambassadors.
How To Measure Your Corporate Reputation
There are numerous approaches to corporate reputation measurement.
The most common approaches include:
- Check Your PageRank
- Research Your Online Ratings And Reviews
- Check Your Local Search Ranking
- Check Your Brand’s Likes And Followers On Social Media
1. Check Your PageRank
PageRank is a Google search algorithm that ranks your web pages on a search engine results page (SERP), i.e. it arranges them according to their importance.
PageRank shows how many inbound links from authoritative and trustworthy sites lead to your content.
Positioning yourself on the PageRank scale through publishing relevant authoritative content that makes your website link-worthy, will help you improve your search engine positioning and positively affect your online reputation.
To check your PageRank, use tools such as Sitechecker or DNS’ Pagerank Checker Tool.
2. Research Your Online Ratings And Reviews
Online reviews contain key information about the experience your customers have had with your brand.
Online reviews statistics show that:
- Customers trust companies with ratings that are above 4 stars
- Higher ratings are given to responsive industry leaders
- Customers expect a response to negative reviews within the time range of three days to a week
To measure your customer sentiment, use natural language processing (NLP) tools, such as IBM Watson, MonkeyLearn or Aylien. Using artificial intelligence, NLP tools allow you to access and analyze enormous amounts of data.
3. Check Your Local Search Ranking
Your local search ranking helps you identify whether your brand appears in local search results when customers are looking for a business close to their location.
Analyzing your local search ranking can help you identify opportunities to attract local traffic.
To check your local search ranking, use tools, such as SurferLocal’s Rank Checker or the Local SERP Checker by Brightlocal.
4. Check Your Brand’s Likes And Followers On Social Media
Monitoring the number of followers and likes you have on social media will give you information about the number of users who find your content valuable and trustworthy, and who are willing to engage and create a bond with your brand.
To monitor your social media performance, you can use tools such as Hootsuite.
How To Build A Corporate Reputation Management Strategy
Explore our six-step guide to building a successful corporate reputation management strategy:
1. Create A Reputation Management Team
Assign specific responsibilities to each team member. These responsibilities may extend to the collection and analysis of data, removal of negative digital information, social media management, review management and public relations.
2. Audit Your Online Presence
- Review all current mentions related to your brand, whether positive, negative or neutral. These can include articles, news and social media comments.
- Check all online reviews of your business posted by both customers and employees
- Review your presence on both claimed and unclaimed business profiles
- Check how your company appears when you use search phrases for your brand and industry
3. Analyze Your Brand’s Standing
- Explore all existing threats that may negatively affect your reputation, such as customer complaints, negative reviews or negative media mentions
- Evaluate the overall customer sentiment about your brand
- Identify opportunities for reputation growth and improvement
4. Compare Your Brand To The Competition
- Research how your local and national competitors perform for high-volume search phrases
- Check the performance of your competitors on social platforms and online review sites
- Analyze your competition’s brand messaging, brand awareness and sentiment among key target audiences
- Identify your weak and strong areas along with opportunities for improvement
5. Create A Reputation Roadmap
- Use online reputation monitoring to collect customer feedback
- Use online review management to answer positive and negative reviews
- Implement a social media management strategy to monitor and act on comments and posts related to your brand
- Create high-quality content, such as blogs or social media posts, to solidify your digital presence, boost your brand authority and build trust
- Invest in search engine optimization to make your landing pages, blogs and social threads visible on search engines
- Engage in corporate social responsibility initiatives, such as charity and community events or environmental campaigns
- Foster your relationship with the media
- Create a crisis communication plan to prevent long-term damage to your reputation, in case of an unforeseen event
6. Work With A Professional Reputation Management Agency
- Review professional reputation management agencies on B2B marketplaces, such as DesignRush
- Select an agency with a proven track record in managing corporate reputation
Corporate Reputation Management Checklist
Our experts compiled a corporate reputation management checklist to help you maintain a positive image for your brand.
Products And Services
- Optimize price and quality ratio
- Add value for your customers
- Make sure your products or services are safe
- Speak confidently of your products and services
- Improve your customer service
- Highlight employee expertise
Financial Performance
- Improve your standing against your competitors
- Reduce risk
- Create a growth strategy
- Seek a global presence
Work Environment
- Make sure employee working conditions are safe and productive
- Monitor for toxic behavior, such as hostility or aggression
- Boost diversity
- Provide regular training and support
- Ensure fair compensation and benefits
- Support family culture
Emotional Appeal
- Speak directly to your target groups
- Promote honesty and transparency
- Create an inspiring brand story
- Develop and maintain a strong corporate identity based on key values
- Respect both customer and employee privacy
Corporate Social Responsibility
- Support social and community causes
- Use innovative ways to reduce environmental impact
Online Reputation Management
- Create positive content
- Improve your visibility through SEO
- Optimize your accounts across all social media platforms
- Build brand trust and loyalty
- Create a strong online presence
- Encourage positive reviews
- Monitor and reply to online mentions
- Acknowledge and reply to negative reviews and comments
- React transparently to false negative content
Key Takeaways On Corporate Reputation Management
Corporate reputation management includes activities to improve the public opinion of your brand.
To measure your corporate reputation:
- Check your PageRank
- Research your online ratings and reviews
- Check your local search rank
- Check your brand likes and followers on social media
To build a corporate reputation management strategy:
- Create a reputation management team
- Audit your online presence
- Analyze your brand standing
- Compare your brand to the competition
- Create a reputation roadmap
- Work with a professional reputation management agency
